How Microsoft Beats GNU/Linux In Schools

twitter writes "Ever wonder why schools still use Windows? Boycott Novell has extracted the details from 2002 Microsoft email presented in the Comes vrs Microsoft case and other leaks. What emerges is Microsoft's desperate battle to 'never lose to Linux.' At stake for Microsoft is more than a billion dollars of annual revenue, vital user conditioning and governmental lock in that excludes competition, and software freedom for the rest of us. Education and Government Incentives [EDGI] and "Microsoft Unlimited Potential" are programs that allows vendors to sell Windows at zero cost. Microsoft's nightmare scenario has already been realized in Indiana and other places. Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars. Because software is about as expensive as the hardware in these deals, the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to see what Microsoft can do other than what they did to Peter Quinn."

Comments

Product dumping

[PitaBred]

Microsoft has already been ruled a monopoly... isn't dumping an illegal tactic for monopolies?

Re:Product dumping

[goombah99]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free. They are not going to put Linux out of bussiness by undercutting linux's profit margin. It might be possible they are however dumping with regard to software support (red hat, IBM, Novell, ...) But I think this would be hard to argue succesfully.

Even the memos from MS state MS cannot and will not compete soley on the basis of price.

The thing is their products are agile in price since they have high fixed costs and low marginal costs. Airlines are classic example of this. Airlines try to create price structures (e.g. saturday stays, advance purchase, limited kinds of seats, luggage limits,... ) so that they integrate the area under the demand curve.

Far from being unfair this is actually socially ideal. In the ideal limit people pay for something exactly what it is worth. depsite the fact that some folks pay more than others, over all nearly everyone, including the people paying the higher price, are paying LESS than they would have to pay if it was sold for a fixed price, because of the increased demand lowers the per capitia fixed costs.

I also question broad statements like " Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars.". Anecdotally maybe this is has happened. But it's not really clear that this is true in general. School systems are one of the most budget limited govt run orgs. They try everything to shave dollars, like fees for art supplies, to hot lunches paid for by PTO fund raisers. I find it hard to believe the schools would somehow be so blind as to over look an easy "tens of millions" if the case was clear cut.

" Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars. "

Re:Product dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.

Re:Product dumping

[postbigbang]

It's not the operating system that pays, it's the sum of platform applications and infrastructure where Microsoft makes money, coupled to the students that know nothing else but Windows. The tip of the iceberg is Windows. The cash cows are Office, SQL Server, Exchange, and the add-ons, upgrades, and other platform products.

You don't 'lose' to Linux, you lose revenue that represents lots of infrastructure, server licenses, CALs, and so on.

There are few professional organizations that can do an end-to-end Linux infrastructure for educational needs (including school administration software costs) but the list is growing, if by populism alone.

Part of Microsoft's loss is the horrible security problems of 1998-2007, as they're less than before. That damage hurt Microsoft-- coupled to support costs for the products. Macs have always been a fractional part of the educational market, and Apple's done a lot to damage their own relationships with schools-- but students love them.

Microsoft has a lot to learn about love, rather than feigning leadership.

Re:Product dumping

[ZombieRoboNinja]

>>School systems are one of the most budget limited govt run orgs.

This is true, but there are often a lot of state or national funds available specifically for technology that don't come out of the school's (local) budget. So there are actually a lot of public schools that have more money than they really need sloshing around for computers, even if they're scrambling to pay their teachers and replace horrendously outdated textbooks.

Re:Product dumping

[Bromskloss]

they integrate the area under the demand curve.

Far from being unfair this is actually socially ideal. In the ideal limit people pay for something exactly what it is worth.

Ah I like to reason about this kind of things! What do we mean by "exactly what it is worth" in this case? Is it in the eyes of the buyer or the seller?

Re:Product dumping

[Gerzel]

Adding the word objective to your argument does not make it any more objective.

You need to show WHY it is objectively more or less of a monopoly than the Law says and ALSO show why we should consider your definition of monopoly rather than the legal one.

Objectively strangling an infant or elderly person should be less of a crime than strangling a young adult because the young adult is harder to replace than the infant and has more to provide to society in terms of man-hours work.

While objectivity can help justice; justice is not necessarily objective

Re:Product dumping

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Great post, but I have to challenge this statement:

are paying LESS than they would have to pay if it was sold for a fixed price, because of the increased demand lowers the per capitia fixed costs.

No. Companies maximize profit by charging the maximum price a consumer tier will permit. It has nothing to do with saving anyone any money. The increased demand lowering fixed costs is a separate matter that also holds true, but companies simply bank on the lowered fixed costs, and do not pass it on to consumers. They may say so, but the only time companies are supposed to lower prices is when they need to be more competitive. Of course, when they raise prices they love to put it on increased costs, but we all know from the oil companies that in their case the increase in oil prices was directly proportional to their obscene level of profits.

No one should second guess the intents of any large corporation. They are required to squeeze every dime out of the consumer. The economy is built around this behavior. If a private company is charging less than it can, they are a great M&A opportunity. If it is a public company, the shareholders would not allow it. It is only a matter of time until prices are adjusted to their maximums.

Re:Product dumping

[gbjbaanb]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.

Last I saw, Linux wasn't free, RedHat, Novell and Canonical all sell it (plus assorted support and licensing offerings) for quite a sum. Therefore, this dumping is illegal. surely?

plus, Macs certainly aren't free, and they're also part Microsoft's of the competition.

Re:Product dumping

[CarpetShark]

Indeed. Linux is a kernel, not a product. The free distros cannot really be argued to compete for government contracts. Moreover, Linux's FOSS development methodology is simply based on the scientific and academic sharing in the academic world it came from. It may not even be right to argue that Linux itself CAN be a competitor, given that. It would be like claiming physics professors who give away their ideas and laser technology demo software are competing with a laser pointer manufacturer.

Re:Product dumping

[diegocgteleline.es]

Indeed, and consider how MUCH money on training Microsoft gets for free when public schools teach with Microsoft products.

It's not just the license. It's all the taxes you pay to train your own childs for the benefit of a private company.

Re:Product dumping

[atraintocry]

RTFHeadline.

Re:Product dumping

[stinerman]

I'm not so sure.

Smith believed in the labor theory of value, so he'd have thought that what the software was "worth" is the amount of labor required to produce it.

Re:Product dumping

[memco]

Education, however, is a place where Apple holds a substantial portion of the market, and is the market.

Re:Product dumping

[gustar]

Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.

I do not think that is true. Plenty of people and organizations use Linux on the desktop/laptop.

With Linux (or say FreeBSD) you can deliver a functional platform with *all* of the applications a typical (and not so typical user) needs for *no* acquisition cost.

Definitely an attractive value proposition which continues to attract attention.

Re:Product dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbiased from someone named 'AppleOSux'. Allthough I use linux at home and personally think it's better on price and technical merit than windows or OS X, Apple wins at schools for the same reason schools use windows. OS X runs photoshop students use in photo class, it runs MS Office that everyone has their documents in (and before you say OO, our school switched to office 07 this year and OO has had problems on at least half of the documents, allthough usually its just formatting problems and you can still read it). Our school is about half macs right now. They decide the OS based on the applications. OS X runs office, photoshop, eclipse, audacity (I know those last two are cross platform/OSS), and the rest of the software they need, except for the teachers grading software that runs on windows, which is why every classroom has one windows comp in it.

Re:Product dumping

[0100010001010011]

The main competition to Windows Is Windows N-1.

Re:Product dumping

[rubycodez]

Linux might make headway for that cost reason now that we're in economic downturn, but right now Mac has over three times the users.

Mac OSX is a very small part of the cost of a Mac. And all the major desktop GNU/Linux apps run on Mac OSX

Re:Product dumping

[Lulfas]

Except in the non-first world countries, where they aren't.

Re:Product dumping

[dubbreak]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.

Last I saw, Linux wasn't free, RedHat, Novell and Canonical all sell it (plus assorted support and licensing offerings) for quite a sum.

No kidding. At the university I went to the linux lab with Red Hat cost more to license than an equivalent sized XP installed lab.

Granted the linux lab was licensed as workstation installs (more expensive, but desktop didn't allow multiple users remoting in) and the windows labs were desktop install so we're not comparing apples to apples (and I vaguely remember there was some weirdness with the RedHat licensing for education that made them jump up one level further, missing options for education licensing as opposed to commercial). Still, one would assume the linux licensing would have a slight edge regardless of the install type.

Re:Product dumping

[silanea]

I can only speak of the situation here in Germany, but throughout my whole education so far, including several terms in computer science, I have encountered exactly 1 (read: one) Mac in a publicly-funded institution, and that one was located in the arts faculty of my grammar school. Over here Macs are very much limited to visual arts faculties and (usually private) specialised arts and design academies, and even there they hold no monopoly.

Is the situation in other countries that different?

Re:Product dumping

[goombah99]

I actually read chunks of adam smith long ago and Recall with patchy clarity that he did set out as an axiom that trades, while not equally so, are still something that both the seller and buyer agree is worth doing.

But scanning the wikipedia on adam smith for a refresher they dwell a lot on his Labor Theory of Value, which finds amorphous usage.

The discrepancy, and one that Marx among many latched onto, is that there can be a difference between the price of an item and the sum of the cost of the labor that went into. The latter is it's labor value, and former is it's selling price.

Lots of people have weighed in, but I think Smith's original point is right. Both sides entering a contract are aregging it is worthwhile. Presumbaly the labor cost to the seller where he to pay try other means of reproducing the item, either through his own labor or through the effort of finding another seller, are give it a higher value than the price. Thus to both the Labor cost makes it worthwhile.

Re:Product dumping

[Tablizer]

The main competition to Windows Is Windows N-1.

That's kind of like Curly versus Moe.
     

Re:Product dumping

[Red Pointy Tail]

The thing is their products are agile in price since they have high fixed costs and low marginal costs. Airlines are classic example of this.

Um... airlines have low marginal costs? Where did you get that from? I think what you are getting at is the ability to execute price differentiation. Having a low marginal cost of course helps you execute this because you can drop all the way to zero, but I don't think you can call running flights low-cost!

Re:Product dumping

[gustar]

Linux might make headway for that cost reason now that we're in economic downturn, but right now Mac has over three times the users.

Linux began making headway long before the economy went South. The value proposition of low, or no acquisition cost is just icing on already very appealing cake.

As far number of users, I have heard OS/X has anywhere from six to ten percent of the *OS market* depending on which survey you happen to believe. I would say its not hard to believe that market use of Linux/BSD on the desktop rival this at least.

Honestly I am not sure how people are counting number of Linux/BSD desktop/laptop users since there is no license to buy. You download, then go using one copy of a download to install numerous times/instances. For all either us know there could be many, many millions of users.

Mac OSX is a very small part of the cost of a Mac. And all the major desktop GNU/Linux apps run on Mac OSX

According to the Apple site, a copy of Leopard costs $129. Not exactly trivial. though I am not sure what percentage of the cost of a new Mac is the OS.

I have no problem with Macs, or OS/X but for my money I can get a lot more value through commodity hardware coupled with Linux, or FreeBSD.

Many folks are discovering the same.

Re:Product dumping

[pha3r0]

I can't disagree with that totally but there is one point with which I have to take exception.

School systems are one of the most budget limited govt run orgs. They try everything to shave dollars, like fees for art supplies, to hot lunches paid for by PTO fund raisers. I find it hard to believe the schools would somehow be so blind as to over look an easy "tens of millions" if the case was clear cut.

I while back i posted about an experience I had with a government office, This office was a school and I am here to tell you, while it is true some schools and some teachers are under budgeted. Many only appear so on paper and in fact hemorrhage money.

The real issue I see is the same that occurs in every other aspect of Linux/FOSS adoption. The community, and companies we form around, are behind the curve so to speak. Microsoft was aggressive in there early years and has used there size to push everyone around. From patents to legislation all the way down to your local school district. We wont win this fight by beating there prices just like they can't compete with ours. We have to continually innovate, provide support and help our neighbors adopt FOSS (assimilate those who refuse).

If you want to win schools over you gotta start with yours, get involved with the PTA's and let your Superintendents know they can save money, turn out classes full of seniors with desirable tech skills, and all the other goodies that go with it, and make sure they know how that will play out when it comes time to vote!

Re:Product dumping

[goombah99]

see page 196 of "Straight and Level: practical airplan economics". Here is the google book search link. though that may not be a stable link. You can also look here or here.

Re:Product dumping

[Ironica]

Far from being unfair this is actually socially ideal. In the ideal limit people pay for something exactly what it is worth. depsite the fact that some folks pay more than others, over all nearly everyone, including the people paying the higher price, are paying LESS than they would have to pay if it was sold for a fixed price, because of the increased demand lowers the per capitia fixed costs.

I think you just said that, by offering the product at a lower price, companies enable people to buy their product at a lower price.

Re:Product dumping

[naveenkumar.s]

I guess that's true everywhere except the US. The only place I saw a mac in my college was in the media lab.

Re:Product dumping

[McNihil]

I would almost argue that it is even Sum(Windows K) where K=N-4 to N-1

Windows 7 main competition is XP for the most part (74%) and Vista comes next at (20%)

Re:Product dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in the non-first world countries, where they aren't.

OK, 3rd world gets Windows N-2.

Re:Product dumping

[mewshi_nya]

Monopoly, in economic terms, is defined as one player having a major portion of the market, and the market power that goes with it.

Re:Product dumping

[EdelFactor19]

That's a meaningless and effectively incorrect point. Seeing as the schools are not going to run hackintosh's and OS X is really only sold with hardware (aside from upgrades) the hardware cost and OS cost is inseperable just the way they like it. That way whenever we complain there hardwear costs are bloated they can BS about how they are charging us for the OS itself.

OS X is just as expensive as windows; and thats not the point of this article.

Re:Product dumping

[BronsCon]

And education is (or so we're told in school) about preparing us for the business world. So GGGP is correct.

Re:Product dumping

[Tubal-Cain]

and involved no usage of the computers for any productive purpose beyond that which could've been offered by a typewriter.

Editing without white-out or retyping? What kind of typewriter did you have?

Re:Product dumping

[Tubal-Cain]

Uhhh...
Most of the first world is on Windows $LAST_VERSION (XP), and a non-trivial portion is still on $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF (2000).

Re:Product dumping

[Lonewolf666]

True for the "enterprise" versions, which usually are supposed to include some support. But it is legal to use a free Linux distribution (even if not promoted for organizations by the Linux vendor).
CentOS is even advertised as being identical to RedHat except for the name, and free for download.

There is your free competition ;-)

Re:Product dumping

[Tubal-Cain]

I would say its not hard to believe that market use of Linux/BSD on the desktop rival this at least.

I would.

Honestly I am not sure how people are counting number of Linux/BSD desktop/laptop users since there is no license to buy.

The current favored method is tracking web users across large collections of websites through cookies and the browser's User Agent.

Linux has <1% marketshare and declining (enable javascript for hitslink if you use NoScript)
Of course, this metric is skewed somewhat by the fact that Firefox users can fake their user agent (for sites like fafsa.ed.gov, for instance)

...then go using one copy of a download to install numerous times/instances.

Is that so very different from your average XP install?

According to the Apple site, a copy of Leopard costs $129.

To be pedantic, that is supposed to be an upgrade disc.

Re:Product dumping

[burnin1965]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.

Actually it has less to do with prices and more to do with the intentions. Perhaps it would have been better to call it "predatory pricing" as the objective of the dumping is to drive competitors out of the market so a monopoly can be established at which point the remaining monopoly gouges customers and provides a sub par product.

The fact that you can acquire and implement linux for virtually no cost does not change the fact that Microsoft is using predatory practices to perpetuate a monopoly position.

The thing is their products are agile in price since they have high fixed costs and low marginal costs.

Actually Microsoft's software products are agile in price because they have gross margins which are only possible with a monopoly position that they maintain through illegal business tactics.

From their most recent Quarterly SEC filing the client business (Vista, XP) gross margin is 95%, server and tools (Windows Server, SQL Server, CALs) gross margin is 83%, office (MS Office) gross margin is 96%.

I have no idea what the fixed and marginal costs are as they do not break them out but the cost of revenue is minimal as one would expect for a software company with the market size.

And comparing an Airline business to Microsoft is a poor comparison as the cost of reproducing an airline flight is very different from the cost of reproducing a copy of a software application. You could compare Microsoft's business model to recorded music and movies.

Far from being unfair this is actually socially ideal.

Not in a monopoly controlled market, see the margins, customers are gouged.

I also question broad statements like " Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars."

Think about it, what does a school district with technically capable IT staff pay in gross margins to implement linux versus Windows?

Re:Product dumping

[hedwards]

Whether or not the competition is free is wholly irrelevant to the question. The question is whether or not MS is damaging or distorting the market by doing so. A commercial interest that makes money by selling an item is not allowed to dump.

Linux doesn't charge anybody for their software, so failing to charge subsectors is really not dumping.

The reason why dumping is banned is that a company with deep pockets, like MS, can afford to give away a lot of product and put smaller vendors into bankruptcy, then raise their prices again. Or use the threat of lowered prices as a way of strong arming the competition into giving in.

Re:Product dumping

[dryeo]

My son's high school seems to have about a 50/50 ratio of PC's and Mac's. In elementary he used a Mac

Re:Product dumping

[dryeo]

I should add this is Canada.

Re:Product dumping

[guyminuslife]

I'm 23. In elementary school, all of my school's computers were Macs. (Once we got Macs---we still had a room full of old Apple IIs.) In middle school, we had a few Windows computers in the library, but the labs and the classroom computers were all Macs. I don't remember seeing a single Mac in high school. The computers I've seen at my university have all been Windows (although the servers are from Sun), but I rarely use them and haven't looked around much.I bet if I went back to my old elementary and middle schools, all of the computers there would be running XP.

I think it's just a function of Apple. They gave a lot of discounts to schools back in the day, so that's what the schools adopted. I don't know whether they continued this program or not. I don't know what kind of deals Microsoft/OEMs were offering at the time. I'm sure it was largely a function of cash. And also: when it became obvious that most students and faculty were using Windows all the time outside of school---e.g., that Microsoft had definitively won and Apple was irrelevant (I am, of course, speaking historically), then from a practical educational standpoint, it only made sense to use Windows machines.

That point is important. It may be the case that Linux would save schools money. But if the schools' only interest were saving money, they wouldn't have computers at all---or they'd still be using those old Apple IIs from my elementary. If you can use one operating system, it is (and should be) Windows. For younger students, the school's objective is to teach computer literacy, so they want to have Windows computers. For older students, the school's objective is to use them as a tool and not have to worry about showing the classroom idiot how to use GNOME, so they want to have Windows computers. If Linux were widely used on the desktop, then schools would have no problem switching---but that's a chicken-and-egg problem.

Re:Product dumping

[QuantumRiff]

I used to work at a small college. They didn't teach classes in Office applications, they taught classes in Office 2007. They taught intro to MS Word. The teachers, (who attended all sorts of MS training for free) didn't think there was a difference. They got PISSED when I suggested to students that couldn't afford office to try openoffice. MS gave our entire campus all the software we needed for less money than we gave the local bus service so students could ride the city bus at a heavy discount. This was at a 2 year college that had more technology per capita than most schools in the state. Hell, our main "Operating systems" class covered Windows 2003, 2000, and XP. The teacher got upset when the students came to me (I was network admin) and asked for Linux, so I handed them Ubuntu's live cd's... Why would we want to use something that's free, when we get to use something so valuable, for free. they thought MS was obviously a better value!

Re:Product dumping

[kenh]

Why do public schools use MS and Apple products, not Linux? It's simple:

• It's what the teachers know and want
• It's what the parents know and want for their kids
• It's what the software that came with the textbook runs on
• It's not that expensive - really

Teachers and Parents can raise a holy stink if they think they need something the school isn't offering.

Textbook publishers aren't supporting Linux (yet), and supporting Windows in WINE or other virtualization really means the IT group is supporting two platforms (Linux and Windows)

Our local school district pays about $64,000 to pay for annual licenses for desktops (Mac and PCs, including MS Office) and servers (incl. SQL Server) to run about 1,200 desktops (one third Mac). If you cut all those licenses, the most you could save would be $64K/year, assuming you don't need to add a headcount to implement Linux solutions to replace the lost Windows infrastructure/tools.

Re:Product dumping

[JohnBailey]

Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.

For home users, perhaps, in graphic design firms, Windows might even be the competition for Apple. But for general business users, not so much.

But to prove your point, can you find me a report of Microsoft swooping in with the sales ninjas to fight for a customer that is switching to Mac?

Re:Product dumping

[JohnBailey]

Except in the non-first world countries, where they aren't.

Except in non American countries, where they aren't.

Re:Product dumping

[plasmacutter]

Far from being unfair this is actually socially ideal. In the ideal limit people pay for something exactly what it is worth. depsite the fact that some folks pay more than others,

actually, that's economically ideal in the simpler static models.

over all nearly everyone, including the people paying the higher price, are paying LESS than they would have to pay if it was sold for a fixed price, because of the increased demand lowers the per capitia fixed costs.

introductory micro courses say otherwise, and that fixed costs are not a factor in pricing, only marginal cost.

That is, once again, in an ideal economic model designed to illustrate market forces. Later courses teach these markets are far from ideal, and that prices often exceed marginal cost, but NOT because of fixed costs.

I will ask you. Please name one product which used differential prices which provided savings to anyone compared to the original price structure?

Re:Product dumping

[Mozk]

It appears as though you're unaware of this, so I'd like to point out that Photoshop runs on Windows as well.

