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Indian State Logs Microsoft Out
slack_prad writes "An Indian state, Kerala has chalked out a plan for migrating its high school students to free software platforms in three years. This was apparently in response to RMS's recent visit to the place. The education minister for the state said that the Free software guru Richard Stallman's visit last week had nudged the schools to discard the proprietary software altogether. 'Stallman has inspired Kerala's transition to free software on the lines of an exciting model of a Spanish province.' Initially, schools were given the option to choose whether teachers were to be trained in Linux systems or Microsoft. The option has now narrowed down to migration."
my schools network is pure hell and the school is half a million quid in debt because it never works, and they refuse to hire more tech to fix it due to lack of money, ironically the staff are pro linux/mac but the stupid headteacher is a Microsoft bitch.
schools need to actually do a proper investigation into what'll actually work best rather than the idiot head teacher who's only expertise were woodshop in my case choose based on what they use at home.
Ah, that old straw man. Are schools teaching computing or Windows? All the basic skills they need to use any computer GUI can be taught with Linux just as well as Windows. In fact, having variety will make the students much more comfortable with the idea that things move and so in order to find the setting you want you need to hunt about a bit. People worry about the time to retrain users but you can put a Windows user on a Mac and within an hour they will be able to function and quite possibly be as capable as they are on Windows within a day. Most people who claim to know Windows really don't know much beyond using a bit of Office (badly) and the file manager. I say to people that if they can use a keyboard and a mouse they can use a Mac and the same is true of Linux, especially in a supported environment where all they need is to be able to do their work and someone else will keep it running. Sure, for home users Windows may be the best option (well, no, it isn't, buy a Mac, but that is another story) but where you don't have to run the system yourself you should be able to cope with whatever you are put in front of. At our site we have a mixure of Windows, Linux and Macs and the only people who really have problems are the PA and secretarial types who really don't know anything about their computers and function by remembering where stuff is. Move anything and they panic. Everyone else, the younger more computer literate types are happy enough on whatever they get. There is no benefit teaching students where to find something on version X of Windows, teach them what to look for based on what it is that they are trying to do and when it moves they will still be able to function.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Many, many school districts in the US run Windows and things operate just fine.
.PDF files (since the bloody MS boxen couldn't even read postscript files), took them to work on a disc, and printed them out on the school computers using the single useful program installed on them --- the free Acrobat reader.
Well, that all depends on who you ask, doesn't it? I don't know about school districts, but I can speak first hand about working as a mathematics instructor at a community college and being restricted to using Microsoft products. Things DON'T operate just fine. Have you ever tried to prepare a mathematical document with MS Word that doesn't look like it was scrawled by a 6-year-old? I thought not. It's fucking impossible. So, I went to our "Admin" to request her kind permission to install LaTeX on one of the sacred MS boxen. She did, and things were okay until we got new computers. So, I asked her again to put LaTeX on the new machine. Her response was, "Last time it broke the e-mail client, so I'll not allow it." Ahhhh, the genius and worldly knowledge of the MS slave. So, I prepared my documents at home, exported them to