Re:Product dumping

[Mozk]

we're not comparing apples to apples

First Red Hat and Microsoft, and now you're bringing Apple into this?

Re:Product dumping

[Bob9113]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.

That is only true with price competitors, which Linux and Windows are not. With quality competitors, dumping must be gauged by other criteria, which actually don't work too well here either.

The most "perfect" definition of dumping is selling below the marginal cost. Since the marginal cost for Windows is somewhere between a few bucks (packaging) and the marginal cost of support (moderate - a few tens of dollars at most), it is difficult to say what exact price constitutes dumping. It can, from this, be said to be greater than zero.

For companies that have high fixed and low marginal costs, one could theoretically calculate the effective per-unit cost. But with a company such as Microsoft which sells many goods in diverse markets which have shared fixed costs, this would be an exceedingly difficult calculation. You'd have to get into lots of guesses about incidence rates and it wouldn't be much better than throwing darts.

In a quality competitive market of imperfect competing monopolies (all copyrighted works are monopolies), another possible definition is selling below the market price. Simultaneously, though, it is difficult to gauge the market price of a low marginal cost good which uses monopoly pricing. The natural price is probably somewhere between the $60 or whatever OEMs pay and $320 for a full retail copy of Ultimate Edition.

As for competitor prices, in a quality competitive market the natural price of each good is different. Therefore it is possible for a competitor to be selling for less and not dumping, or to be selling for more and dumping. The competitors' prices are not relevant in quality competition, except inasmuch as they promote natural pricing.

Finally the question of harm - with some goods dumping is actually beneficial to the target market. If customer loyalty (lock-in being one example) is low, and barriers to competitor entry and exit are low, dumping is a good thing. It doesn't harm the competitor and it benefits the customer. In this case the reason it makes sense for MS is the customer loyalty angle - as long as they have most of the market they can continue to dictate things like de facto standards, and hence continue to inhibit competition.

In summary; the price of Linux is not directly relevant, and dumping harms this market. Whether they are in fact dumping is not definitively answered here, but it cannot be ruled out based on the price of Linux alone, and if they are regularly selling for $0 then they are almost certainly dumping (the only possible exception being $0 marginal price for per-seat licenses if MS's marginal cost is zero (no packaging, no support)).

Re:Product dumping

[profplump]

To be pedantic, that is supposed to be an upgrade disc.

Not really. Apple might assume that you already bought a Mac that came with some pervious version of the OS, but the license doesn't restrict you to such uses. If you bought a Mac second-hand but not the OS license that came with it you could still use the $129 version of OS X to obtain a valid OS.

Re:Product dumping

[Tubal-Cain]

Textbook publishers aren't supporting Linux (yet)

Everybody knows that textbooks run on DeadTree OS.

Re:Product dumping

[rubycodez]

schools get a very steep discount for macs, the schools in my area got 40%

Re:Product dumping

[rubycodez]

For internet use Macs outnumber Linux boxes over 8 to 1

Now I use GNU/Linux, but there's no sense being such a fanboy that reality is denied. Linux market share for desktop is minuscule on this planet, less than 1%.

Re:Product dumping

[hitmark]

unless your into digital media, then its basically mandatory...

Re:Product dumping

[Bert64]

Teaching specific apps in schools is a poor idea, since by the time these kids venture into the workplace the apps they used in school will be horrendously obsolete and no longer used... I used wordperfect (for dos) in school, and before that we had acorn archimedes systems running riscos and some apps i forget the name of.

What the schools use isn't important, because whatever they use will be different from what people have to use after school. How they teach is what matters, teach general concepts rather than specific apps.

Re:Product dumping

[genericpoweruser]

Unless the textbook says "left click on the Start button. . ."

Re:Product dumping

[Silas is back]

Except in non American countries, where they aren't.

Wrong, here in Switzerland Apple holds more than 50% of the educational market and the top spot in several other European countries. That was 2006, I doubt the rate has dropped, but have no data at hand.

Re:Product dumping

[Silas is back]

Yes, I know this, poor Germans. I guess that's your country's "Geiz ist geil" mentality. ;-)

As I just posted a few comments up, here in Switzerland Apple held more than 50% of the educational market in 2006, and I doubt this rate has dropped. This is also what you'll encounter, 50/50 Macs vs. PCs. Market share for Apple in the whole IT business also is over 10%.

Re:Product dumping

[Chrisq]

It's not dumping if the competition (Linux) is free.

Is that true? I could grow my own flour, bake my own bread and brew my own beer (not quite free but at a fraction of the cost), but companies selling at the cost of ingredients would be dumping.

Re:Product dumping

[theTerribleRobbo]

Australian here; my school had about 40 PCs and 20 Macs. This was back in the OS 9 / early-OS X era.

Re:Product dumping

[silanea]

Thanks for your post. Though I strongly disagree with the following part:

[...] If you can use one operating system, it is (and should be) Windows. For younger students, the school's objective is to teach computer literacy, so they want to have Windows computers. For older students, the school's objective is to use them as a tool and not have to worry about showing the classroom idiot how to use GNOME, so they want to have Windows computers. [...]

Conditioning someone to click at certain screen elements to achieve a certain effect is software training, not an exercise in computer literacy. Computer literacy would be to teach students the concepts and paradigms behind modern software. Then they could find their way around Windows, OS X and Linux by themselves (with a little help from the respective manuals) - by understanding what the hell they are doing instead of mere repetitive training. Basic concepts are shared amongst all mayor desktops: Some kind of menu-based application launcher, a bar that collects open windows, a file manager...they have different names and look (more or less) different in each OS, but GNOME's application menu applies the same paradigms as Windows' Start menu.

Many companies who want to ditch the Windows eco-system or at least parts like MS Office face enormous obstacles in their employees' computer illiteracy. They may know the Office toolbars by heart, but they cannot transfer their knowledge to competing applications because they don't really understand what button X does. Microsoft rewards training over understanding. And that alone should be reason enough to make it unfit for educational use.

Re:Product dumping

[RiotingPacifist]

same here in england. we had 3 apples in the art department and that was it.

Re:Product dumping

[JAlexoi]

Just to remind you, that Apple sells PREMIUM hardware at premium prices.
That is why, the first thing that a person that just bought MacBook Pro has to convince himself that he has not spent his money for nothing.
Sure, it's a good machine, but it's not worth the price.

Re:Product dumping

[JAlexoi]

Sure, because they probably have 100% margins on those things.

Re:Product dumping

[JohnBailey]

unless your into digital media, then its basically mandatory...

And if you are into making hand crafted woodcuts, it's entirely optional. If you narrow the specification enough, you can support just about any premise.

Re:Product dumping

[etnoy]

The teacher got upset when the students came to me [...] and asked for Linux, so I handed them Ubuntu's live cd's...

OMG! It's YOU!

Re:Product dumping

[JPeMu]

Macs are the main competition to Windows, not Linux.

While this may be true, I would like to think that schools who "go down the Mac road" would be held accountable for that decision by those who finance them. I can't conceive of any justification for purchasing significantly over-priced hardware (in comparison to the relatively cheaper and virtually identical vanilla PC hardware).

Whether you like it or not, Microsoft pretty well dominates the commercial sector. Training people to use Mac products, whilst arguably an improvement over a Microsoft-lock-in, isn't going to be either the most appropriate use of funding and in one fell swoop limits the sheer quantity of available software to run on the chosen OS (although that's arguably a good point!)

The issue of cost (or more correctly value-for-money) leaves only one clear candidate, and that's Linux. As with Mac, the choice of software is limited - whilst Linux has (far too big) a selection of software available, I'd argue that the quality of much of the software (outside of the "key" mainstream apps) is somewhat limited: That said, Linux has more than enough (as does Mac) high-quality, feature-rich mainstream apps (such as Firefox for web browsing, a port of Adobe Flash, a plethora of Multimedia apps, OpenOffice, The GIMP etc.) but delivered in a value-for-money fashion (i.e. most of this software is free and well-supported by the community).

I'm not grumbling per se - I use Linux myself (Linux Mint if you must know), and am an advocate for Linux where possible. However, although Linux has matured over the years, it is still not quite (imho) "ready for the desktop". There are a number of design fragmentation issues that need to be resolved (choice of desktop manager, multimedia software, configuration toolset etc.) - most end users simply don't care what desktop manager or MP3 player they are using, as long as that software is stable and of good-quality both from a performance and appearance perspective, simple-to-use (i.e. intuitive), compatible with most (if not all) other software (in the case of desktop managers, for instance), and of sufficient caliber to insulate them from the intricacies of the underlying OS (eg by including adequate configuration applications, plugins, codecs or whatever).

For me, though, It's good to see each and every instance where Linux is gaining a foothold - not "just" because it's Linux, but because it represents an informed choice of a value-for-money OS, and also because it goes one step further to aiding in the catch-22 of "Linux for the desktop": Increased market penetration will (hopefully) lead to improvements, and improvements will lead to increased market penetration. As a parent in the UK, It would be nice to see Linux gain a significant share in schools here too: As a taxpayer, I am effectively contributing to their funding and take great exception at the amounts of money being spent on proprietary technologies that are, frankly, unnecessary. The money would be greatly appreciated and of use in other areas, and Linux is a credible solution to liberate these funds.

DT

Re:Product dumping

[Ironlenny]

If the migration costs are not in the budget, how can schools take advantage of cost saving technologies?

Re:Product dumping

[Ihmhi]

I'm sure that making it harder to run and install programs (especially games) would be considered a real plus for Mac or Linux. Yes, there are games, emulators not like WINE, etc., but there seem to be less gaping security holes.

When I was in high school, I had some games dropped onto people's accounts as a favor. The games disappeared, of course - I learned that the sysadmin was monitoring the size of each account and then manually checking out the ones with a load of stuff.

I thought it best to just deposit a shortcut onto people's accounts and then drop stuff onto the c:/ drive of each station, but you could not get into the drive via My Computer. Luckily, I had found that you could access C:/ using the address bar in MS Word 97.

I felt a bit bad for the poor ol' gal who had to use a hard drive imager on nearly every computer on a weekly basis to restore them... and the games would be back just as quickly.

Don't even get me started on the other kids who brought along bootleg Counterstrike/Team Fortress Classic install discs that were set up to automatically circmuvent the network security... 5 minutes to install on a computer, pass a couple disks around, game on for the whole lunch period.

Re:Product dumping

[pacinpm]

Actually fighting Microsoft is non-patriotic in those times of recession. If Microsoft loses those contracts it means they must cut on jobs. GNU programs will not feed that many people as Microsoft.

Re:Product dumping

[xaxa]

That's "top spot" comparing Apple with Dell, or HP, or Sun, etc. Not comparing OS X with Windows and Linux.

Re:Product dumping

[who knows my name]

My school wasted thousands of pounds on swipe card systems that don't work, and they no longer use. I knew more about computers than our head of IT. Schools are just not well informed, or don't have the staff who know how to implement a Linux system. I could quite easily see our old headteacher being persuaded to take a load of cheap computers running Windows...

Re:Product dumping

[crmarvin42]

Practically speaking (ie not lawyer speak) the license for the Mac OS is attached to the hardware at manufacturing, because the license is useless without the hardware. When I bought an old G4 the license was automatically transfered to me, even though the machine didn't have a HD or any installer disks. Whether Apple actually states that anywhere in a legally defensible document doesn't really matter since it is impossible to purchase new Apple hardware without getting a license at the same time, and Apple is not in the habit of suing it's own customers (those who've purchased their hardware) for violation of licensing terms.

I've commented on this in the past ad nauseam. Apple sells upgrades (even though they don't specify this clearly on the box) becuase their license prohibits the installation of the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware. Consequently, any licensed-approved use of the Mac OS installer disks are, by design, either upgrades or restores to factory settings.

I don't plan to argue the validity of EULA's, or any other point of potential legal contention with anyone here because I'm not a lawyer, and most likely neither are you. As things stand right now, Apple has a reasonable expectation of the validity of their EULA, and as a result they have no need to specify that their software is really an "upgrade". Besides, if their EULA is not valid, then specifying that the software is an upgrade would be an exercise in futility since they would do the specifying in the EULA!

Re:Product dumping

[grahamm]

Um... airlines have low marginal costs? Where did you get that from?

What is the difference in cost to the airline of carrying N passengers on a particular flight and carrying N+1 passengers (assuming that N < the capacity of the aircraft)? That is the marginal cost to the airline.

Re:Product dumping

[drinkypoo]

Adam Smith was being paid to produce a treatise on the benefits of mercantilism. The book is a PR piece.

Re:Product dumping

[JimFive]

Teaching specific apps in schools is a poor idea, since by the time these kids venture into the workplace the apps they used in school will be horrendously obsolete and no longer used... I used wordperfect (for dos) in school,

While that used to be true, I don't think it is any more. MS Word didn't change much from Word 6.0 up through Word 2003 (I haven't used 2007, but I understand the interface is quite a bit different). So learning MS Word in high school in 1994 would have held you in good stead for at least 13 years.
--
JimFive

Re:Product dumping

[pfleming]

I also question broad statements like " Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars.". Anecdotally maybe this is has happened. But it's not really clear that this is true in general. School systems are one of the most budget limited govt run orgs. They try everything to shave dollars, like fees for art supplies, to hot lunches paid for by PTO fund raisers. I find it hard to believe the schools would somehow be so blind as to over look an easy "tens of millions" if the case was clear cut.

The school district here is just like that. I tried to demo K12LTSP to the elementary school my kids go to. While they were willing enough to allow a demo, there was no way it would have gone even as far as actually setting up a couple of machines. The web server runs Mandriva and they reportedly use MySQL for some inventory purposes but don't try to put FOSS software on a local computer. I was chastised for installing software - specifically OpenOffice.org - on a workstation. As part of the hook, MS offers extremely cheap copies of Windows for users to take home.
Tech Services is Windows centric (I think there is one Apple "expert") It's what they know, it's what they stick with.
And forget about trying to donate a computer to a school; if it doesn't run the latest MS OS they don't want it - forget about installing a K12LTSP lab since the machines are not powerful enough.

Re:Product dumping

[StormyWeather]

I used WordPerfect and Lotus123 in middle/high school with an IBM color dot matrix printer that never seemed to work right. It let me learn how to type, set margins, etc, and I've used just about every other word processor you can imagine since with no reservations. Lotus showed me how spreadsheets work, and I found the transition to every other spreadsheet product easy.

I would say that becoming good with a software product that you need to do your job/education at the time is a very good thing. Every app borrows from the next, so transitioning is easier than learning from scratch, and it's easier than trying to learn 8 similar products at once.

Re:Product dumping

[Bert64]

As you pointed out, msword 2007 is massively different, so learning an older version in school wouldn't be much use.
And what guarantee is there that the interface present in 2007 won't be changed again?
What guarantee is there that ms will be so widespread in the future?

No, you should teach general concepts that apply to multiple apps, teach kids how to write documents on computers, not how to specifically use a particular version of msword.

Also, in 1994 wordperfect was still extremely common, teaching exclusively msword then on the assumption that it would be more widely used in future would be the equivalent to teaching exclusively openoffice today. The future looks bright for openoffice, with moves towards standardised formats (even ms plans to implement odf) eliminating obstacles, and tough economic conditions pushing companies to try and reduce costs.. But that's no guarantee.

Re:Product dumping

[pfleming]

Our local school district pays about $64,000 to pay for annual licenses for desktops (Mac and PCs, including MS Office) and servers (incl. SQL Server) to run about 1,200 desktops (one third Mac). If you cut all those licenses, the most you could save would be $64K/year, assuming you don't need to add a headcount to implement Linux solutions to replace the lost Windows infrastructure/tools.

$64k/year is a school nurse or maybe one and a half. Our district has been cutting school nurses so they actually serve more than one school. A nurse here could end up at as many as three schools a week. While that's fine for certain types of screenings it makes a big difference when your kid busts their head open on the playground - initial review of the wound by a trained professional or an automatic trip to the ER. Where do you want to get a phone call from about your kid? Sorry, we don't have a nurse. We sent that salary to Redmond.

Re:Product dumping

[robot_love]

And if you are into making hand crafted woodcuts, it's entirely optional. If you narrow the specification enough, you can support just about any premise.

You have been warned, John. Unless you bring your MacBook Pro to the next Woodcutting meeting, your membership will be revoked. I think we've been very lenient until now, but enough is enough. Get a Mac or get out.

Re:Product dumping

[goombah99]

I will ask you. Please name one product which used differential prices which provided savings to anyone compared to the original price structure?

1) airlines
2) software.

Re:Product dumping

[elrous0]

Back in the 80's in the U.S. (and well into the 90's), Apple basically dominated the primary and secondary schools (school for ages 5-18). Every school I went to (and I moved around a lot) had Apple II's and Mac's exclusively. I was in college before I saw my first PC.

Apple worked very hard to sell themselves to the education market back in those days and would even basically "bribe" schools and districts with special side deals for employees. No one called it a "monopoly" back then (they way they try to with Windows now) but it was basically the exact same kind of stuff that MS does today.

Re:Product dumping

[mikael]

On a bannser seen outside a Silicon Valley conference center:

"Objective objectives objectify objectivity".

Re:Product dumping

[krunk7]

Yes. Any folder placed in the doc effectively becomes a "Menu" of items contained in that directory. So the Applications directory becomes the applications menu.

Re:Product dumping

[cellurl]

Ever notice that when kids say their name they say, "My name is Carter and I am 6".
We should do that on slashdot.

Hi, my name is Jim (age 51).

We need to hit the consultants, not the school. Convince the consultant and it will get in the school. If the consultant gets an extra $1M by pushing free sw, it will happen.

Re:Product dumping

[Lulfas]

Exactly. They have 15.2%, let's say linux has the princely sum of 5%, so Windows is stuck with a mere 79.8%.

Re:Product dumping

[dhasenan]

I think anyone with good knowledge of KDE and GNOME would adapt to Windows quickly. They would be less able to change settings, but otherwise they could work effectively right away.

Re:Product dumping

[crypticedge]

It runs just as well on a windows machine at that. Infact, in our company our Art department runs windows. Only 3 macs in the building, all 3 used by the same person in marketing. He only got them because he cried enough to his boss to get him to buy them, but then he couldn't work on a pc, as he doesn't know how to use one, and none of his keyboard shortcuts work like he expects.

Our PC based art department does just as good of work as he does on his mac, and his mac has issues printing to our ultra high rez photo printers, and distorts the colors badly. None of our windows based machines do this, nor do the few linux machines I have.

Re:Product dumping

[ITJC68]

Macs won't overtake Windows as long as they have hardware lock in and their price. Their hardware is overpriced and the software is usually higher then the windows equivalent. Most customers will look at total cost before choosing an OS and right now Linux is a good bet if the admin is good with it. If not or they have someone with MCSE it will be M$ in the office and education system because of total cost.

Re:Product dumping

[Hal_Porter]

MS gave our entire campus all the software we needed for less money than we gave the local bus service so students could ride the city bus at a heavy discount.

That was very generous of them! What nice people.

Re:Product dumping

[He who knows]

my GCSE ict lessons involved learning how to use only Microsoft products and the exam was Microsoft specific. already what i have learnt is out of date after 2 years.

Re:Product dumping

[He who knows]

I have not seen a single Mac in a school. If you used one at home it would seriously hurt your education since you cant then work on coursework at school.

Re:Product dumping

[Anonymous Coward]

I do tech support for a private school.

Most of the educators here have a fetish for all things Apple. They remember the old days when Apple bent over backwards for schools and produced the best machines for all things artsy.

These days, things have changed.

Apple is a huge pain to deal with. They do provide an education discount of around 10 to 20 percent, but that is nothing compared to some of the education and volume deals I can get from Dell or HP. Worse yet is that Apple does not allow resellers to sell Macs to schools. So to take advantage of some deals I have to buy on my own credit card and get reimbursed. A couple years ago, we had problem with some paperwork where Apple refused to sell us any computers at all for about 2 months. I finally broke that stalemate by calling my rep and making an unfavorable comparison between them and IBM.

On top of that, the best price/performance Macs are iMacs, Which are very nice and not over priced, but they have integrated LCD's. So, then I can't upgrade a monitor later on. But also, If I replace that Mac in 3-4 years, I am re-buying a screen. With a PC I could just replace the computer and save 100-200 dollars.

As for the artistic pursuits, the only thing Apple has going for them is iMovie and Final cut pro. My music teachers have very good software on PC. All the Adobe products work well on PC's.

Maintenance wise, the PC is much more affordable. Standard PC hardware is easier to repair. Also, the management tools for PC networks are generations ahead of Apple. Yes, I have an OSX server. It's not as good as Ghost/Active Directory/Kaseya for managing the network. On top of that, OS X 10.4 (I have not played with 10.5 much) has some real weird design flaws in regards to networks. For instance, it allows you to give it a name on the network that in not unique. Also, if you have printer sharing set up, the Mac will re-share any network printers in knows about. Safari can not auto-detect web proxy servers. Etc...

I have kicked around the idea of Open source. But the problem there is training. A) I can not get either the time or budget approved to do training. B) If it were forced, a good number of our faculty are barely computer functional. They would probably quit if I made them use Linux. The Linux price advantage means nothing in the face of these problems. It would be more doable in the computer labs. Still, saving under 100 bucks at the time of purchase, especially since we use computers here until they die, is nothing compared to savings in tech support.

Open Office is more feasible. I could save a lot of money by doing that in the labs and continuing to buy office only for the faculty and staff. Incidentally, I have not yet even upgraded them to Office 2007, even though we are entitled to it, because of the support load for training.

Re:Product dumping

[visible.frylock]

I also question broad statements like " Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars.". Anecdotally maybe this is has happened. But it's not really clear that this is true in general. School systems are one of the most budget limited govt run orgs. They try everything to shave dollars, like fees for art supplies, to hot lunches paid for by PTO fund raisers. I find it hard to believe the schools would somehow be so blind as to over look an easy "tens of millions" if the case was clear cut.

No offense, but this couldn't be further from the truth. I work in a public school. They don't really try that hard to save money on certain things, for whatever reason. These things include: technology, special ed, construction, and sports departments, to name a few.

Not sure if you're in this situation, but a lot of people know a teacher who isn't that well paid and have heard them complaining about lack of funding they get, and so they get the idea that schools are really hurting for money. From everything I've seen, this usually isn't true unless you're talking about inner city schools. But just because money isn't going to the right places doesn't mean that money isn't being thrown around left, right, and center. Trust me, it is.

Even if wine was perfect tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. "Who's going to give us our support contract?," they'll say. Red Who?

In short, it has relatively little to do with money, software quality, etc. This is especially true being that, at least here in the US, spending money on Microsoft licensing is not generally seen as wasteful. This perception matters. And yes, we live in a fucked up world.

Re:Product dumping

[alexborges]

Okay, but even if we take that as truth, it hardly constitutes an argument against what smith wrote.

"The Book", is considered one of the most important writings on economy ever written.

Re:Product dumping

[plasmacutter]

I will ask you. Please name one product which used differential prices which provided savings to anyone compared to the original price structure?

1) airlines
2) software.

1) airlines - one coach seat costs as much as another
2) software - everyone but microsoft charges the same fees to everyone (note microsoft's "variable pricing" could also be called "dumping")

Sorry, try again.

Re:Product dumping

[fritsd]

Your argument only applies to the U.S. of A. For the rest of the world, your logic can be turned the other way around: it is unpatriotic to pay a foreign corporation, if you can get good enough functionality for much less, and support your nation's IT companies in the process.

Re:Product dumping

[Draek]

Linux might make headway for that cost reason now that we're in economic downturn, but right now Mac has over three times the users.

On the home user desktop. On the business, however, it wouldn't surprise me if even OS/2 had a bigger market share than OSX, Macs simply have never been a factor in the business outside of marketing departments. Linux, however, is a low-cost alternative to UNIX, which doesn't require purchase of new hardware (unlike OSX Server) and works fairly well with Windows (unlike old UNIXen), so it has been very well accepted by enterprises of all sizes.

Re:Product dumping

[Gerzel]

uhm it is an example of a bad objective theory, not of objective reasoning.

As I am arguing against the use of objectivity alone as a reason for an argument then I only need show that a line of objective reasoning can be both objective and wrong.

I am not arguing against objective reasoning.

Re:Product dumping

[BlackSnake112]

The 1980s called and want their Apple computers back. Apple had K-12 education back in the 80s. Apple lost it in the 90s. While the schools still had a few Apple machines lying around. The computer labs and most used computers were windows ones. Schools went with price and what they could use. Many schools had unlimited installs of windows back in the 90s. They could buy lower end hardware on the cheap and but already paid for windows on it.

I remember a whole school system still using win 98 in 2004. Why asked why, they responded we already have 98. it works for our needs. When our needs change, we will look at the options. Many schools do not have the budgets to replace computers every year. They often use computers (and software) long past what business would.

Re:Product dumping

[KasperMeerts]

..., but right now Mac has over three times the users.

To be honest, I doubt it. Anecdotal evidence is worth nothing of course but I personally know 11 people using Linux and only two Mac users.

Apart from the ubiquitous iPod's, Apple isn't really known here in Europe. There are no ads on the TV and at least as far as I know, the elitism of MacHeads is really looked down upon.

Re:Product dumping

[Grizzled Old Scout]

And to the benefit of the students themselves. Working for, or even better, owning private companies is very rewarding. Plus there are plenty of opportunities for students of all ages to learn and pursue their own interests.

Re:Product dumping

[ozphx]

Wait, so you are saying the Linux community needs to do exactly what Microsoft is doing and send in some sales guys to demonstrate the benefits of using their software?

I thought that was evil?

Re:Product dumping

[drinkypoo]

"The Book", is considered one of the most important writings on economy ever written.

I hardly expect economists, mercantilists, and capitalists, who are pretty much in charge of what media is made and distributed, to point out the obvious and glaring flaws in capitalism.

Re:Product dumping

[True Grit]

The current favored method is tracking web users across large collections of websites through cookies and the browser's User Agent.

But since cookies can be blocked and User Agent Strings can be munged, "favored" != "accurate".

Linux has <1% marketshare and declining

Not arguing about the <1% part, but the "declining" part is questionable given the obviously small sample base. If you throw out the two high and low numbers then the trend is slowly upward. I suspect the high 0.9x numbers in August and September were just statistical noise.

Of course, this metric is skewed somewhat by the fact that Firefox users can fake their user agent

Ya think?

And not just Firefox, KDE's browser has the same ability, I'm guessing just about any browser running on Linux has to allow this because of broken (IE+Windows only) websites.

Precisely why relying on the User Agent ID is so unreliable, its just a text string that can be user-modified like anything else in a browser's configuration.

Re:Product dumping

[protobion]

Actually, at the publicly funded scientific research institute I work in, in Dortmund, my entire department has iMacs and Macbook Pros - totally about 50 in all.

I of course prefer Bootcamp-XP , but that is not to say there aren't any Macs in thse places. Most times it just happens, that Macs are not enough value for money in an environment where people either prefer Windows for compatibility reasons and can run Linux for everything else anyway. Silver shiny jewels of a thing are not exactly a priority for a publicly funded institution, nor should they be.

Or

[jayhawk88]

Schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, it's what the vast majority of their software runs on, and it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world.

Re:Or

[slugtastic]

And why is that? Because Microsoft has a monopoly over the market.

Re:Or

[the_enigma_1983]

Or maybe the vast majority of [the worlds] software runs on [Windows], and [Windows is] what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world because that is what schools have used, and how Microsoft helped build their monopoly.

Re:Or

[duguk]

In my experience (I worked in a school for 7 years and went to the same one for 5 years; and worked in a primary school for about 18 months), the only reason they use Microsoft is out of habit. That's what they're used to, what the staff are used to, and what the IT Technicians are used to. If anything breaks, there's Microsoft to blame.

Fact is, most of the time, all they use is a Word Processor and a Web Browser. Occasionally using presentation software, and maybe some spreadsheeting and database software. Have a guess what most of the staff are used to; and how much trouble they have with MS Access for teaching GCSE. Serious problems come up with the less experienced staff just with Microsoft's software. Now imagine trying to suggest using something new.

There's no reason they couldn't use Linux aside from the installation and support; switching from OpenOffice to Microsoft Office really isn't much different than going from Windows to Mac. I finally managed to convince them to have a couple of Ubuntu machines that the students had no problems with using, I wanted the students to have an experience of all operating systems; surely that's the idea of being at a school? Experiencing as much as possible? Most of the staff wouldn't even try. Some would, but most wouldn't. Some even wanted Windows 95 back.

Microsoft configuration just isn't cut out to be used in schools, it's hard to tie down the operating system as much as the staff really want it, Linux would be a god-send, but I can't see it happening any time soon. It'd save a lot of money and effort overall, and a lot of time if the staff were able, and the governors were willing. Most IT Techs aren't even trained and get the job because they know someone on the inside; or like me; proved themselves when they worked there. Not for the will of trying to change, but getting a school to do anything is damn near impossible.

Oh, the reason I left? The pay and conditions were terrible; most things just weren't working right, security was a joke, almost daily re-installs in some of the rooms, and no-one was interested in doing anything about it.

Re:Or

[speedingant]

But software is useless if it's useless.

Re:Or

[thetoadwarrior]

Then why give it away for free if they'll use it anyway?

Re:Or

[JumpDrive]

I don't strictly believe this is the case. Microsoft sells to Educational Institutions at a deep discount. So to them it doesn't make sense to go through the hassle of switching to another OS. Most of the places where I've seen *nix used is in high end computing, not on the servers or desktops. Most of the IT culture (the maintainers) is a MS culture. The *nix systems are maintained by a completely different group.

Re:Or

[CannonballHead]

They have a monopoly or they gained a monopoly?

Apple and Microsoft and Unix were all small time operating systems "back in the day," right? So ... what's the deal? Why didn't the ever-so-more-amazing Linux, Unix, or OS X become the monopoly? You can't argue that Apple doesn't do *cough* "weird" *cough* business practices. Many of the mainstream unix flavors (Solaris, AIX, HPUX) were never really consumer oriented but server oriented, and Linux is somewhat new as far as compatibility and consumer-usability goes, as far as I understand it (the earliest I started using it was around 2000).

So it came down, in the late 80s and 90s, to either Apple's OS or Microsoft's OS. Apparently, people liked Microsoft's.

Whether or not they have a monopoly now I guess is debatable, but even if they didn't do any of monopoly-ish business practices now, they STILL would have a large share of the market. It's not necessarily because "they are a monopoly" but because it is hard to break a large market share. Case in point: search engines and Google. Or for a while, search engines and Yahoo. A lot of search engines just plain died or never were popular. Usually only one or two survive and become the "giants," and the others get a few percentage of the fun.

The fact that Linux (and OS X) is growing is good, but I grow tired of the constant complaints that somehow, Microsoft is paying off all the old grandma's to stay with Windows... as if Dell could suddenly ship Linux on a desktop and not have TONS of technical support calls asking "Why can't I use iTunes?" or "Why doesn't [insert something] work?"

Re:Or

[Jamie's Nightmare]

Because nothing else, UNIX clones included, can do better than Microsoft when it comes to delivering a desktop OS. Everyone is free to compete. Even you.

Re:Or

[mikael_j]

Actually, UNIX used to be for anything "serious" along with VMS (Workstations, minicomputers and general server duties), not just "small time" or "server oriented".

A large part of what happened was that MS managed to gain market share by 1) Widespread piracy and 2) Being not nearly as good as the UNIX systems but also a lot cheaper. Point no. 2 is also why a lot of us who remember the days of MS-DOS, Win 2.x/3.x and other horrors may grudgingly admit that Microsoft's current operating system offerings are usable but still prefer *nix systems, because MS "won" by fighting dirty...

/Mikael

Re:Or

[onefriedrice]

I think you're suggesting that Microsoft "gained" their monopoly fair and square. As if "apparently people liked [Windows]."

Unfortunately, that's not very apparent at all. Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time. It eventually became outdated, yet it had a lot going for it including some nice killer apps (desktop publishing for one). You can't simply shrug that off as 'people just liked Windows better' unless you know what you're talking about.

In actuality, Microsoft gained its monopoly using questionably dubious, but well documented, business tactics, and now they use that OS monopoly in yet more questionable and dubious ways. This is generally known and accepted, but maybe your "apparently people liked [Windows]" comment isn't so well supported.

Re:Or

[darinfp]

What? CEO's write memos requesting bids now? The global financial crisis is obviously much worse than I thought..

Re:Or

[ion.simon.c]

*nods* One place that I worked at was sick of the cost of Sun's OS (whatever it was called at the time) and switched to Win NT back in the mid nineties. Now, they have a shitload of in-house Windows software to support and are looking at switching to Linux.

*shrug* Crazy place.

Re:Or

[turbidostato]

"Schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, it's what the vast majority of their software runs on, and it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world."

I can accept points one and two but point three, "it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world" is and always has been total utter bullshit. Whatever the students are using now will have only minor correlation to whatever they'll found in "the real world" few years from now. When I were in school it were the days of Microsoft DOS. How much does it resembles Windows Vista to Microsoft DOS except that there's "Microsoft" in the name? Is it really so much similar Windows 98 to Windows Vista than it is to current versions of Gnome or KDE upon Linux?

In fact, the reverse is truer: whatever I learnt about DOS on my school days serves me nothing on current versions of Microsoft OS and apps. On the other hand, what I learnt on my university days about NFS, X Window, DNS, SMTP, Vi... is still serving me now almost word by word about fifteen years later. And this is not per chance: Microsoft, being the principal actor and living out of selling licenses is *forced* to add new features and change the way of doing things just "to stay the same" while others, specially if not competing on selling usage licenses, can maintain whatever is already working just the same for ages.

Re:Or

[ion.simon.c]

For my desktops, servers, and laptop, Linux is a better OS than Windows. However, what works well for one person may not work at all for another.

Re:Or

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the sysadmin for an elementary school for one year, then the same for a high school [my alma mater] for 3 years. I ran away because of office politics so severe I could barely do my job. The terrible pay and work conditions didn't help either.

As my final year came to close in spring 2007, my plans for the next year were for the lowest PC in wide use school-wide to be a P4/1.6 with 256 MB RAM, with a smattering of Celerons 1.7, 1.2, and 433 with 128 MB RAM--more than enough for Ubuntu 6.06, the latest LTS at the time.

I thought about converting the whole school to Linux all the damn time. Aside from the political side of it ("This isn't the Microsoft computer I had last year!"), I thought of the F/OSS equivalents to EVERYTHING I was using. Several were easy, but several were not...

Windows 2000 or XP Professional -> Ubuntu LTS

Office 2000 or XP -> OpenOffice.Org

MSIE -> Firefox

TN3270 -> plenty of options

Windows 2000 Server or Server 2003 -> Ubuntu LTS server

Altiris Deployment Solution -> ADS can deploy Linux images and deb/rpm packages, but is not itself F/OSS--and it requires a Windows server. Is there a F/OSS solution out there that can install a small partition similar to WinPE, boot to it, and image--all without having to physically visit the computer to insert a boot volume?

IIS -> Apache

SharePoint -> ???

Exchange server/Outlook -> ???/Evolution

AutoCAD [drafting] -> ???

Genesis School -> A "master database" for student records, class scheduling, attendance, grading, gradebooks, and Web-based frontends to allow administrators to create reports, teachers to do attendance and grading for their students, and students/parents to check their gradebook rows. Moodle?

AsureID Express -> Link to an SQL server holding students' and employees' names, numbers, and pictures--or import pics from a USB camera, and make cards that can be printed with a plastic-card printer.

I've found http://www.osalt.com/, but finding F/OSS alternatives to these situations isn't exactly easy...

Re:Or

[ChatHuant]

Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time. It eventually became outdated, yet it had a lot going for it including some nice killer apps (desktop publishing for one). You can't simply shrug that off as 'people just liked Windows better' unless you know what you're talking about

Well, since you mention knowing what you're talking about, you're igoring the most important factors: first, the fact that the PC platform was so open: you could buy PC compatibles from myriads of vendors, in any configuration you wanted, and with any peripherals you wanted. With the exception of a short period, Apple didn't allow cloning at all, so your choices were basically whatever models they were selling at the moment. With PCs you could update your computer yourself, with extra RAM, new hard drives, a bevy of expansion cards, and more tweaks that any geek could dream of. Apple's machines were not easily extensible, and some models lacked basic functionality (for example, the initial model had no hard drive nor the means to attach one easily. Apple machines were underpowered for business use (ignore the fans' tortured argumentation about Altivec or similar things). While the competition in the PC world pushed the PC performance and innovation, Apple kept delivering relatively low performance machines, at premium prices (which they still do, IMO): for example, the first 32 bit Apple, based on the 68020 was launched a year after the first 386 PC.
 
For programmers, the development on PCs was always easier (for example, many more programmers were familiar with C/C++ than wih Objective C), and the tools were more varied and generally better. This led to a wide market of third party vendors, and a profusion of PC softwre. The lack of performance, coupled with the lack of expandability also limited the growth of games on Apple machines. The ubiquity of Windows, and the importance Microsoft gave to backward compatibility also helped: if you wrote your app with a bit of care, it would run on most of this variety of computers, whatever hardware they had, and whether they were running Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95 or maybe even DOS.
 
So yes, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "people liked Windows better".

Re:Or

[turbidostato]

"I think you're suggesting that Microsoft "gained" their monopoly fair and square. As if "apparently people liked [Windows].""

Well, to some extent, they did. Or, to say it better, current outcome would be probably similar even if Microsoft limited itselt to their fair practices disregarding the bad ones.

On the beginning Gates were just lucky and had the eye to take advantage of his luckyness: the first PC for the masses was preloaded with his OS (DOS). Then, by the early days of Windows, Apple tried to be "too clever" trying to get both the hardware and the software market. It didn't work. IBM tried to be "too clever" trying to get the hardware market for them only. It didn't work. The big UNIX names thought that the big money was securely tied on their side and disregarded those "toy" hardware and software new systems. It didn't work.

Then the first days of networking came. Again the UNIX guys didn't see what was coming. Novell thought they could retain their grip on the emerging market not considering their fragility against Microsoft's natural strategy: the OS is Microsoft; main productivity apps are growingly belonging to us... what do you think that will happen as soon as we deliver even a half-assed "network system" (as it were 3.11 for workgroups first and NT after that)? That's right: why having to deal with two companies and two phylosophies when we can get it done with just one and lower costs and complexities?

Of course that doesn't mean I have great sympathy for their "other" practices (backstabbing IBM on the OS/2 issue; making Dr DOS seem buggy when detected; forbiding integrators to deal with other OS vendors like BeOS; changing standards just to break compatibility with other vendors as they tried with J++, early versions of Exchange, the days of the browser wars or currently with Kerberos; changing their own protocols just to break third party compatibility as it happend with Samba...) but that they cleverly knew how to build their advantage on all fields, either ethical or unethical.

Re:Or

[Skuld-Chan]

Now who's being a revisionist?

Maybe Microsoft won over Apple's System 7, Mac OS 8/9 because a) it was more stable, b) could actually multi-task and c) didn't treat their developers with contempt. Also - Microsoft made its meteoric rise while Apple was still trying to figure out how to fix Mac OS - even a fanboy would admit that OSX was a much needed, but late addition to the Mac platform.

I was there - if you were a mac developer - apple's developer support was practically non-existant and expensive. Microsoft's was (and actually still us) practically free, helpful and plentiful.

Actually I'd argue that Apple still treats developers with contempt - as they don't ever test any 3rd party software/hardware when releasing an OS (I've honestly lost track of how many methods and api's they've changed, removed and broken to break our apps) and never respond to or fix radar bugs.

Yes Microsoft is evil, but a lot of their success was handed to them and actually well deserved.

Re:Or

[TechForensics]

Schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, it's what the vast majority of their software runs on, and it's what students will encounter on the vast majority of computers they will use in the real world.

So let's change that.

Re:Or

[F3V0H1B]

1. Bill Gates drops out of Harvard in 1975.
2. IBM choose Microsoft to program their O.S for their personal computer.
3. He buys Q-DOS for $50,000 and modifies it.
4. ???
5. Profit

Re:Or

[AmberBlackCat]

I honestly believe that whole "If you don't like it, build it yourself!" attitude has something to do with it. Windows, regardless of the criticism, caters to end users way more than Linux does. And they need all of their hardware to work right now. They don't have time to wait for a driver to be reverse engineered. And they can't be bothered by things like ODF and Ogg. And after all that, maybe some of that antitrust stuff.

Re:Or

[Technician]

In actuality, Microsoft gained its monopoly using questionably dubious, but well documented, business tactics

In reality, much of the Windows is from white box computers. Computers on a budget, a pirated copy of an OS, and lots of free downloadable applications, plus an open interface.

Macs were sealed boxes with the OS pre installed for the most part with little 3rd party hardware support.

When the PC clones were all the rage, they could run Windows, but not Mac software. This is where the PC and the Windows culture outgrew the Mac. Weak copy protection on Windows and DOS were a huge reason for the growth of the OS as the system of choice.

Now that Microsoft is reigning in on Piracy and naked PC's are not as common as pre-built boxes are cheap, many machines are migrating to alternatives as Windows now has relibility and dependability issues for pirated copies.

I stopped using Windows at home on home built stuff for this very reason. I no longer transplant the old OS to the new box when faster hardware comes out. I use Ubuntu instead. MS shot them selves in the foot when you could no longer transplant the OS from the old box to the new one without phoning home and begging. It's much easier to simply install Ubuntu.

Re:Or

[CronoCloud]

Of course the original Mac had no hard drive, no mass market oriented computer did in 1984. Heck, even in 1986 the most common MS/DOS PC configuration was 256KB of RAM and two 360KB floppies because hard disks were too expensive for many users. Hard disks didn't become common till the cheap horde of cheap AT clones showed up, say around 87-88 and then only in businesses.

Re:Or

[Maxo-Texas]

As an old fart that lived through the time...

1) Microsoft basically begged people to pirate their software until the very late 1990's or even early 2000's (so it was "free").
2) Microsoft controlled the operating system and they did make changes to it to kill strong competing software.
3) Microsoft certified as "ready for windows 95" Word95 which violated the certification standards that all competitors were held to (including undocumented O/S entry points)
4) Apple had a good product AND overcharged for it- hideously so. Windows for $300 hardware plus "free" operating system or Apple for 900 bucks ($10,000 for the Lisa).
5) Amiga came too late and their business side killed a superior hardware platform (and it had a very buggy Disk O/S-- but I did get my first virus on it-- "Something wonderful has happened... Your Amiga has come alive!"
6) The component architecture of the PC let it upgrade graphics independently (this was major).
7) Intel was making better faster processors quicker and cheaper than Motorola.
9) Microsoft, more than once, stole other companies IP. (and in some cases when caught bought out the entire company)
10) Microsoft Windows 95 was comparatively EASY to network which got a lot of gamers on it. DOS games were a complete pain to configure and sometimes just never worked. Lan parties ruled with Win95.

---

Why I personally am moving away from Windows and Word.
Microsoft's stated desire is me paying the maximum subscription money will bear (probably $50 to $80 a month like cable) for their software.
And
Microsoft getting into bed in a big way with DRM people who want to control MY FRAKKIN computer. It's MINE- If they want me to use DRM- GIVE me a computer like the Cell Phone people give me a cell phone.

Re:Or

[Richard W.M. Jones]

You can mount the home directory (*) with noexec which means they cannot run anything even if they can compile it. However this doesn't prevent people from writing elaborate Perl scripts, unless you take away Perl/Python/etc, at which point the whole thing starts to get counterproductive.

In any case, what the GP meant is that you can lock down Linux so that users cannot make unauthorized modifications to the base OS, and so that it doesn't need to be reinstalled. To be fair you can do that with Windows too, but it's likely to be easier with Linux because that's how most Linux distros come by default.

Rich.

(*) You have to do this with all user-writable directories, eg. /tmp

Re:Or

[rust627]

schools here use windows because they cant buy ready made computers without windows and they cant return the windows disks and get a refund.
They have already paid for it , it's there and they won't get the money back so they use it rather than shelling out more to get someone to load another O/S on to the machines irrelevant of how much better or free the other system is .
Windows came with the box , the box can't be bought without it ,therefore it is 'free'.

Re:Or

[sangdrax]

Yes, but the reason why Microsoft has a monopoly is not relevant to the school. They see that their kids will use Windows. So they teach Windows.

A case to deploy Linux can only be made once learning Linux makes you also capable of using Windows. I think that's not a big problem since most basic concepts are the same, but it is required. It's no use teaching exotic tools which most of the students are never going to use.

Re:Or

[duguk]

Very true. I was thinking more making the os read-only to remove the need of re-installation. Can't really do that in Windows. Anything else isn't as important comparatively, since reinstalling a whole PC; or even just re-imaging one can mean one person in a class doesn't get a PC for an hour just because some sod has decided to be a pain.

You don't get much chance of down-time in a school during the day, and one PC being off can make the difference between a happy class and a nightmare of a day.

Re:Or

[fl!ptop]

Whatever the students are using now will have only minor correlation to whatever they'll found in "the real world" few years from now.

i'll 2nd this motion. at my daughter's school, i approached the principal a few years ago about converting some of their older machines running win95 and win98 over to ubuntu. it was free and it ran fine on older hardware. i was turned down. the reason? "we want them to learn something they'll actually use when they get into the real world." the principal said those words. to which i countered, "do you really think they'll be using windows 95 or 98?" i was met with a blank stare, the kind where they suddenly realize you're correct, but are afraid to admit it.

the problem is most teachers and administrators have no clue, and they're windows automatrons who can't answer any question unless it begins with the words, "click on..." and the biggest shame is they're teaching our kids.

Re:Or

[lt.cyx]

People avoid using Linux (or anything not Microsoft) for the same reason people say "math is difficult": they are merely repeating something they heard somewhere. They won't even give math or Linux or Ooo a try.

Re:Or

[duguk]

The students didn't have a problem with trying it; it was the staff who didn't want to know. Some even thought that trying to offer alternatives would be a problem to them. Surely it's easier to learn something alternative and new when younger? Thats why they teach languages at a young age isn't it?

Most of the students I saw using Linux and OpenOffice and Firefox had *no* problem at all, some even found it easier; but none complained that it wasn't enough like Microsoft, most just got on with it. It's the staff who are the problem.

Re:Or

[Attila Dimedici]

The IBM PC XT came with a hard drive starting in 1983.

Re:Or

[krunk7]

I've seen the argument that software students learn "will only have a minor correlation" to what they use a few years from now. This is utterly and completely wrong. A student starting High School in 2001 very likely may have received his first introduction to Windows XP, coming from '98 of course. The difference between these two (from a beginning user perspective) is negligible.

Most businesses skipped Vista and Win 7 is likely to come around in 2010. So That 2001 student, especially as far as work (job/school/lab/etc) is concerned, has used XP for 9 years. That's 4 years of high school, 4 years of college, and 1 year in the work force.

It might not last forever, but seriously a 9 year run of staring at the exact same desktop. This is assuming people pick up Win 7 out of the blocks and with a vengeance too. There's no reason to doubt that XP will be on plenty desktops years after Win 7 is released.

Re:Or

[RobBebop]

what I learnt on my university days about NFS, X Window, DNS, SMTP, Vi... is still serving me now almost word by word about fifteen years later

Yes... this is the "get it right and then move onto something else" approach to designing complex systems. It's popular amongst designers who are thinking 20, 30, and 40 years ahead for projects they are building today.

With forethought, you can do great things. Without it, you (or somebody else) can earn a shit-ton of money doing maintenance work fixing your crappy systems. It's the "slapstick method" that keep capitalism running, forcing consumers to re-buy and continuously upgrade their broken systems because they're convinced by the idea that things that are "shiny" and "new" are better than things that "work right".

Re:Or

[mikael_j]

10) Microsoft Windows 95 was comparatively EASY to network which got a lot of gamers on it. DOS games were a complete pain to configure and sometimes just never worked. Lan parties ruled with Win95.

Please tell me you're kidding. Setting up networking on win9x may have been "easy" if you knew that "Fjärranslutning" in the swedish version was MS code for "PPP/SLIP" and you didn't mind re-installing your network drivers and TCP/IP stack once a month or so when Windows decided to start munching on the files (I'm not saying this just as an end user but also as someone who's had to support the damn POS).

/Mikael

Re:Or

[ozphx]

That was his point. Windows works "better" for more people.

Hence Bill Gates needing double suspenders to prevent his heavy wallet from pantsing him in public.

"Is that the Conquistidor?" "No, its MS Dong"

Re:Or

[Maxo-Texas]

Nope.

Win95 was a wondrous dream compared to DOS.
I dislike Microsoft for various reasons and intensely distrust their desire to loot my wallet for $50 to $110 a month but Windows was easier first and it usually is easier first and that is how they succeed.

Mac is even easier BUT it is bloody expensive.

Re:Or

[mikael_j]

Well, I'll give you that Windows 95 was easier than MS-DOS but it was still a PITA for anyone used to doing network configuration on a "real" operating system (Linux/UNIX) since it tried to be user friendly to the point where anyone who knew what he/she was doing would be utterly confused.

/Mikael

Teachers

[religious freak]

Um, I think one of the perhaps very good reasons they don't use Linux is because the teachers are clueless as to how to use it.

Yeah, mark me as troll, but it's F'in true.

Re:Teachers

[Penguinisto]

The sad part is... as a former teacher myself, I cannot help but agree, but with one caveat:

...because the vast majority of teachers are clueless as to how to use it.

...which is more accurate, but just as bad, methinks.

/P

Re:Teachers

[pjbgravely]

Um, I think one of the perhaps very good reasons they don't use Linux is because the teachers are clueless as to how to use it.

They won't be able to find their icons to click on because they are on the top panel instead of the bottom? The same problem with the task bar and system tray?

An easy fix for that is to set up a special teachers image that puts everything on the bottom. You can even make it an ugly blue while you are at it.

I think that moving to OSX (which doesn't have the ability to change to fit the user) would be much harder for them.

Or do you mean teachers won't be able to fix things when they break. I doubt they can do that on windows right now.

Re:Teachers

[icepick72]

Why should teachers have to learn Linux or another OS? The Windows OS is easy to adapt to if you have little computer experience. Your average teacher doesn't need to learn a different OS or another set of apps. If the decision applied only to computer departments, well maybe, but for general use with a plethora of tools and software available that the average teacher is accustomed to, Windows will suffice.

Re:Teachers

[religious freak]

It's been a long time since I've been in high school, and I really am curious. Do they even know how to use Windows?

I've got a baseless and unsupportable hypothesis (based on my lack of personal experience and lack of research) that teachers are afraid of technology, because their students know it better than them. And as a result, students are not getting the exposure to tech they need.

So really, how good is computer literacy in teachers today? Even for something as basic as Windows? (I remember in high school, my Spanish teacher was so afraid of the VCR, he didn't want any of us to touch it, not because we were vandals, but because he didn't know how to work it, and probably assumed the same of us)

Re:Teachers

[Hatta]

Teachers are clueless on how to use windows too. Teachers shouldn't be administering the things, just using apps that they're probably going to need to be trained for anyway.

Re:Teachers

[frank_adrian314159]

Um, I think one of the perhaps very good reasons they don't use Linux is because the teachers are clueless as to how to use it.

Um, I think that the teachers are pretty clueless as to how to use Windows, too. I'd almost go as far as saying they're pretty clueless on how to run any hardware more advanced than hamster cages, but they generally can get students to do that for them.

Not to denigrate teachers - they are fine at what they're actually trained to do (i.e., teach), but most of them are the "typical computer user" (read clueless).

Re:Teachers

[DoubleMike]

You are right, but if we're honest the teachers are almost as clueless as to how to use Windows. Actually, when I was in high school four years ago, even the IT guy (the librarian) didn't know how to use Windows as well as most of the students. I don't think Linux would have made much of a difference.

Re:Teachers

[DaveWick79]

A dozen years ago, in the schools we were working in, we had to drag the teachers and staff kicking and screaming away from their Macs.

You aren't going to get them to switch to Linux any easier - in fact, since the Linux experience isn't even close to the Mac experience, it will be even more difficult to sell them on Linux. Plenty of schools are running linux on the back end now, but it really boils down to the site sysadmin and what he/she and staff are trained for.

Re:Teachers

[Tacvek]

Re: your sig: Which apt-based distro was that from, and how did it arise?

Re:Teachers

[johndmartiniii]

That teachers and students can't learn something new or something that is analog to what they already know is simply a limiting belief. It serves its purpose well, though, meaning that many teachers would cry out in agony if you moved their cheese, even as the read that stupid book of the same moniker.

It is because people believe that they cannot do something that they will not do something. This philosophy moves upward within an organization, beginning with individuals. Teachers have been conditioned to believe that they have to go through "training" to do anything new, because they are no longer curious about anything. Thankfully, any "training" that they receive can possibly be considered as "continuing education" and fulfill their NCLB requirements. The problem is that there is no one giant corporate entity railing for free software use in institutions like schools. Even if there were, it is unlikely that teachers would consider switching as anything other than inconvenient, irritating and impossible.

Re:Teachers

[darinfp]

There's also the lock in of years of lesson plans, handouts etc already in office format. It's not going to pretty if you tell them to check all the formatting under OO before they can print it.

Re:Teachers

[riceboy50]

Where I went to school there weren't any IT staff that worked at the school, so tech savvy teachers and students—like myself—handled most of the issues. There was district level IT that took care of some infrastructure, but they were far too understaffed to do the types of things we were doing.

Re:Teachers

[apoc.famine]

I'm a teacher. Probably one of the top tech-savvy ones at my school, and also a linux dork.

My sister's BF uses linux a lot now, since I pointed him to it. My sister also uses it a lot. As does my mom, who now, instead bitching about her "computer" bitches specifically about Microsoft. The linux side of her dual-boot gets nothing but praise.

In any school, 80% of the teachers don't really know how to use a computer. They really are novices. In this case, there is NO difference between Linux and Windows. They probably wouldn't notice a difference if you swapped out their Windows machine for a KDE machine. (Gnome is enough different that they might notice. MIGHT notice..)

Flashaback to my mom's computer. My sister (Windows-only librarian) wanted to steal some of mom's Christmas CDs. I suggested she infringe on the copyrights by making a copy. (She's got both eyes, and both legs, so I couldn't suggest piracy.) She booted into Kubuntu, popped the CD into one drive, a blank into the second, found K3b, and burned herself a couple of CDs.

If she can do that, with 0 assistance, I'm confident that most teachers could use linux as well as windows. But why does EVERY school run windows?

It's a combination of a few factors.

1) The Admins know that Windows runs on 80+% of the computers in the world, and have used it exclusively.
2) A technology grant (in my State, a lawsuit against MS got it for us) buys both the hardware AND gets free MS software with it.
3) One essential piece of software (Gradequick, in my case) runs on Windows only.

I talk to my head tech guy often about different flavors of linux, and our collective playing around with it. He's not ignorant. But when a settlement from MS pays for all the hardware AND software for our school, why would he reformat it to run linux? It would be incompatable with a few major applications, and a major pain in the ass, as we'd then be running two operating systems. For a small tech staff, with limited resources, homogeneity is a necessity. (But he's still made sure that my linux laptop can connect to the wireless.)

Re:Teachers

[pjbgravely]

It was a bad Ubuntu install. I usually fix bad installs but this time it was impossible.

Re:Teachers

[betterunixthanunix]

I would argue that it is really just that they are not aware of Linux. Perhaps my view is skewed by my experience with university professors and researchers, but I have found that most people really just are not aware of free software or what they can do with it. People are unaware that they really have choices in these things. I have met researchers who were shocked to discover that the basic software in any Linux distro -- a shell, the POSIX userland, and Perl/Python -- can serve as a replacement for dozens of proprietary packages they were using for converting and formatting their data, and even more shocked to discover that those basic utilities were more efficient because large numbers of tasks were easily automated. These are not people who were clueless about computing, either: they were very skilled at programming Matlab, and picked up bash and Perl very quickly.

The lack of awareness about computing is more of a general problem, though it is particularly noticeable with schools. I have drawn the conclusion recently that anyone majoring in any subject that is likely to involve computing -- basically, any science, engineering, or business major -- should be required to take a CS course where they use a Unix or Unix-like system and program in a language like Python or Perl. Just being raised to a basic level of awareness of how a computer can be used would be invaluable for many people, and would go much further in terms of saving money and increasing productivity than simply install some Linux on everyone's computers.

Re:Teachers

[theheadlessrabbit]

I've got a baseless and unsupportable hypothesis (based on my lack of personal experience and lack of research) that teachers are afraid of technology, because their students know it better than them. And as a result, students are not getting the exposure to tech they need.

my personal experience would support your hypothesis.

back in my high school days (nearly 10 years ago now) I took a lot of 'computers' classes, because i wanted to learn about computers. but, i didn't. instead, I learned how to use things like 'corel word perfect', some power point clone, and 'turing' a programming language so limiting, it makes BASIC seem like C by comparison.

rather than learning about building computers and general computing concepts, i was taught how to use specific and now obsolete software. those courses and that knowledge are now useless to me.

how clueless were the teachers?
this was back in 1999, so not knowing about linux was still forgivable, but the misinformation i received, was not.

over the course of 3 years and 3 different computers classes, these are the highlights:

On a test, this question came up:
how many companies sell differing operating systems:
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. more than 3.
apparently, the correct answer was b, not d. silly me...

i got 150% for participation, because i taught the teacher how to use computers before she could teach the class.

i got kicked out of class for playing computer games. but the assignment was 'to write your own computer game' and i was testing my own game! she refused to believe it was mine, even after going through my code line by line.

and finally, i got suspended for 'hacking'. some random 'error' dialogues were popping up on every system every hour or so, and i disabled them on my computer.

My experience shows me that you are correct. most teachers do not understand the technology that the students are growing up with.

last year, when booting up my laptop for one of my lessons, one of my students saw my ubuntu desktop and yelled out 'that's my system, too!'

Re:Teachers

[Tubal-Cain]

No dpkg?

Re:Teachers

[pjbgravely]

You got me, i probably didn't even check. I forgot nothing is impossible with linux, just hard sometimes.

I started using Ubuntu (Wary Warthog) because it was hard and I wanted to learn. Now I use it because I am lazy. I do use Ubuntu server, Which can be hard to setup, but then runs forever ( At least for me).

Re:Teachers

[jimicus]

I've got a baseless and unsupportable hypothesis (based on my lack of personal experience and lack of research) that teachers are afraid of technology, because their students know it better than them. And as a result, students are not getting the exposure to tech they need.

I'd agree with this.

I'd even go one step further and say that when it finally becomes painfully obvious that a given student almost certainly knows far more about the computers than any member of staff (which happens with at least one or two students per year), staff tend to be absolutely terrified of that student.

Re:Teachers

[marnues]

Just to clear things up, the vast majority of teachers don't know how to use windows either. But it is recognizable.

Re:Teachers

[fritsd]

I'm curious, in which country was this?

Re:Teachers

[Tubal-Cain]

nothing is impossible with linux

Of course not. Just this morning I got my computer to calculate the last digit of pi.

Re:Teachers

[betterunixthanunix]

The USA, why? Do you think this is just another "stupid Americans!" moment?

Re:Teachers

[fritsd]

Maybe my bias shows :-) I did mean a bit that my anecdotal experience in 3 dutch universities was that people used VM/CMS, VAX/VMS, BSD Unix, Sys V Unix, AIX, Irix, SunOS, MS-DOS, Atari ST, for their work; I'm not saying THAT's good but it gives one a bit of a general idea what computers can all be used for. This was mostly in chemistry and informatics I might add.

What I kind of read between the lines from your post, is that nowadays it is considered normal that everyone tries to use MS Windows for all tasks, and that the idea that certain programs run on other OSes/computer systems is just not a concept people encounter when they start to study.

I can't imagine that in the Netherlands scientists get no exposure whatsoever with various and sundry ancient or modern OSes besides MS Windows. But as I said, maybe my bias shows because I'm a bit of a Linux fanatic :-)

I remember when there was talk of MS Windows computers being used to run Gaussian (a program used for large computations on molecules), and IIRC the program had to be painstakingly "dumbed down" to 32-bit file I/O because MS Windows couldn't deal with files larger than 4Gb. This was decades ago, I'm sure it must have improved in the mean time, but still.

What I really mean is: you should use the computer systems for your work that get your work done; and the idea that all possible kinds of scientific work can be shoehorned to be done on off-the-shelf MS Windows systems, is ridiculous to me; it doesn't even run on more than one CPU architecture AFAIK, and I'm not convinced it can run a calculation for a month without crashing (I'm told MS Windows XP is much much better nowadays so I could be wrong on this). Look at the top-500 supercomputers sorted by OS family and you'll see what I mean.

Hmm. all that said, I AM impressed that #10 on that list is a supercomputer that runs MS Windows. Would be nice to see a performance comparison between some protein folding work on top of GNU/Linux and on top of MS Windows super-server-version, on that Dawning 5000a cluster

Den of paranoia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people think so. Paranoia is what leads to things like these (make sure you read the comments there), and makes that blog a rather annoying cesspool which occasionally plops out a useful bit of information.

Stay away from extremists, and get your news from people other than Slashdot's resident joke.

And kudos to ScuttleMonkey, who had to remove all the creative spelling and grammar errors from the submission.

Re:Den of paranoia?

[drsmithy]

And kudos to ScuttleMonkey, who had to remove all the creative spelling and grammar errors from the submission.

Whoa, back up there. Are you saying a Slashdot Editor actually edited something ? That's crazy talk.

Apps!

[Jjeff1]

One of my customers is a K-12 school. They have 10K students, and 390 different windows applications.

Most educational software simply isn't written for Linux. Most educational software is poorly written for Windows. Running as a non-admin user is always a hangup. I can't imagine trying to get all these apps to run under Wine. The chorus of "why don't we have windows" would be deafening.

The reason Windows beats Linux in schools is because the apps they need, work under windows. When the superintendent wants an application, he gets it. No matter how poorly written or insecure it is, we always end up installing it. If linux is somehow responsible for it not working, linux gets tossed, 100% of the time.

Re:Apps!

[at_slashdot]

Totally agree, people are interested in applications not in operating systems.

Re:Apps!

[drspliff]

It would be incredibly interesting if some people with more experience of school education software could put together a top 10 or top 20 list of common applications which are used throughout the country.

I'm sure the majority of them aren't very complex apps, and the learning material could be easily put together (perhaps with bounties for completing modules, it'd be a nice alternative source of income for teachers).

Anyway, with the goals in hand the problem of "Most educational software is poorly written for Windows." shouldn't be an issue, it's hard for me to write educational software because I don't have kids or experience teaching them... but with the right organisation I'd be happy to oblige.

Re:Apps!

[Internalist]

One of my customers is a K-12 school. They have 10K students, and 390 different windows applications.

Where do you live, man? What elementary/high school has ten thousand students?!? And I thought my high school was big at 1000...yikes.

And what apps do high school people need that don't run on Linux?

Re:Apps!

[Mr Z]

This is something of a chicken and egg problem isn't there? I don't recall Windows having any sort of natural advantage when I was in school. It was all Apple ][s, except in the business department where they had some PS/2s running MS-DOS. A couple people thought Windows was interesting, but nobody was in a hurry to switch.

All of this Windows software has developed through the traditional "network effect," and that was nurtured through programs such as Microsoft's that put Windows on many desktops throughout the 90s. That doesn't mean it can't be brought to Linux someday, though. There has to be some demand before it happens. Either that, or some open source efforts to replace the poorly-written software that you mention.

Re:Apps!

[nbates]

Many school applications are web applications. Or Java applications.

Also, many of those applications are easy to reproduce, take for example Carnegie Learning's cognitive tutor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Learning ), not only it is easy to replicate, it also has many interesting challenges from the point of view of a computer scientist. Lot of room for improvement. It is a great job for an open source project.

The only problem is marketing. Most of this solutions are actually not that great, I have tried one Cognitive Tutor application and it has many flaws (wrong answers in some cases, enforces only one kind of solution to each program and doesn't consider alternative paths, very repetitive and boring, and so on). But if you have a sales team and good marketing, you have a hit.

Now, that's harder for an OS project.

Re:Apps!

[Yvanhoe]

When Bob fail at math, Bob is bad at math. When Alice fails at math, girls are bad at math.
When an application crashes under Windows, the application failed. When an application crashes under Linux, Linux fails.

I may sound pompous, but the first bias is being fought by using techniques that could be used in the second as well. The most simple method that yields results is incredibly cheap : show people they have a bias. Most people don't like to feel that they are being sexist and try to correct their bias if they perceive it. Most people (especially teacher, where I live) don't like to feel they are doing the job of a corporate lackey, or helping a monopoly. Microsoft does have a bad rep, not only among geeks. People also don't like to feel that they are being cheated in paying too much for so few.

That, and I was really impressed by wine progresses (under the standard Ubuntu install) these years. Most of your old Windows applications will work better under Ubuntu than under Vista. Even file sharing through netbios/samba worked more easily.

Re:Apps!

[Score Whore]

I know people might hate this idea, but Linux will never see the kinds of growth Apple and Microsoft experienced.

Why? Because most Linux types are using Linux to use Linux. Most consumers use computers to chat with text and video. They want to watch movies. They want to read email. They don't want to be computer experts and they don't use any particular OS in order to be using that OS.

Re:Apps!

[gbjbaanb]

There's a link here of open source news for UK schools. Doesn't look too bad, but you can guess nearly all of them still use Microsoft. This link refers to Becta's appearance before another EU antitrust inquiry into Microsoft's practices.

Re:Apps!

[Jjeff1]

The problem is that software is often written by companies who have an educational base, not a software development base. It's also often very, very old. Lets face it, your core K-6 education has changed very little. Kids still need the 3 R's. The primary app for this level of education at the school I mentioned above was last updated in 2001, and the core educational components are significantly older than that.

But, there are other factors involved. A school might have more than one app that does the same thing. Why? They get grants, and state funding, and federal funding, and a volunteer donates a couple copies. None of those people talk to each other, and even if they did, you'd end up with a committee of 2 dozen people, nothing would ever get done.

You'd think that even on the administrative side, things would be similar. But no. There are only a few companies who make software to track attendance and grading. But there is a huge amount of customization which goes into this software, because each district tracks information differently, and reports to the State differently.

You also have to keep in mind how schools buy things. If a fantastic new learning package came out that schools all over were using, each school would have to justify that purchase. There would probably be a bond initiative. You'd have to explain to voters how product X is going to replace product Y you just had them vote on 5 years ago. In the software world, 5 years is a lifetime. In the voting on a tax increase world, not so much.

You also have to remember that teachers don't like change. They're being asked to do more and more with little compensation. The NCLB act is horrible. So much time is spent teaching to pass tests instead of teaching to learn and think. You're asking them to learn something new, again. You can send them to professional development, but chances are, their contract specifies they're only required to do x hours a year (probably 40). Why should they spend 1/4 of that time re-learning things they already knew how to do instead of learning better teaching which might directly impact education.

The thing that might work is the web. With google docs and all, we're already moving that way. A lot of schools use apps like Plato or e-chalk, which are entirely web based. Get everything on the web. Make it so the school can host the software itself on appliances (capitol cost vs ongoing, e-rate, etc...). Then the client doesn't matter. You can replace your windows desktops with a linux desktop, still running firefox, and there will be little difference.

Anyway, that's my piece. It'd be nice if the problem were simple, it isn't.

Re:Apps!

[artor3]

During college, I worked as IT support for an association of special education preschools. While I did get them to adopt OpenOffice, I immediately realized that I couldn't even recommend switching to Linux, because essential programs weren't supported.

One program that comes to mind is Boardmaker, by Mayer-Johnson. It's an extremely popular tool for helping autistic children, and not a complex program at all. It wouldn't be hard for open-source devs to replicate, but there is just no interest among developers. Unfortunately, without it, few special ed teachers will ever consider using Linux.

There is certainly demand for a free alternative as well - in part because of Boardmaker's $400/license price tag. Searching for "Boardmaker linux" or something of the sort reveals that people have asked for it, but gone unanswered. Perhaps the saddest request is this:

"My 11 year old son has autism and his a communication therapist has recommended Boardmaker by Nova logistics to help him communicate. He has had a great affinity for computers since he was 4 years old. He has a Pentium III 1Ghz powered Intel D815eea computer which I built for him.

Boardmaker sells for over $500 and we live on low, fixed income. I have been told that there may be an equivalent, Linux based program. If so, can you tell me what it is and where I can get it? Thanks for your help."

There were no responses.

Re:Apps!

[madfgurtbn]

I'm sure the majority of them aren't very complex apps, and the learning material could be easily put together (perhaps with bounties for completing modules, it'd be a nice alternative source of income for teachers).

This is just not true. You have to remember that even a small district teaches everything from auto shop to Cisco Networking to Graphic Arts to CNC Machining, CAD, Animation, and on and on and on. There is no way that a district could do without Microsoft Windows. It is impossible at this time. You could replace a lot of school computers with Macs, but not all. You could probaby not replace more than 10% with Linux.

Yes there are a lot of machines sitting in libraries that are used for little more than typing and webcrawling, but they are the exception, not the rule. Computer teaching labs are loaded with apps for many different academic disciplines and those labs are often booked through the day.

Until Linux can run every app that Windows can run, it will not replace Windows in any insitution of any complexity. Munich has proven that.

Re:Apps!

[im_thatoneguy]

And then what do the kids use at home?

I remember we had a ton of old Macs. And we were encouraged to play number munchers and what not at home too.

If your software is *nix only then the chances of being able to encourage kids to continue at home is close to nill.

"Dad can I install LINUX on your laptop?"
"Lin who what! Absolutely not!"

Software compatibility extends beyond the classroom.

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

Most consumers use computers to chat with text and video. They want to watch movies. They want to read email.

*looks up from my Mplayer, Gnomemeeting, Thunderbird, and Pidgin windows*

Pardon me. I was momentarily distracted. Could you start over from the beginning? ;)

Re:Apps!

[Rycross]

I actually usually see that the other way. If an app fails on Windows, its because "Windows is a PoS." If an app fails on Linux, well, it's totally not Linux's fault; blame the app writer.

How many people blamed UAC for shitty apps that try to write to admin-level areas of the OS?

Re:Apps!

[Score Whore]

I think you missed my point. It isn't that some form of each of those are functional under some linux distro. It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.

And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it, as it's been called Ekiga since March of 2008. And you want to compare Ekiga with the simplicity of MSN messenger? And mplayer with iTunes or Windows Media Player? I'm fond of mplayer, and have contributed code, but get real.

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.

I didn't *have* to fuck around with anything to get Mplayer, Thunderbird, and Pidgin installed and running. I said "Package Manager, make it so! (and install all the eeeevil codecs, while you're at it)".
I agree that mplayer's frontend sucks. But, have you used Amarok? I have. It's pretty fucking awsome. It claims to have iPod (and other music device) support, but I don't have any such devices to test that claim. IMO, Amarok's waaaaay better than iTunes, and -as a music player and organizer- parsecs beyond WMP. I simply asked my package manager to install that one, too. ;)

And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it,

You caught me. :/ *has no reason to be videoconferencing.* I don't have a webcam, but did have Ekiga installed -for some damn reason-, so I ran the "Configuration Druid" and accepted the defaults at every page. It ended up autodetected my sound hardware and my NAT, and then enabled STUN.
I then called sip:500@ekiga.net as suggested here, and heard my voice! I called sip:520@ekiga.net as suggested here and found out that I could, indeed be reached from the outside world. I even had a friend call me from his Asterisk site. After thirty mintues of him futzing with his mis-configured Asterisk server, we got a couple of crystal-clear calls in!

I tried to have a Windows using friend call me with Windows Messenger. Following these instructions failed at the login step. Windows Messenger claimed that it couldn't establish a session with ekiga.net. Installing Ekiga and the GTK Runtime worked wonderfully, though. Just like it did on Linux, after my buddy fixed his Asterisk setup.
Are you behind a NAT? If not, would you like to try a SIP call using Windows Messenger?

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

Bah. I meant to say... I really wish that the ekiga guys would package the GTK runtime with their installer. My Windows using friend had to have me track down the installer. This is obviously a point against ekiga.

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

Also, thanks for making me run Ekiga! My buddy fixed his broken Asterisk setup, and I now know that Ekiga is a decent PC-PC voice telephony app. This gives me something good to recommend to the Skype users that I know. :)

Hopefully, I'll get a webcam soon, so's I can test out the video aspect of it.

Oh. I notice that I didn't address your "simplicity" angle. What's more simple than asking your buddy what their ekiga.net username is, then entering sip:username@ekiga.net and pressing the "connect" button? It's just like email, right? I ask this, having never used Windows Messenger. Perhaps you can tell me how it's easier?

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

Ah ha! You don't even have to prefix the ekiga.net username (or any other SIP address) with sip:. ekiga seems to figure out what to do automagically. :D

Re:Apps!

[aquarajustin]

Is there a "+0, I teared" mod?

Re:Apps!

[Tubal-Cain]

And then what do the kids use at home?

OpenOffice, Firefox, Armagetron Advanced, Battle for Wesnoth, BZFlag, KDE 4...

Re:Apps!

[marcosdumay]

"And you want to compare... And mplayer with iTunes or Windows Media Player?"

Let me try comparing them. Two of those can't play DVDs, and can't play ogg. Media Player requires that the user search for codecs, install those stuff (you'd better be running as admin), get some virus on the way. It takes a couple of days to put Media Player on a state where you can simply click on a video and it plays, iTunes can never be put on such state, and they still can't play DVDs (oh, and can they reproduce .flv? I was never able to do that).

Now, for mplayer there is a package of codecs. If you are running Windows, you download those and install where mplayer is. If you are running Linux, they will probably come bundled with the player. Done, you'll never need an extra codec for anything else. Ok, CLI sucks, so you'll need a front-end, well for most Linuxes, there is one bundled (although smplayer is better), for Windows it is like the codecs' instalation (probably better now, there is a while that I don't use mplayer on Windows). Oh, and it will play DVDs, flv, ogg, basicaly anything, with better interpolation algorithms.

Re:Apps!

[internerdj]

"It would be incredibly interesting if some people with more experience of school education software could put together a top 10 or top 20 list of common applications which are used throughout the country."
I think you could find such a list but the standard deviation between counts would be so low as to make the numbers useless. There would be plenty of one-off software that is absolutely vital to a couple of teachers. Replace the top 10-20, you still aren't going to be able to replace windows. It is the one-offs that will be the most difficult to replace and the dropping of which will be the most vocal of resistance. I'll guarantee the top 4-8 are probably already replaced in a manner that is as good or better than the comperable Microsoft product. The problem is when Mrs. Smith can't replace her XXX software with something that doesn't run on Linux, it won't run well on Wine, you ask the district's only sysadmin to get it working and he has to allocate several weeks to figuring it out, and you have 4-8 similar requests from teachers around the district.
If you are so afraid of your child learning MS products then teach them Linux at home. And if you don't see it during high school and are technically inclined, then it isn't like you won't bump into Linux later.

Re:Apps!

[jimicus]

Anyway, with the goals in hand the problem of "Most educational software is poorly written for Windows." shouldn't be an issue, it's hard for me to write educational software because I don't have kids or experience teaching them... but with the right organisation I'd be happy to oblige.

You have no idea how close you are to nailing the exact problem right there.

Most developers quite frankly aren't terribly good at explaining things. It's a skill like any other and to be any good at it you have to practise.

Unfortunately, it's also pretty f*cking fundamental for software in an educational context. Your average curriculum just says "pupils must understand X, Y and Z". How you get the pupils to understand X, Y and Z is the teacher's problem.

So you generally wind up with an application developed by a teacher which explains X, Y and Z beautifully but requires admin rights, actively resists any attempt to install it network-wide through GPO or what have you (hey, what's the problem with visiting every station with a CD-ROM and typing "start, run, D:\setup"?), assumes that any printing you want to do will be through a printer directly attached to the USB port and is generally a PITA - or you wind up with an application which doesn't force the IT staff into a pitched battle but doesn't actually explain anything at all.

Guess which one is chosen by teachers? (And rightly so...)

It's very rare to have a piece of educational software which is both painless to manage and explains ideas nicely. Any software developer looking to do a half-decent job would have to collaborate with at least one or two absolutely first-class teachers. These are remarkably difficult to find.

Re:Apps!

[mgiuca]

How do you get the Windows apps from the classroom into the home computers anyway? Most of them are licensed, so unless families are willing to fork out for home copies of Number Munchers, they'll be SOL. Hence, the school computers and home computers do not need to be compatible.

RE work documents, if the school PCs ran Linux and the home computers ran Windows, students could even work in OpenOffice, and install OO at home on the Windows machines too, in order to work from school and home on the same documents.

So while the odds of installing Linux in schools are insurmountable, this is not a reason.

Re:Apps!

[mgiuca]

When an application crashes under Windows, the application failed. When an application crashes under Linux, Linux fails.

Ironically, the inverse is usually true.

When an application crashes under Windows, often it will bring down the entire OS.

When an application crashes under Linux, it will usually just die and the system keeps on running.

Anyway, the above perception may be due to the error message, "This application has performed an illegal operation, and will be shut down." The application is naughty! Windows is the good guy, and is going to clean it up!

Honestly, this is quite a nifty feature. In Linux, if a program segfaults, a command-line app will unscrupulously print "Segmentation Fault", while a GUI app will even less-scrupulously disappear with no explanation. :/

Re:Apps!

[AMSmith42]

That's true of the smallest district as well. I'm the tech at a district of a little over 300 students.

I'm running NComputing, mostly to cut costs, but it is good PR to be green these days. NComputing claims to work on Linux (before you buy it), but all they have is a beta program that works on two distros with version numbers at least a year and a half old. I'm stuck without the support of the developers. And it is a catch 22 for them as well. Why should they put forth the time and resources when the demand is virtually nil?

Even if I gave training to both staff and students on OpenOffice.org, there are no OpenOffice teacher textbooks (from which then to teach) of which I'm aware. They are all Microsoft based. I have confidence that my computer apps teacher is smart enough to modify her curriculum to match, but why expect that of her? And then when the students go off to college, are they going to resent us when they have to relearn Word for their intro to computers classes?

As the lone tech guy, I could put all my effort into convincing the board and staff that the Linux desktop is little different than Windows and would save x amount of money. Then I could spend ungodly amounts of time, blood, sweat, and tears getting certain Windows-only programs to work (if I'm lucky) in WINE. And when all that was done, I'd be pulled a dozen ways answering the same question: Why doesn't [this] work like Windows did?

Perhaps this only speaks of my confidence in my ability to train, but I think it is closer to the literacy of my potential audience.

And then there is the State, who must be well invested or completely ignorant, as their Assessment application runs in only Windows or Mac. Likewise, there are grants that require specific applications that only run on the big two.

I'd like to help Linux out, really. But there is too much going against me.

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

marcosdumay mentions here that smplayer is a good frontend for mplayer. I just gave it a shot. The mplayer team *really* needs to start shipping it as the default GUI... it's pretty good. *Almost* everything that I would want to do was in the GUI, and the defaults were quite suitable.

Installing smplayer qualifies as "fucking around with shit" -I didn't even know about it till someone else told me about it-. However, I would hope that the distro maintainers know about it, and have the sense to include it by default when they install mplayer on a non-technical user's system.

Re:Apps!

[ion.simon.c]

Are you sure that that OGG comparison is fair?

This http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
enables all directshow apps on a Windows machine to play all Xiph.org codecs.

This http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
enables all quicktime apps to play all Xiph.org codecs.

Granted, this is probably just as much fucking around as asking the package manager to install Pidgin, but it's still possible!

Re:Apps!

[necro2607]

It's worth noting that Boardmaker is available for OS X as well. ;) Of course that family with the 11 year old son could always make their own "tags" using clip art off the net. I've seen it done firsthand as an alternative to using apps like Boardmaker. It's not as convenient or elegant, of course.

Re:Apps!

[sowth]

This happens because most (if not all) don't even know what Boardmaker is or what it does.

However, if some of those special ed teachers got together and paid the money they would've spent on Boardmaker to hire some Russian programmers, then maybe there would be an open source version. Better yet, form a non-profit org which collects money from people who want to help autistic children.

Open Source is a do it yourself kind of thing. You can't just sit around and hope what you want comes around with what you want. You have to lobby for it. But once someone has done the work, it doesn't disappear. I've seen plenty of commercial software become useless because the company decides not to sell it anymore (new copies are not available) and it isn't maintained (won't work on any modern OS). With OSS, if there is any interest at all, someone will keep maintaining it one way or another.

Re:Apps!

[identity0]

If an application advertising itself as "Compatible with Windows" fails under Windows, it's natural to blame the app. If the same app fails under Linux + Wine, it's natural to assume the blame lies with the different environment you gave it.

Can anyone explain the link?

[damn_registrars]

I clicked the link from the end of the story and was unable to find anything on that page referring to "Peter Quinn", "Quinn", or even just "Pete".

What information are we supposed to glean from that link?

Re:Can anyone explain the link?

[domatic]

A couple of years back, Massachusetts attempted to mandate open formats in state government. ODF was to be the office piece of this and MS pulled every dirty trick in the book to reverse or subvert that up to and including pulling strings to get the people pushing for this pressured to leave.

I suggest "massachusetts odf" as better set of search terms for Google.

Re:Can anyone explain the link?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Groklaw has an in-depth discussion. Click their search link and look for "Peter Quinn".

Re:Can anyone explain the link?

[celle]

"including pulling strings to get the people pushing for this pressured to leave."

If true, shouldn't the public be worried if not outright angry about this? If anything it proves corporations have to much control over public government.

Re:Can anyone explain the link?

[yuna49]

One of the biggest reasons why the Massachusetts ODF initiative failed was that the state officials involved were poor politicians. Remember that this initiative originated under a Republican governor with few, if any, ties to the state employee unions. These unions represent the people who would actually be forced to switch to OpenOffice or some other then ODF-compliant software. At the time OO had rather limited support for people with disabilities, an area where Microsoft had invested considerable efforts. Microsoft's lobbyists enlisted these groups, and some sympathetic state representatives, to oppose the introduction of OpenOffice on the grounds that it would create substantial impediments to disabled state workers. (States usually have a much larger fraction of such workers than does private industry for reasons that should be fairly obvious.)

The moral of this story is that technical excellence is not so important as good political skills when it comes to working with government agencies. That's a lesson that should carry over to efforts to introduce FOSS into public education.

let's do lunch

[Threni]

because MS have more experience of wining and dining (and bribing) than generally less dishonest Linux companies?

Re:let's do lunch

[grcumb]

because MS have more experience of wining and dining (and bribing) than generally less dishonest Linux companies?

I wouldn't impute any dishonesty to these sales people. Generally speaking, it's not necessary to be dishonest in order to win.

I suspect that most people's conception of the way things work in government (and education in particular) is altogether too jaded. Many people working in education policy do so out of interest and generally show a degree of commitment to the principles of learning and development.

That doesn't mean they're necessarily brilliant, insightful or even competent. Some are, some aren't. But the vast majority of them make decisions in what they consider to be the best interests of the young people under their care.

The folks at Microsoft are smart, organised and effective. The links in the summary documents show that they've got a clear game plan, and the tables attached indicate that they were executing well on it.

Compare that to the work done by FOSS organisations. With the exception of IBM, there's hardly anyone who has established contacts in Education. FOSS is typically touted by mid-level technical folks who have expertise in their field but little political experience. They almost certainly don't have the resources, the planning or the operational intelligence to keep pace with Microsoft.

Add to this the fact that Microsoft is the incumbent, and you'll see that they've got the advantage in almost every respect: resources, position, momentum and intelligence.

Microsoft's played dirty in the past, and they likely will again in the future. I'm only suggesting that it's not necessary to play that way every time.

The corrupt practice in this particular case is dumping, and that decision is being made at the corporate level. While corruption taints everyone who participates in it, that doesn't mean they are suddenly guilty of every manifestation of it all at once.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[whoever57]

schools prefer to use Windows because it's what the vast majority of their faculty and staff know, ...

A couple or so years ago, I asked a university lecturer why they used so much MS software, when the obviously had knowledge of Linux and Unix -- the reply was something like "we get it free" (or perhaps "almost free").

In this case, it is free as in beer trumping free as in speech.

Key applications

[lordeveryman]

At the High School I volunteer at there are key applications that teachers feel they can not do without. One such example is Microsoft Publisher. This is a loathsome application that does not export to any other known publishing application, but is used to teach publishing in the school. :-(
We are making progress though. The school switched to Open Office this year for all but the business lab. I am working with the business lab teachers to get them familiar with Open Office so they can make an informed decision about what software to use in the future.

Re:Key applications

[I_want_information]

One such example is Microsoft Publisher. This is a loathsome application.

That turd is still around??? God I hated that app!

Re:Key applications

[Tihocan]

Try suggesting Scribus Open source, multiplatform (even runs on Windows), very professional desktop publishing application

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a monopoly is neither illegal nor I would argue immoral. It's what you do with your monopolistic power that makes that determination. In this context it is also important to mention that MS is the original 'give it away for free or close to free' people. This was true even way before Windows had a lock on PCs.

I would agree with the comments above about Windows being what the student will encounter and add further that this reasoning extends to the OLPC and similar products, which is why we are seeing Windows on those platforms instead of a free OS.

Re:So?

[Tubal-Cain]

MS is the original 'give it away for free or close to free' people.

Actually, I am pretty sure that was Gilette. He gave away razor handles but people would need to buy replacement blades.

Re:So?

[azenpunk]

ever hear the phrase "self fulfilling prophecy?"

what you've just described is a cycle. students will encounter MS software in 'the real world' so they should be taught MS software. then, in "the real world" since they only know MS software, they stick to using it. in an educational environment it's tragic not to expose these students to more than one operating system. there is no argument for not having some machines dual booting windows/linux so that at least the curious can experiment. the highest it could possibly cost is that computer being down while it gets reformatted and reinstalled if something breaks, but that's going to be happening often enough with the purely windows machines anyways.

at best, since an entire school year is (i think) too long to just learn how to use a windows machine, it's not unreasonable to figure out some curricular for teaching at least some linux knowledge at some schools. if you have a computer teacher who knows it, they can figure out some things to put into a lesson plan.

it's not a perfect solution but a total monoculture is a sin at best and villainy at worst.

office suite

[mehtars]

Maybe its because office suite is simple, easy to use and works very well with graphics embedded within documents.

Re:office suite

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAhaahehheh*sniff*, good one.

Wait, were you serious? Even with all that "ribbon" crap they've been replacing the menus with?

Save?

[speedingant]

lol at "the world could save up to $500 million each year".

They wouldn't save money..!! You'd see more principals with the words PIMP in crystal with gold chains hanging around their necks. And happy admins after they move to linux. Ahh... Bliss.

Be glad to have an OS

[icepick72]

The reality is a lot of computers run Windows and it's not going to be detrimental for kids to learn Microsoft OS, tools and technologies even if it's fun for us to talk about evil tactics and dumping Microsoft. I think a lot of the time Windows gets into schools because it's a consistent and familiar GUI experience. Kids can learn on it -- they have lots of time to make up their own minds when they get old enough, reaching college and university, etc. all kinds of OS's and tools are used. Cost-wise if the budget can support it, then the budge can support it. I'm not going to stop buying Dempster's whole wheat bread for no-name brand until I actually run short on money.

Re:Be glad to have an OS

[FrostDust]

As mentioned in the blog, the main strategy Microsoft is using is to offer licenses for it's OS/software for cheap, or even free, so that the users will be more likely to buy future products from them in the future.

Ideally, people should be learning how to use computers, not Microsoft software. That way, they would be more open minded toward, and technically capable of, using different software when they get the chance to chose. In government (and school) situations, this is important because it's a waste of money to pay for expensive software licences when free and competitive programs are readily available.

In a world where >85% of PCs are using some form of Windows, however, this doesn't put most users at a disadvantage, as they'll probably never be exposed to alternative software besides Firefox. Or, we get people like Mac converts, who treat a non-MS OS device as the relic of some sort of technological messiah, instead of just a computer with different ways of doing things.

Re:Be glad to have an OS

[conureman]

In a world where greater than >85% of users can barely click on an email, only 15% of students will need real computers. The rest want an appliance.

Re:Be glad to have an OS

[smoker2]

In a world where such a large percentage are part of a botnet, surely people need to learn something more than point and click. It's not someone elses fault, you have ultimate control. Instead, you pay for antivirus, and spy sweepers, and updates and privacy violations. How much money is spent on things that should be irrelevant ? (don't start on the "if linux was as popular it would have just as many security issues" argument. If the users were taught to have a clue in the first place it would never have been an issue.)

When did the easiest thing ever be the right thing to do ?

Re:Be glad to have an OS

[I_want_information]

In a world where greater than >85% of users can barely click on an email, only 15% of students will need real computers. The rest want an appliance.

I once had a student who was supposed to email me her take-home essay midterm component.

After about six tries over the space of more than a month, she finally figured out how to actually attach the file.

Sigh.

90%+ of a market is a monopoly

[Nicolas MONNET]

Hell even 50%+ is considered a monopoly for all intents and purposes in most jurisdictions.

Re:90%+ of a market is a monopoly

[mabhatter654]

exactly, the company I worked for, which doesn't even place in US steel production, had anti-competition investigation nearly started back when fuel prices and metals price went sky high 7-8 years ago. Because they were so specialized they could nearly "write their own ticket" and get price increases from customers to match the prices they paid out... while automotive customers were demanding all their other suppliers cut prices 5-10% simply because THEY could get away with it.

"monopoly" is about your position of power in regard to the customer, not the actual market share involved.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[drsmithy]

A couple or so years ago, I asked a university lecturer why they used so much MS software, when the obviously had knowledge of Linux and Unix -- the reply was something like "we get it free" (or perhaps "almost free").

So they were using it because it was better ? Because they certainly wouldn't have been paying more for Linux or UNIX...

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[BeerCat]

A couple or so years ago, I asked a university lecturer why they used so much MS software, when the obviously had knowledge of Linux and Unix -- the reply was something like "we get it free" (or perhaps "almost free").

Don't forget that in the early days (Windows 3 / 3.1), MS tended to turn a blind eye to copying, as it increased mindshare.

(Also, at the same time, some organisations were still on DOS, but the new machines came with Windows disks. Those installing the company setup used to keep the Windows disks, or give them away. Of course, once they had all the copies of Windows that they and their friends could possibly use, a quick re-format of the floppy disks allowed their re-use - disks were expensive)

More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Prep_Styles]

Now that the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to see what Microsoft can do other than what they did to ...

I like Linux as much as the next guy ( I run it almost exclusively) But seriously how many times do I have to read M$ is doomed! DOOOMMED!

Windows is popular in schools (as is mac) because the experience is more seamless then it is in a flavour of Linux. Schools are not trying to just teach computers to kids, their trying to get them to read, write, perform arithmetical, or other tasks that are SEEN as separate from the computing experience. As soon as you have to explain to teaching staff that Gnome isn't Linux isn't GNU isn't RedHat ... you've lost the case because the teachers are just going to say "This isn't a computer class! Why do I have to learn this!?"

I think Linux would be great is schools but until you have a reasonably seamless experience your not going to get anywhere.

The arguments always come down to cost: "Linux will save you money". Sure it will. But these institutions are used to spending money to get what they think they need. Your not going to win this argument with cost benefits alone, you have to convince them that Linux will do a better job then Windows and Mac and as of right now I don't think that's an easy case to make.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[maugle]

I don't know about you, but my newspapers constantly have articles on how the schools have no budget and the teachers are poor and the buildings are falling apart and yadda yadda yadda.
You'd think they'd jump at a chance to save some cash, no matter how little.

I put Microsoft's continued dominance down to momentum ("everybody uses Microsoft products") and fear ("if I decide to save some cash by moving from Windows to Linux, but the migration fails, we'll be out a lot of time and money and I'll be out on the street").

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[conureman]

If Linux can't do the job of a Mac, they're SOL. If Linux can't do the job of a Windows PC, they are only out the cost of the integration, assuming they bought "Vista-Ready". I think a few, proprietary OS boxes in the labs are enough for the actual needs. 1:1 wouldn't cost much if the good stuff was for geeks only. All the squids get cheaper hardware with Free software to text each other with.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Chandon Seldon]

Windows is popular in schools (as is mac) because the experience is more seamless then it is in a flavour of Linux.

In what way? An office suite that doesn't even have menus? Media players that have completely unique UI elements? Every application needing to be installed separately and maintained through a separately developed installation program?

As soon as you have to explain to teaching staff that Gnome isn't Linux isn't GNU isn't RedHat ...

Oh, wait. I'm being trolled. I'll just be on my way.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Techman83]

Maybe if we say it enough times it will become true. Bit like the Global Financial crisis...

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Repossessed]

Why do the teachers need to know all that? 'This is Linux, there are a great deal of variations.' Depending on the options, you might show them the middle button copy paste or how to use the multiple desktops. Thats really all an end user needs. Most of them won't even need that, unless they have to be hand held through every step of using windows anyway.

The hard part will be teaching them different applications, since the non computer sometimes freak when the save button gets moved. But then Office 07 is even worse.

Retraining your IT staff/the actual computer teacher, or non being able to get a decent equivalent to a critical program is a real problem of course.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[serialband]

Actually, cost is a barrier to linux adoption. You don't just plop a new OS on a school without planning to train all your teachers and hiring a brand new sysadmin who knows Linux/Unix to mantain and support the system.

In schools that run Windows, Linux will only save you money when Microsoft's OS isn't included on Dell's (or whatever hardware is cheapest) by default. Microsoft's OS is already "free" to the hardware purchaser. This has nothing to do with Windows being more seamless. It's entirely because it comes installed by default on the hardware. Major hardware vendors that do offer linux, don't offer much of a real discount. Small mom/pop/internet stores, that actually offer cheaper with linux installs, are not the prefered place to purchase hardware. They're small operations, so they don't carry the volume needed for timely volume purchases of a lab of 30-50 systems at a time.

Sure, you can run Open Office on Linux and there's all this open source software on Linux. Well, all the necessary Open Source software is available for Windows and Macs as well.

Macs are also mostly prevalent in many k-8 system where the teachers have been using Macs for years and have no real tech support/sysadmin to maintain them. It makes no sense for those teachers to switch, since, the school system would have to hire a Full Time tech to support and retrain all those teachers as well as pay for additional training. The Macs are currently Virus free and Trojan free because of its lower market penetration. That may change in the future as Macs take over more of the market, but for now Macs are much cheaper for k-8 schools to maintain and own than windows while still having the educational software the teachers need/want.

Adoping linux would require a tech support hire to manage, test and maintain all those educational software in Wine. Switching from Windows to Linux would be a wash for a school system. There is currently a whole world of educational applications written Windows and Macs, but not Linux, so there's no cost savings in software. Edubuntu is a nice effort, but it's currently worthless for anything above first grade. If anything, until viruses and trojans invade OSX, Macs are currently cheapest to run for non-technical users.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Bryan K. Feir]

Not to mention s/Retric/Rhetoric/

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[Tubal-Cain]

but the migration fails, we'll be out a lot of time and money and I'll be out on the street").

How so? Worst case scenario I can imagine is a small school has to buy a second ex-gaming rig, doubling their server capacity when they don't need it. A handful of computers can be converted in the library. If they work, the rest are converted in a few weeks. If they don't work, the admins can just reimage them. Same policy for the office and computer-lab-classrooms, but have a smaller control group (1-3) and a slower migration rate. If at any time the administration decides to call it off, pull out the disc images.

Where is the extra expense here? The only other thing I can think of is some productivity loss because the IT guy is a little more busy and is slower to respond to regular IT requests.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[marcosdumay]

There is no global financial crisis!!!

At least, people have been saying the above for about two years... Let's see if it can work for another one.

Re:More Microsoft is Doomed Retric

[jimicus]

I don't know about you, but my newspapers constantly have articles on how the schools have no budget and the teachers are poor and the buildings are falling apart and yadda yadda yadda.
You'd think they'd jump at a chance to save some cash, no matter how little.

As an industry (for want of a better word), education can sometimes be very resistant to change - largely because they often perceive change as being for its own sake than for any real benefit.

I would not be surprised - in fact, I'd be astonished if it weren't the case - to learn of schools still keeping a couple of clapped-out 386 and 486 PCs running DOS around for just one specific piece of software which is wheeled out for one lesson once a year because it won't work under Windows and they haven't yet found an alternative.

Re:Dumping.

[El Lobo]

Well, if Linuzzz can be installed for free at schools and Windows cost a little bit (MS Select and Campus contracts are really a good deal at schools and universities), how do you explain the fact that Windows and Macs still have the edge in education over GNU/Linuzzz?

Couldn't be that this is the tool (I repeat, the TOOL, not the religion) that is, for good or bad, the defacto standard out there in the real world? Couldn't be a good think that you are preparing your students to use the tools (I repeat, not the religion) that could help them to face the real world market?

Sure, it could be a cool think to get Basquian language to be obligatory for all schools in Sweden, but I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that students would be more happy having a good English language education, just for their future sake. Basquian? Sure, be my guest, get a book and learn.

First...

[V!NCENT]

First they ignore you, then laugh at you and then hate you. Then they fight you and then you win. When the truth dies, very bad things happen...

- After a song by Robbie Williams

Re:First...

[V!NCENT]

I plan to wait, as it's only a matter of time before you will be switching to either Linux or a Macintosh. Can't you tell by Microsofts tactics? I don't know if you have been following the developments in the Apple and Linux world (I bet you didn't) but the future for Microsoft is not so bright...

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[El Lobo]

Believe me, after a couple of free beers I no longer care for freedom of speech. I use a lot of software that is "free as in beer" and I'm absolutely happy with it. And non-free software? I use a lot more (including the OS, development tools, etc), and I'm delighted with what I use as well. I'll never understand the ideological "free as in speech" fixation.

Treat Microsoft like the Cable company then.

[AppleOSuX]

When your contract with Microsoft is about to run out, just tell them you're switching to Linux. Then you can get more Microsoft products for free.

When Microsoft stops offering freebies, then switch to Linux.

Problem solved.

Re:Treat Microsoft like the Cable company then.

[mabhatter654]

but that's the catch. "Freebis" like Sharepoint tie Server, AD, SQL, and Exchange together in a way that simply can't be migrated to OSS. Sure it can be replicated, but you would have to rebuild everything done before to move off it. There are dozens of other MS products that tied in a similar manner. Not bad products, but the combine products can't be got away from easily.

Re:Treat Microsoft like the Cable company then.

[celle]

"When Microsoft stops offering freebies, then switch to Linux."

Except when Microsoft stops offering freebies it'll be to late because the choice will be gone.

Saving money vs risk taking

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure, schools have very strict budgets, but they are very cautious too and will not take risks. Moving to Linux is perceived as very high risk. Teachers are already overworked and also don't want change that they see little benefit in doing.

Saving money through fund raisers etc is seen to be low risk and a proven way to get money to flow the right way. An experiment in Linux is perceived to be a lot more risky and harder. The school's computers are often seen to be very high expense items and there is a preception that running Linux lowers their value or might even cause damage. Don't want to take any risks with that!

Re:Saving money vs risk taking

[goombah99]

In theory risk and cost can be equated. You could (in theory) take out an insurace policy for the precise value of undoing the disaster if a mistake is made. The premium would be the cost.

Of course in reality their are externalities that are hard to price: the damage to students if for a year or so their computer trainingis in chaos. The risk to the principal's job status.

But nevermind, it does not matter if you can really take out a policy. What matters is you can say that the risks are not worth the cost savings.

So the illinois experiment is actually lowering the risk costs.

It's not desperate

[Greg_D]

When you almost always win.

twitter == BoycottNovell Shill

[Anonymous Coward]

Check his posting history (with all his 40 sock accounts), the guy does nothing but paste links to that blog. Recent example. Look at his comments, submissions and journal entries. Aside from "M$" what you'll see are links to that blog. And surprise, it's AdSense-enabled!

I think someone just figured out:

1. Collect underpants
2. Bash Microsoft
3. Profit!

Lame, lame lame.

and OLPC/Negroponte will still think MSFT is good

[Locutus]

it shows that nothing has changed at Microsoft in the past 20 years. There is no "new Microsoft", there is no "kinder, gentler Microsoft", and there is no "Microsoft is a friend to open source".

It's all a lie for the purpose of furthering their goal of making sure Windows is the only OS for the vast majority of the populations.

surprise!

LoB

Re:Dumping.

[gustar]

Who says they Microsoft has the edge? Where I work we hire a number of kids out of college, *all* of them have higher degree of comfort implementing various solutions on a Linux/BSD platform then Windows. That tells me they are getting a tremendous amount of exposure to these platforms during their college years.

Quite frankly I manage to do my own job quite effectively without having to rely on Microsoft products at all, this includes technical aspects as well communicating, documenting, etc.

So by all means use the tools you are comfortable with, but do not imply that they are the only choice for the *real world* when that is not even close to being the case.

Re:Slashdot's fall from grace.

[onefriedrice]

From your ID, I wouldn't have guessed you've been here 9 years, but you're always free to get your news and commentary elsewhere.

So what?

[gandhi_2]

how is this different from what Apple has done since....there was an Apple?

And what the fuck is this, Comrade?

the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft

Imagine the money we could save if we dumped all commercially-produced products? We could totally save a ton of money if we just worked on collective farms and no-one ever made a profit. Way to tie FLOSS to the socialist agenda.

Letting kids into the workplace without MS training is a non-starter. Here's a better idea: Kids well rounded in MS, Mac, and a Linux distro?

rear guard action

[the_B0fh]

Look at what's happening across the world:

http://knowledge.oscc.org.my/newsletters/first-quarterly-e-newsletter-jan-2009/at_download/file

the government's documented savings is US$10mil last year. And there are numerous undocumented savings, as well as followons, schools are now putting OSS in, etc etc.

Re:Dumping.

[WiiVault]

While I admit the GP is a troll you are just as offbase. Your anecdotal evidance does not disprove that Windows is still dominant. Does it suck? Heck yeah, but schools only have so much time and sadly windows skills are crucial many industries. I hope that changes, but until then your 10 person shop does little to change the trend.

Re:Slashdot's fall from grace.

[Jamie's Nightmare]

I only recently bothered to get an ID. Previously I would post autonomously.

Re:Dumping.

[HangingChad]

Couldn't be that this is the tool (I repeat, the TOOL, not the religion) that is, for good or bad, the defacto standard out there in the real world?

Or it could be that the manufacturer of the tool gives their tools away to educational institutions and maybe offers a scholarship or other financial incentive in addition to make sure any of them thinking about an alternative gets a reminder of how much money is on the line. And the reps of that tool manufacturer phone the local politicians and senior administrators and remind them how much money and how many jobs the proprietary software circle jerk provides.

So if you mean that influence peddling and bribery are the de facto standard in the "real world" then, sadly, you are quite right. And it certainly explains how Windows could have an edge in academia that has nothing to do with the relative merits of the tool itself.

You couldn't hit the real world in the butt with a base fiddle.

WSUS

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reason that schools don't switch from Windows is because it is sooo much easier to keep a Windows network running seamlessly than a Linux network. I am the administrator for a small school (about 52 systems). When I want to install software or manage settings, I use group policies combined with active directory to control deployment. It took me about 1 day to get this all running initially. Updates are managed through WSUS. Has anyone on slashdot ever tried to set up ldap or fedora directory server. It is very difficult to get everything up and running. If something were to go down, only I could get it back up. With Windows Server, I have several people in the faculty who could fix it if there was a problem. Due to school discounts, price is not a huge issue. For an example, look at http://cdwg.com/ for the "Academic Discount" licenses. I considered installing OO.o instead of MS Office. However, with the release of Office 2007, there is real insentive to upgrade. It is much easier to teach and use the new "ribbon" interface than the old menu/toolbar interface. OO.o would have a difficult time switching to a ribbon and keeping their credibility as an innovator. To summarise: MS provides real value for the money. They provide a well integrated system that is seamless, stable, and easy to maintain. They have shown that they will continue to innovate and have shown current and future products such as groove, sharepoint, and Windows 7 (I am typing this from W7) that continue to raise the bar.

Re:WSUS

[LingNoi]

OO.o would have a difficult time switching to a ribbon and keeping their credibility as an innovator.

As someone that uses Ubuntu and Open Office on a daily basis OO.o is nothing but a shoddy copy of MS Office.

There is nothing innovative about it. The only difference I have noticed in my 4 years of using it so far is that if spreadsheet crashes then you can say goodbye to writer and whatever document you had open too...

oh, and the menu options have been re-arranged so I can never remember how to edit the footer of my documents.

The only reason I continue to use it is becauese I have a deadline and no time to invest in looking at other options for ubuntu.

Re:WSUS

[dylan_-]

oh, and the menu options have been re-arranged so I can never remember how to edit the footer of my documents.

To edit a footer, you click on it and type/delete/whatever like any other piece of text.

Re:WSUS

[LingNoi]

Sorry, I meant add a footer. However the thing which I think both OO.o and Word could do better is footers and headers.

It should be really simple to divide your document up into chapters and have the page count + footer start on page 2 leaving page 1 free for a cover, etc.

Although it's possible to do it feels hackish and too difficult when it should be a simple job.

I've never been able to figure out how to have different headers (chapter 1, chapter 2, etc) in a document.

Re:WSUS

[dylan_-]

Sorry, I meant add a footer. However the thing which I think both OO.o and Word could do better is footers and headers.

It's under Insert...Footer, and hasn't moved. Are you sure you're not confusing it with Word, which did have headers and footers hidden away in some weird place?

It should be really simple to divide your document up into chapters and have the page count + footer start on page 2 leaving page 1 free for a cover, etc.

Insert...Manual Break and choose a Page 1 break after the first page.

I've never been able to figure out how to have different headers (chapter 1, chapter 2, etc) in a document.

At least in version 3, go to the Help Index and type "chapter" and it has instructions for automatically putting in the correct chapter header for each chapter.

Re:WSUS

[LingNoi]

Manual Break and choose a Page 1 break after the first page.

and doing so leaves a hidden page in your document screwing up the page counter and also adding blank pages when you export to PDF.

Re:WSUS

[dylan_-]

Manual Break and choose a Page 1 break after the first page.

and doing so leaves a hidden page in your document screwing up the page counter and also adding blank pages when you export to PDF.

Oops, I did that wrong. Choose Format...Styles and Formatting and change the Page Style to First Page. That'll work.

If you look up First Page on the Help, it has instructions for not printing blank pages when exporting to PDF, if you're using first page breaks.

Re:WSUS

[LingNoi]

Thanks, i'll check it out.

so blind as to over look an easy 10's of millons

[ahfoo]

Tens of millions? It's more than that by far. The financial relationship between school districts and Microsoft is immense.

The very notion on free software is under constant attack day in and day out in the school precisely because the school administrations are already so bought out.

The only reason Microsoft even exists is because of their insistence that everybody owes them something.

How does Microsoft beat Linux in schools? The answers are vast. But what is partly missing in the analysis is the fact that the education "market" is not isolated to the United States. These are global issues in the here and now.

Re:Dumping.

[gustar]

The majority of *market domincance* surveys boil to little more than highly slanted, carefully filtered marketing campaigns. Given that, why do you feel anecdotal experience is essentially worthless?

I have worked for many companies, I have seen a tremendous amount of Linux/BSD on the back-end, and now I am seeing it on the client-side as well.

None of the organizations for which I have worked have been ten person shops but rather larger enterprises looking to maximize their investment in infrastructure from initial purchase to full depreciation. All of them recognized open source as a viable means of achieving these goals in some form or another.

Re:Dumping.

[gustar]

Maybe they (or their resume) tells you that to get the job? I'm not doubting their Linux/BSD skills, but people tailor their resumes to the specific job they are applying for.

I am sure they did tailor their resume, that is exactly what people interested in getting a job do!

The fact is they landed the position because when we interviewed them they demonstrated strong Linux/UNIX skills.

I work with these folks daily, as they continue to demonstrate strong Linux/UNIX skills, and knowledge.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[ion.simon.c]

Are you a programmer?
If you're not, you're not likely to understand the "free as in speech" fixation.

Re:Dumping.

[Sam36]

Well, if Linuzzz can be installed for free at schools and Windows cost a little bit (MS Select and Campus contracts are really a good deal at schools and universities), how do you explain the fact that Windows and Macs still have the edge in education over GNU/Linuzzz?

Couldn't be that this is the tool (I repeat, the TOOL, not the religion) that is, for good or bad, the defacto standard out there in the real world? Couldn't be a good think that you are preparing your students to use the tools (I repeat, not the religion) that could help them to face the real world market?

Sure, it could be a cool think to get Basquian language to be obligatory for all schools in Sweden, but I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that students would be more happy having a good English language education, just for their future sake. Basquian? Sure, be my guest, get a book and learn.

They are not taught concepts that is for sure. I once installed Open Office for an accounting friend of mine. He had been using Excel for years. Upon showing him how to add columns in OO he cheered and said "Cool I don't have to use my calculator anymore!"

Let me fix this for you...

[actionbastard]

"Most educational software is poorly written for Windows."

Most poorly written educational software is for Windows.
There. All Better.

From years of experience; the most any, average, K-12 student needs from a software standpoint is, a web-browser, a word-processor, and maybe some presentation software. Everything else that is purchased by schools, unless it is for a specialized curriculum/class, is a waste of money. Why? Because unless it is integrated into the curriculum -meaning that it is a tool that must be used to complete course assignments- it is simply employed as a way to keep students busy doing something.

Why education still buys Windows is by-and-large driven by the fact that commodity x86 hardware is sold by major vendors with Windows pre-installed. Most schools that desire technology are interested in getting the most for your tax dollar as they can that still has a familiar 'feel' to it for the adults. The kids; they don't care, as many of them have been exposed to a greater variety of OS/machine combos then the average teacher has, and they are sufficiently adaptable to figure it out for themselves.

Re:Dumping.

[smoker2]

Schools are supposed to teach you how to think, not which button to push. Would you allow McDonalds to influence your kids education, by conditioning them to happy meals ?

I don't know about you but I have to think harder to use a linux OS than I do a Windows OS (mainly due to Linux's massive scope for personal influence). And the sad part is people think that's a bad idea. Use it or lose it.

I think the issue with schools is that nobody is selling linux to schools, and schools are doing the minimum teaching they can get away with. Whereas Microsoft is making itself available and has zero real competitors in that market. Given their market dominance the sheep follow along. Who is going to break the cycle ?

Re:Dumping.

[recoiledsnake]

Given their market dominance the sheep follow along. Who is going to break the cycle ?

A very full featured and good office suite can do it. OO.o is good but MS Office 2007 is simply light years ahead.

Bah - Here's how to really save money

[billybob_jcv]

Take all the computers out of the schools. As far as I can tell, at any given time half of them won't boot or are frozen anyway. The teachers and the schools "IT Staff" (ie, the teacher who was so bad at teaching 3rd graders he now runs the "technology lab") are completely clueless and have no business trying to teach our children about technology. My 11 year-old daughter is *light-years* ahead of ALL of her teachers when it comes to the web, email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, video and html/css development. I suggest the schools stick to teaching readin', ritin' & 'rithmetic - and perhaps we'll have kids that know more than how to load a Glock 17...

Re:Bah - Here's how to really save money

[OneSmartFellow]

I whole-heartedly agree. There is almost no place for IT in elementary school. What is the point of teaching children how to make powerpoint presentations about their fluffy bunny when they can't even read a sentence such as this one, or do long division, or explain how the moon moves around the earth, and the earth around the sun. I can rationalize a computer lab in Jr.High/High school; but, there again, I have serious misgivings about wasting months training this age group how to copy and paste in Word, or send an e-mail in Outlook. I suppose these skills are considered basic now, and do have a place, but so much time is devoted to such trivialities that it's cringe-worthy. Meanwhile the type of computer course I grew up with (starting in Jr. High), were we had to understand how to use a recursive function call, or verify a hash over a domain is simply not taught until college. This is just pathetic.

I know schools have dumbed down substantially in my life-time. I can see it with my own children who are now leaving school for University with a much less well rounded education than I had. It's time our schools and politician stopped treating computers and IT like cargo cult cultures would, and concentrate on education again.

This just in...

[cj1127]

...investment of time, resources and money into making an operating system marketable, desirable and a household name has resulted in a greater market share; whilst those preoccupied with promoting other operating systems from their basements are lagging by about 20 years behind them in terms of advertising, market appeal and usability. Shocking.

sugar

[spandex_panda]

I have had sugar running on my ubuntu pc at home, it is very different, but in a school with very connected computers, wouldn't Sugar (regardless of the OLPC debacle) be perfect for an educational suite specifically built for collaboration?

Perhaps a pilot study should be undertaken with one of the above school admins and a class (10-20 PCs) of kids to see if Ubuntu + sugar = fun, educational, inclusive and collaborative computer learning experience!

The one big issue I can see is the near impossibility of getting out of sugar and back to gnome to use open office!!!

The real reason

[Brandybuck]

The real reason is simply because the consumer (in this case, schools) chose Windows over Linux. Is not about the price, it's about the cost. And when consumers know Windows but they don't know Linux, guess which is the lower cost? Familiarity is a desired trait. The familiarity extends beyond the school to the students' homes. Most will have Windows systems at home, and like it or not, their parents will want their children learning Windows.

But all of that is a side issue. The heart of the matter is that healthy well-adjusted people do not compete through whining. Stop worrying about what software other people are using and worry about your own life. There are far more important problems to address in life than what OS your neighbor's kids are using.

Re:There are some problems with your logic

[Johnny Loves Linux]

It seems you're ignoring Microsoft's exclusive licensing issues with the Major OEMS in the 90's prohibiting the OEMs from either preloading alternative OSes or prohibiting any boot menus which would allow people to choose which OS they want to boot (ref: BeOS).

You seem to also be ignoring Microsoft's practice of deliberating altering their internal APIs to prevent any other software maker from writing their own clone of DOS (ref: DRDOS). Ironically enough it was the rise of hardware PC clone makers that permitted Microsoft to flourish. Apparently Microsoft did not wish that freedom to extend to software as well.

You also seem to be ignoring Microsoft's practice of altering their APIs so certain competing applications fail to work correctly. (ref: "Dos isn't done until Lotus won't run")

And finally, if Microsoft was an inherently better competitor why then tactics like Edgie? Shouldn't their products naturally sell better solely based on their own merits?

The commodity PC ran Windows

[westlake]

Apple had a viable, easy-to-use operating system at the same time.

.
In a half-dozen or so standard configurations only available from Apple.

The "high-priced spread."

The Windows PC was available from many fiercely competitive suppliers - and could be customized any way you wanted.

Apple had its "killer apps."

The problem was that the Mac was defined almost solely as a graphics powerhouse for the designer and photo editor working at the professional level.

I'll not call the Mac "gay."

But it was never working class.

MSDOS and Windows got down and dirty.

The auto body shop in Anchorage. The office tower in Burbank. The feed lot in Nebraska. The suburban hospital on Long Island.

MSDOS and Windows began as a stand-alone OS.

Microsoft earned its 90% share by building from the ground up and not from the top down.

rambling comments from a labtech...

[Anonymous Coward]

I made the switch to Linux with Ubuntu because, for most things, it works just plain better than Windows. But, getting this point across to the people I work with is, well, proving rather difficult.

Why is that? Because:

1) People are gullible. The people that make decisions about purchasing first look at a glossy sales brochure or pick what they saw advertised on TV. Then they then ask "Is this okay?" Linux doesn't have any shiny brochures, we never get asked if it's okay.

2) People are terrified of change, any change. They won't admit it, but they are. It's not that Linux is still harder to use than Windows (honestly, it's the other way around now, and I've proved it to people); it's that people don't want to change, even for the better.

3) People are lazy. I had instructors DEMANDING that I dual-boot to Linux (so I used a VMware image instead) and then they went off to teach MS Office instead of Open-Office... because there's a course-pack/textbook that includes online testing and grading (so they don't have to do any work).

In short, the problem is inertia. Unfortunately, Linux is going to have to get way better than Windows before the Educational "ship" can start to make some course corrections. Dumb, fearful, lazy people have to be beaten over the head with the obvious before they will change direction.

Now, the appropriate tool to beat said people over the head with is a turn-key Linux distribution that integrates into an Active Directory domain, right out of the box. One that includes an image-casting process that allows 100s of computers to be managed (deployed, updated, etc.) from a central console (PXE boot, the works). If I had that (turn-key), I might make some progress around here... though it would still take a while.

FOSS will eventually dominate education. It is inevitable. The Linux distributions out there are making phenomenal strides towards ease-of-use and overall functionality. In most aspects, they have already bested Windows. But, it will take time to overcome the inertia in Education. Honestly, I expect the business world will actually turn first. Education, despite its best efforts, is surprisingly conservative.

        David...

Re:rambling comments from a labtech...

[MoreDruid]

One that includes an image-casting process that allows 100s of computers to be managed (deployed, updated, etc.) from a central console (PXE boot, the works).

Then you might want to take a look at RedHat Satellite or RedHat Spacewalk. Debian has a similar project called FAI - Fully Automated Installer.

I've seen a managed environment of over 1000 servers in RH Satellite done by about 6 people (including developers extending the Satellite default capabilities), impressive. Spacewalk is kind of the next generation of Satellite, but completely free (and thus only community supported). FAI is used for rollout of small and big projects alike, they have an acknowledgement section on their site where you can look around.

Re:rambling comments from a labtech...

[isorox]

Now, the appropriate tool to beat said people over the head with is a turn-key Linux distribution that integrates into an Active Directory domain, right out of the box. One that includes an image-casting process that allows 100s of computers to be managed (deployed, updated, etc.) from a central console (PXE boot, the works). If I had that (turn-key), I might make some progress around here... though it would still take a while.

Turnkey isn't there yet -- but it isn't with the windows ecosystem either. The above is pretty much what we have with about 60 ubuntu server boxes across the country. PXE boot for local ones, USB/CD boot for remote ones which lack DHCP networks.

You have to manually reboot each box to install, but I guess if you set up PXE as the first device in the bios it would be possible.

The preseed installation includes lots of useful gubbins, including antivirus (with dat download). Our nagios install ssh's in and runs an apt-get update check every day. We still manually upgrade the packages, for the same reason we do so with windows -- we test updates and roll out security ones once we're happy.

We can login via a local account (essential for when AD or the network plays up), but for most purposes it's active directory -- ubuntu 8.04 comes with likewise-open which makes that simpler.

Acquisition cost isn't the issue in schools

[geek geezer is me]

The Fine Article has an occasional point, but there are as many flaws. As a school tech director for ten years and now a consultant for a company with a specialty practice in outsourcing K12 IT, the issue isn't how much MS costs. It's the continuing cost of support, and beleive it or not a properly configured Windows system is VERY efficient. My district had nearly 9,000 students with almost 4,000 computers and well above 300 in use applications from K to 12. Our tech to computer ratio was over 1:700 and we resolved most trouble calls in less than 24 hours. If a school has the resources and desires a technology rich environment with a huge range of software using thick clients then a Windows desktop OS makes a lot of sense. The range of educational software is just not there for Linux, and it's only in the last couple years that the management utilities have started to mature for it. Ironically the wild environment of Windows produced excellent management tools early on. As for actual costs, in the U.S. a School License Agreement will provide just about everything MS has to offer to a school for about $50/year per machine. Not cheap, but considering all it includes, not exactly highway robbery, and after 3 years you own whatever the latest version MS has and you can stop paying for a couple years. In the places I've had experience the MS cost is just 5%-6% of the tech budget. In comparison, even for 700:1 and higher support ratios the techs cost 30% or more of the budget. Having said that, I'm currently working mostly with urban schools without the resources of the suburban district where I was tech director. For these districts with extremely limited resources Linux makes a lot more sense, especially in a thin client mode. When the choice is between something and nothing at all, Linux provides the something. Management utilities are still in need of a lot of help. A FOSS app virtualization capability would really help where multi-media requirements, which are big in schools, require "thick" clients. Windows has "dll hell" but Linux suffers from "lib purgatory" among other maladies. And having observed how technology is typically used in schools, I have to say that those who say the way to save money on school technology is to simply remove it have a point in all too many cases.

Choosing Apple for Education - nobrainer

[john_chr]

I'm a parent rep on a school ICT sub-committee that looked at ICT for the extension of our school that will extend into High School (grades 7-10, current school is only Kinder - 6) here in Australia. They were already heavily into Macs but we looked at equivalent Windows laptops and they came with no additional software and a heavy admin cost. For creativity the iLife software could not be beat. The iWork software was also dirt cheap for edu use. Then when it came to also using iPod Touch as handheld media devices for the students, any Windows solution was nowhere near for the price. Sure - you can get really cheap windows laptops but add on software and admin costs and there was no comparison.

Re:Choosing Apple for Education - nobrainer

[geek geezer is me]

Actually working closely with a district with half Macs and half PC's I think the no brainer decision is anything BUT Apple. Windows for the richness of the available apps, or Linux for the low acquisition costs. iWork is a joke for older students, but Open Office/NeoOffice is a good fit. If iLife is the primary reason you are using the computers in school for, then there is a BIG problem. As far as administration, with the latest Leopard Server tools, Mac finally has decent administration, not that it helps me the eMacs still in service. iPod Touch/iPhone is probably the most interesting aspect - I think mobile platforms are getting to be powerful and cheap enough to make 1:1 computing a reality. I still prefer my Android, and hope the apps will catch up to Apple devices.

Re:Every Christian already knows the answer...

[LingNoi]

I know you're trying to make the comparison between religion == linux adoption.

However I'll repeat what a guy from the Ubuntu LUG in Thailand said, "If you really like something, then you want it to succeed".

It's less to do with converting people to be open source fanatics then it is just showing people this cool stuff you like.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone can get Linux for free. Most people have to pay for Windows, but Microsoft is giving it to you for free. Don't you feel special?

hmm...

[toby]

Windows is popular in schools (as is mac) because the experience is more seamless then it is in a flavour of Linux.

...and when somebody presents you with evidence that this is not the case, such as this article, what do you do? Dismiss it because it's not your preferred explanation?

Evidence that Microsoft abuses its monopoly in order to avoid competing on merit has been surfacing for decades and has repeatedly seen them convicted. In schools this is particularly pernicious for obvious reasons.

bitter, much?

[toby]

n/t

iPod Touches for students????

[toby]

I wanna go to your school!

The iPod touch is seriously nice (I bought one for my girlfriend ... who is now my wife ... I rest my case! :)

Re:Dumping.

[guyminuslife]

Not to point out the obvious, but you are hiring college-educated kids to work at a tech firm.

You must be aware that most people who use computers are not "implementing various solutions." Of course computer science majors know something about Unix. One would expect philosophy majors to know something about Kant. Most people don't spend much time evaluating the Categorical Imperative.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[mabhatter654]

because "teachers" really do get it nearly free... or at least not under per-pupil costs. Of course Universities pay big money in the name of "piracy" for site licensing.. but that goes under the IT or legal funds, not "teachers" funds.... see the difference.

Like the Forrester survey below this article, people use Microsoft software out of habit, not even because they like it. For most people, using even MS Word is really hard, and re-learning it is even worse. MS knows Linux or Mac is better but as long as they keep the price of upgrades less than the price to go some place else, and the pain of upgrades less than the pain of learning Linux they will keep their customers from sheer bureaucratic inertia.

windows licenses-linux dev projects.

[plasmacutter]

ooohkay..

let's try this then.

Take windows and commercial education suite licenses allocated for next year.

Contract out devs to write equivalent apps for linux during this year.

Switch to linux as the licenses lapse.

Next year's budget now has 25% less required for information technology (to maintain the code)

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[whoever57]

because "teachers" really do get it nearly free... or at least not under per-pupil costs. Of course Universities pay big money in the name of "piracy" for site licensing.. but that goes under the IT or legal funds, not "teachers" funds.... see the difference.

You assume that I asked why the teacher used MS software -- in fact, I did not.

First some context on the person that I asked: The lecturer in this case had been with the university a long time (in the CS department). It was a university in the UK -- had the lecturer been at a US university, she would have been a professor with full tenure.

Secondly, I asked in the context of the CS department's use of MS software, not her personal use.

I'm reasonably certain that her response was on the lines of "the University gets it free", not "I get it free."

Re:Dumping.

[JohnBailey]

While I admit the GP is a troll you are just as offbase. Your anecdotal evidance does not disprove that Windows is still dominant. Does it suck? Heck yeah, but schools only have so much time and sadly windows skills are crucial many industries. I hope that changes, but until then your 10 person shop does little to change the trend.

So what are Windows skills? As opposed to basic computer use skills.

Linux for the blind

[Britz]

I have not heard of a program for autistic children, but Klaus Knopper, one of the popular Linux engineers over here in Germany (if not the most popular for Knoppix) works on Linux for blind people. His wife is blind. There might be more Linux people out there that are handicapped themsleves or have close relatives that are. That can be a very high incentive to create useful tools.

Publishing with Scibus

[Britz]

I worked with an early version of Scribus a couple years ago and was very impressed by it. Since then Scribus evolved a lot. Maybe you should give the Windows version a try:
http://www.scribus.net/?q=taxonomy/term/36

Or just do apt-get install scribus

Re:Publishing with Scibus

[Tubal-Cain]

I second that recommendation.

Promiscuous Software

[LuYu]

They also used the term "naked PCs" to daemonise whatever is not saddled with Windows.

We should refer to Windows computers as "promiscuous PCs" as they are very loose about security and have a lot of disgusting viruses. Windows is the dirty whore of the software world.

Need new interface to webapps

[beachdog]

The painful part about having Microsoft computers in a special education classroom is the entire Windows interface is wrong for special ed kids.

On a Linux box, a web browser could switch on an age and ability appropriate interface model.

I work in Special Education classrooms with all kinds of disabled kids. The PC interface is awful.

The Linux desktops just shuffle some choices, but Linux could be radically better.

By interface, I mean the mouse, the left button, the right button, the roller, the keystrokes, the cursor, the active area on the screen. The interface is too chopped up, too many choices, and too easy to disrupt. The interface requires too many ideas linked to isolated fine motor actions.
----
The most successful interface for special ed kids is the teletubbies web games on pbs.org (where the youth can play peek-a-boo using a pushbutton wired to the left mouse button). The other success is the Stellaluna kids book on CD. It can be used where the adult holds the mouse and the youth pushes a button wired to the left mouse. It also models the success of musically modulated speech to enhance communication with kids who parse speech slowly.
-------
But for these applications, the adult interface surrounding the application is still the problem.
------------
What I would like to see is research based interface protocols for specific levels of receptive language (like 1 year old), visual processing and motor ability (like can use hand but can't isolate finger).

The interface protocol would be like a style sheet, it masks and configures the user's mouse, display, speakers, and keyboard.

This would be great as a web app. You could search the web for apps that can be presented to your student with ability appropriate interface.

Applications for special ed kids are very few in number, the ones I know are 1990 vintage Windows/MacIntosh programs implemented with a slide show toolkit.

An example is "Teen Tunes". It is still a "CD must be in the drive" program with a '90's copyright date. It sells for over $100. Like other special ed programs, this one is a frozen experiment in interface simplification. The aide still has to hold the mouse and center the cursor while the student pushes a button.

This isn't really news...

[Penguin Follower]

I work for a non-profit organization, and MS practically gives software away to use. CALs are dirt cheap, and we get pretty much any version of any software dirt cheap from MS. We just upgraded to XP from 2000 (and ditched Novell for AD). Compared to migrations of the scale we did (we've got about 3000 users) that I've done with other organizations, the software cost was really, really low. Again, it was from gratuitous discounts from MS for being a non-profit org.

Re:Every Christian already knows the answer...

[KingAlanI]

Some people like this post, some people don't. Looking at the history, this guy's been hit with both Insightful and Overrated repeatedly

Seems with Slashcode that interesting controversial posts don't seem to move up fast enough (There's stuff that's obviously good and obviously bad that does get modded appropriately pretty quickly.)

I can definitely see the connection; it's clear that it's because gillbates is invoking a touchy subject (religion) in the process, this post is under-respected.

How's that for a "wish I had modpoints today" spiel? :D

Video is not simple

[Sits]

Believe it or not it's surprisingly hard to have a player/OS combination that will play ALL the types of video out there. I think the most complete combination is some version of Windows with Quicktime, RealPlayer and VLC installed (and that probably won't play everything) with Flash installed for typical web video.

It's another case of "if someone hasn't done it for you then it's a pain".

OK. We win, then what?

[piotru]

Linux stays competing with whom? IBM? What would convince IBM and others to contribute to free software development now that Windows is gone?
In my opinion, Linux should not play the role of an "handy idiot" in hands of Big $ to kill M$, M$ is Linux's guarantee of being supported by Big $, at least to some degree.

That explains something

[KingAlanI]

Yeah, I've been wondering why my university is filled with Exchange/Outlook mailserver (accessible in FF for Windows or FF for Linux, haha), Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate (or 2008 for Mac) all over the place, computers with Windows and 18 bazillion gigs of ram and multicore processors and...

The client-side stuff like Windows and Office I can kinda see due to familiarity reasons. But Exchange, back end of email system, I had previous never understood why that kind of thing was MS

The IT/compsci/etc. departments may have Linux and Unix boxes somewhere, but I haven't seen 'em. Tricked-out Macs and CS4/whatever - those kinds of computers I *do* see a lot of

Central management a problem

[ikekrull]

Linux is pretty bad when it comes to central management.

Its possible to roll a managed solution for a mixed Windows/Linux network with authentication based on LDAP and file sharing based on NFS and SAMBA, web apps authing back to LDAP, homedirs shared by NFS with a single client image installed from USB.

But its pretty ugly, insecure and requires a hell of a lot of application-specific configuration to get it to work seamlessly.

I know this, because I am responsible for administering a school network using Linux for servers and desktops (I inherited the system after a former disgruntled sysadmin left), and it is a hell of a lot more tricky than it could be.

Everything we have pretty much works, but i'm the only one associated with the organisation who can come remotely close to knowing how stuff works or what to do when stuff breaks. At least my business model is 'recession-proof', but frankly, the people running the school are powerless, and disenfranchised, and i find it pretty difficult to articulate any actual benefits of keeping the system on Linux beyond the expense involved in switching back to Windows - this is not the picture a lot of OSS advocates paint, or the way it should be.

It's been nothing but pain setting the system up - Its a good deal for me as they're kind of stuck paying me to admin the system, but does it really have to be this complex?

I'm a huge linux geek with a lot of real world programming and admin experiences, and the bottom line is if i had to do it again for another school, i'd pass and suggest they use Windows.

Thats why Windows wins in schools.

so there are only 50 schools in the world?

[kae_verens]

"schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars"

"the world could save up to $500 million each year"

One word

[mahadiga]

How Microsoft Beats GNU/Linux In Schools

Bribe.
I have seen M$ bribing gullible government officials in developing nations.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[El Lobo]

I AM a programmer, and guess what...? I am the producer of one of those free as beer projects. Now I could tell you: "if you re not a programmer you cannot understand the free as beer concept" , but no, I'm not THAT arrogant as , for example, you.

My small company has done the very same thing

[CaptainTux]

Our company competes in the electronic medical records market and we've done the same thing as Microsoft in order to get our software and services into new clinics.

Depending on the clinic, it's often more important to add them to our client list than it is to make a huge profit from the initial software sale. There's a lot to consider when you're competitively pricing software and/or services. Outright profit is just one very small item on that list.

It's popular to hate on Microsoft because of their past behavior. But there's nothing 'unethical' or 'monopolistic' about it. It's normal business competition. You can bet Oracle does it, IBM does it, and just about every other software/services vendor does it.

Re:Dumping.

[Alex Belits]

O RLY?

What the fuck is wrong with Microsofties now? Office 2007 toolbar has the very same UI model that Microsoft trolls dissed tirelessly in OLPC Sugar interface -- except, of course, with more tab menu navigation and none of the consistency.

Promiscuous

[troll8901]

I learned the real-world meaning of "promiscuous" in 2008.

Before that, I learned the network meaning in the 1990s.

I didn't get the chance to make lots of jokes!

/Troll8901 (learning how to be a Grammer Nazi by reading Slashdot)

Are teachers too lazy to learn alternate software?

[troll8901]

3) People are lazy. I had instructors DEMANDING that I ... (so they don't have to do any work).

I once taught music to three classes of young students. I created all my own lecture notes. Trust me, it was very tedious work creating quality materials, that were "easy to understand, easy to grasp the concept".

Students requested to know how to play songs like She Bangs and Flying Without Wings. I spent so much time transposing scores for them that I didn't have time to learn new stuff.

In the 10th and last lesson, I showed students the existence of software like Cakewalk and Cooledit. Yes, they ran on Windows, because these were the only software I knew.

Moral of the story:
Instructors are not lazy. They had other things to do, like prepare exam notes and mark assignments. Don't fault them for using only Windows software, because these are nothing more than tools for teaching.

Linux will come with a big bang. Like Google.

[Qbertino]

Looking at Ubuntu 8.10 vs. WinXP and Vista, the following is dawning on me: Sometime in the future, when printing has become a zero fuss issue just like graphics and 3D drivers have now become a zero-fuss issue on Linux, Windows will be steamrolled into insignificance, just like Google did with Altavista. No way MS can compete with that level of quality in the long run if it comes for free.

itbusiness

[ferd_farkle]

Jeez - Microsoft is acting just like a corporation facing competition. Who would've thunk it? I'm just glad Gnu/Linux is actually competitive nowadays.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[El Lobo]

So you react to the Linuzzz word but not to the parent's M$? How convenient.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[El Lobo]

I promise you, I'll stop with Abble and Linuzz when no M$ could be found in any post on this site. Happy now? I guess no ;-P

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[marcosdumay]

Well, my experience is that MS pays to get universities using their software, at least at Brazil.

Together with free Windows there is always some monetary "donation".

normal business competition .. ?

[rs232]

"My small company has done the very same thing .. there's nothing 'unethical' or 'monopolistic' about it. It's normal business competition"

You mean your company went to other peoples customers and lie about their product and sabotage third party apps .. and if you believe that's not 'unethical' you've been whoring too long ...

I expect Office to get involved in understanding these speedups
I am hard core about trying to find ways to make our applications boot faster

Video IS simple

[marcosdumay]

You just need a 32 bits Debian machine, add debian-multimedia to your sources.list, then apt-get install mplayer smplayer w32-codecs.

Unfortunately, some of the w32-codecs aren't available for 64 bits. Smplayer is a good front-end, that you can use instead of the native one. Also, you may not need to add debian-multimedia, I've dowloaded mplayer without it once, but I don't know if it's currently 'non-us', 'main' or simply considered too much pain to be put on main. Although, I can't guarantee the reciprocal if you add debian-multimedia, it will surely work.

Re:Video IS simple

[ion.simon.c]

*plays Devil's Advocate*

Can that Debian box play DRM'd WMV's? All QuickTime files? (Even QuicktimeVR?) How about the audio track of this file: http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/research/daedalus/movies/SIGGRAPH08v3_30.mov ?

*removes DA hat*

In seriousness, mplayer+ffmpeg+a recent mplayer codec pack plays 99% of what I run into. Of the things that won't play, 99% are probably malware-spreading WMV files.

Also, my hat's off to you for telling me about smplayer, it's *EXTREMELY* boss!
My gripes:
* It should do some magic to detect playback of DVD ISO files and apply my favorite deinterlacer.
* It should give me a little more information about the deinterlacing schemes... Are these already ordered in a descending "best" to "worst" order? (Say, for DVD playback?) I wouldn't be surprised if this ordering is a pretty hard thing to do.

central management of a Linux system ..

[rs232]

"Linux is pretty bad when it comes to central management"

Have you tried to SSH into the machines and running CRON scripts to relieve you of the burden?

What services exactly are you providing to the desktop users? What does this school do that requires such complexity?

"I am responsible for administering a school network using Linux for servers and desktops"

How many servers, what distro, who is your support contract with. Have you contacted other education facilities using Linux? Do you also use Linux on the desktops?

"i'm the only one associated with the organisation who can come remotely close to knowing how stuff works or what to do when stuff breaks"

How exactly does the stuff break? Have you considered documenting how the stuff works, if in the event of, God forbid, you geting run over by a bus ?

"At least my business model is 'recession-proof', but frankly, the people running the school are powerless, and disenfranchised"

Good for you, it's not as if Windows ever made work for anyone .. :) But what part of the planet are you on, aren't there not any other trained Linux geeks in your area ?

"i find it pretty difficult to articulate any actual benefits of keeping the system on Linux"

In terms of education, what do the teachers and students require that is not being provided by the current system? Web access, email, course material .. ?

"Its a good deal for me as they're kind of stuck paying me to admin the system, but does it really have to be this complex?"

I hadn't realized Linux was the way to go to bilk up the overtime .. :)

I'm quite frankly puzzled how a Linux sysadmin with real world programming and admin experience can find IT so complex, personally, once I set up some scripts, the system runs itself, and baring hardware failure, it just runs and runs ...

"Thats why Windows wins in schools"

They why does MS have to expend so much energy is keeping it out of schools. If most peoples experiences were like yours they would all be flying back to the safe arms of MS, you being a huge Linux geek and all :)

Re:central management of a Linux system ..

[ikekrull]

Do I know about ssh and and cron? Yes of course i know about ssh and f**king cron.

The system does pretty much just run 98% of the time - but no, there arent many Linux geeks in my area who can jump in a troubleshoot this stuff, and yes, things do occasionally go wrong - whether its postgrey randomly crashing, or a printer not working, or a file permission problem etc. etc.

Getting OpenLDAP, PAM/NSS, SAMBA, gdm, Postfix, Courier, CUPS, pykota, Moodle, egroupware, koha and some other bits and pieces all to auth and store their account data in OpenLDAP is a nightmare, and the management tools for LDAP are terrible.

The big problem is that the school (it is a small school) can't afford a full-time admin, so when the guy who built this system left, he left the place with no documentation, and a system that was designed only to work with an administrator present.

I've been maintaining that system and slowly rebuilding things, but theres just no 'product' here - every app config is a one-off customisation, and theres no simple, standard way to do anything.

I wanted this job to be an 'install and run' but its a 'install, laboriously configure, then babysit' scenario.

And i'm not flying back into the arms of MS, I just don't want to deal with systems like this - I'd rather just decline to even attempt to build another system like this.

If you just can't see that Windows has a plain better solution for centrally managed desktops by unskilled staff with Active Directory and its integration into core platform components like Exchange, and its network filesystem integration, than the current crop of Linuxes and their 'just roll your own LDAP based auth solution for each app you plan to deploy, and spend days googling over the little pitfalls', well, i have to question your objectivity.

MS is expending energy keeping Linux out of schools because one day someone will come up with a working central management platform that suits schools requirements quite nicely. When that day comes, then MS has to worry about it's continued place in schools.

It will probably take a lot of painful and fragmented deployments like the one I work with before there is enough collective will by the education community to fund or otherwise support the development of a nicer platform.

Despite my frustration, I'm out there doing it, trying to help a school that had been left totally screwed by their previous admin.

I'm glad to know you have no trouble running your Linux systems - i guess everything is easy in your world.

Perhaps you should put me out of a job with a secure, rock stable, centrally managed Linux system for schools that requires no administrative effort, theres certainly a market for it, and clearly its no problem for someone like you.

I'm waiting.

Former school tech- I tried to switch

[beerdini]

I used to work in a school about 5 years ago when I started getting involved with Linux. I used the desktop, brought in servers, started changing the network backbone to Linux in my school, but when I talked to the neighboring schools, they wanted nothing to do with it. I was a newbie in the tech departments at the time so when we had the regional tech department meetings, they wouldn't listen to me. I'd demo a feature that my school was using, everyone was buying in to it but as soon as I said it ran off of Linux, they all shut down. The existing Linux "expert" was a single person department that had no time to do any testing that said he installed it once, had a problem and never looked back. Being a school and a Novell shop, I found out that he was using SUSE 8 and 10 just came out at the time. He refused to look at it citing the amount of time and his previous Linux experience.

Another big factor is the teaching mentality. I actively tried to push OpenOffice in our school, which I was denied because...and I quote,"The rest of the world uses Microsoft, so thats what we need to teach." They aren't trying to teach word processing, spreadsheet use, database design and management, etc...they are teaching Word, Excel, Access, and all of the other applications. From my experience, people that learn the application are locked in to the Word and Excel, but teaching word processing and how to use a spreadsheet someone can use Word, OpenOffice, Excel, Notes, and pretty much any other office suite out there.

Bottom line what it comes down to is budget strapped school systems can't afford a sizable tech department that can take the time to research and develop new systems to cut costs and do the job better. It is often a single person that is swamped with requests and can also share duties as a teacher, librarian, or some other role and is only concerned with fixing what is broken, upgrading to the newest version, and keeping the status quo. Since Linux is outside of their knowledge and comfort zone, these "admins" are never going to switch to anything outside of Microsoft.

Red Hat Linux lab licensing ..

[rs232]

"At the university I went to the linux lab with Red Hat cost more to license than an equivalent sized XP installed lab"

What was the name of this university and why didn't they go with CentOS or Fedora

"Granted the linux lab was licensed as workstation installs (more expensive, but desktop didn't allow multiple users remoting in)"

Where does it say that ? My understanding is that you pay for a support contract, but as you are in a 'Linux lab' full of huge Linux geeks, you hardly need it :)

"I vaguely remember there was some weirdness with the RedHat licensing for education .. one would assume the linux licensing would have a slight edge regardless of the install type"

What ?

Re:Red Hat Linux lab licensing ..

[dubbreak]

I asked the same question about CentOS (or any other free distro.. there were some people pushing to host a Ubuntu repository on campus). It probably boiled down to corporate/school policy on licensing.

The licensing was support (iirc), but it was on a per machine basis and it depended on the use of that machine. Seriously. It must be based upon the idea that a server will require more support than a workstation and a workstation more than a desktop (seems backwards to me, but that's how they charged)

Students were not allowed to assist with maintenance. The person in charge of that lab was pretty useless. Most of the linux geeks (myself included) put up with the lab when we had too, but usually would work on our own laptops. You would have to be careful about library versions though as most of your code would be tested either on those workstations or on a solaris server.. easy enough though (well.. except the RH machines were always the furthest behind in libraries and pretty much any software period).

The weird licensing had something along the lines of n-tiers of licensing for commercial (3 or 4, don't remember) and n-1 tiers for schools, so you'd get shoe-horned into something that possibly wouldn't quite fit.

No clue what they are running now. Probably a year old version of RH knowing the history. Personally I think the *nix lab was better off when it was Solaris on x86.. heck the AIX on PowerPC was better maintained and a lot more stable.

(sorry about the no multi-quote I was typing in a hurry and didn't have time to mess with that)

It wasn't any better.

[jotaeleemeese]

But price is the oil of the inertia machine.

Anybody saying how to moderate his own post ....

[jotaeleemeese]

... should be moderated as troll.

Which are these magic applications?

[jotaeleemeese]

What awesome things do they do?

Names please.

I am tired of hearing this but names are never offered.

Linux network backbone ..

[rs232]

"I used to work in a school about 5 years ago when I .. started changing the network backbone to Linux in my school"

Do you mind providing the name of the school? What do you mean, you changed the switches & routers?, if so what did they run on before and why the need to change ?

"I was a newbie in the tech departments at the time"

But they let you upgrade the 'backbone'?

"The existing Linux "expert" .. had a problem and .. refused to look at it citing the amount of time and his previous Linux experience"

What was the nature of his problem, what was he tryign to do, give specifics. Did either of you contact other educational facilities involved in Linux migration .. ?

"Bottom line what it comes down to is budget strapped school systems can't afford a sizable tech department that can take the time to research and develop new systems"

What research do you need to browse the Internet, email and do word processing, spreadsheets etc, all of which are currently available on Windows ...

If my 70 year old mum can use it ....

[jotaeleemeese]

... anybody can.

This lame excuse that users have to fuck around with Linux to make it work is a fantasy.

Last year saw around a dozen machines (maybe more) that come with Linux preinstalled, and frankly Ubuntu can be installed by somebody non technical without any issues (unless you can't tell your time zone, your own language or answer some other mind numbingly challenging questions like those).

Re:Dumping.

[jedidiah]

>> While I admit the GP is a troll you are just as offbase. Your anecdotal evidance does
>> not disprove that Windows is still dominant. Does it suck? Heck yeah, but schools only
>> have so much time and sadly windows skills are crucial many industries. I hope that
>> changes, but until then your 10 person shop does little to change the trend.
>
> So what are Windows skills? As opposed to basic computer use skills.

That's the crux of the matter here.

The relevant computing skills can be taught with Apple II's.

Nevermind the "everyone runs Windows" BS. A kid coming out of
school these days should be able to adequately deal with the
pervasive sorts of consumer network gear like cable modem
routers. (basic network skills and the abstract understanding
to apply that to ANY UI)

What about ethics?

[jotaeleemeese]

Why the children, their parents and the teachers don't know about the ethics of the company whose software they are using?

It is all great and good to use the best tool for the job, but if that tool is made by somebody I find distasteful to make business with I will change to another tool.

Talk about ethics is sorely lacking in all this debate about the benefits of using MS's software.

Which institutions are we talking about?

[jotaeleemeese]

I have never found a public school anywhere in the world that could buy whatever they needed.

They had to mind the pennies and often have to organize events to obtain money from charitable people.

And I am talking about the UK, the 4th biggest economy in the world, not a 3rd world backwater place, I have lived close to 2 primary schools and they often have "fairs" and car boot sales in order to raise money.

What are you smoking?

[jotaeleemeese]

A call to save money is a call to become more efficient, to use your money more wisely.

That has nothing to do with Socialism, as a matter of fact capitalism assumes that you will always look for the better deal, but this self interest is distorted by the monopolistic nature of the computing market.

If anything choosing anything but MS software is a service to the capitlist way of living.

This is a discussion website!

[jotaeleemeese]

We are supposed to worry about issues that matter to us.

Your suggestion would be in place if we were in a website discussing fashion, sports or a complete non related issue.

IT in schools is one of the most important topics we can worry about in this website.

Re:This is a discussion website!

[Brandybuck]

It's not about what interests you. It's about the whining. If you're one of the few sysadmins looking to work in the public school system, then the interest is legitimate. But not the whining. Discuss how Unix (not just Linux) makes a better choice for schools, discuss the hidden cost savings of Open Source software, etc, etc. But don't whine about how life is not fair.

Linux lib purgatory .. ?

[rs232]

"As a school tech director for ten years and now a consultant for a company with a specialty practice in outsourcing K12 IT"

Now that we've established you credentials .. :)

"the issue isn't how much MS costs. It's the continuing cost of support, and beleive it or not a properly configured Windows system is VERY efficient"

From personal experience Windows (heavy use by game players) I find the opposite to be true. Windows requires a total reinstall at about the four month mark. It just sloooows down so much, defrag cleaning out the registry and so on, has no effect. So by the time I get to the last one, the first one requires a reinstall. There was even a company selling a utility to keep your heavy apps on different Windows partitions so as the machine won't slow down over time. The utility provided a hot key to switch between apps ..

With Linux, and baring upgrades, it just runs and runs ...

"Our tech to computer ratio was over 1:700 and we resolved most trouble calls in less than 24 hours"

Well the tech to computer ratio at a f400 company I worked for was 12:400 so all I can say is, you must be drinking different koolaid.

"The range of educational software is just not there for Linux, and it's only in the last couple years that the management utilities have started to mature for it" Generally, learning to use the desktop is the best tutorial a kid can have. What educational software are you referring to. What functionality in Linux 'management utilities' has been immature these last couple of years?

"Ironically the wild environment of Windows produced excellent management tools early on"

I don't understand this bit, define 'wild environment' and what management tools are you referring to, 'Active Directory'? I understand that there was a market in tools to manage the 'management' tools in 'Active Directory' :)

"Windows has "dll hell" but Linux suffers from "lib purgatory" among other maladies"

The whole world is familiar with the former, but personally I've never heard of the latter ...

Re:Linux lib purgatory .. ?

[geek geezer is me]

To many people who have opinions on what technology should be in schools are "experts" because hey, they went to school, they know what works. Right. The most important part of your comment is "Generally, learning to use the desktop is the best tutorial a kid can have." THIS is why technology in education is so f-ed up. You do realize that the major things schools need to teach are reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, problem solving, scientific method, and even things like health, art and music? Technology is an enabling tool that needs to be the means to end of teaching these other subjects, not the thing being taught, or at least the actual teaching of the technology part is way down the list for most students, certainly for the first half of their education. I was a tech director and I still don't understand the educational value of 3rd graders being able to type 30 words a minute and use PowerPoint (or iMovie or whatever). Yet that's what is happening in all too many places. A 12:400 support ratio? Can I come work whever you're at? I can either take it easy and loaf, or perhaps I can sell my company's services to save your company about a half million dollars a year in support costs and I can get a big fat commission check. Unless you are a research lab or similar, if it takes 12 people to maintain 400 systems, be they Windows, Linux or whatever, I suggest you send a few people to the appropriate vendor's classes and investigate a thing called "best practices" for your environment and industry. I spent time about a year ago at a F50 company and even their ratio was something like 1:200+. K12 education can pump up those numbers to the 1:700 range because we end up with labs of identical machines. If you can get by with thin clients (tough to do when so much education related resources/software is multimedia) then you can push it to 1:2000 or more. Google manages to have one technician handle several servers because they are for the most part identical. The power of the cloud. Sun had it right oh so many years ago, the network IS the computer, the problem was they made money on the computer and when the network took over they lost their cash cow. That's how I think of Windows now. Just nodes on the network, and eventually I hope everything becomes web delivered based on standards (I can dream can't I?) and then it won't matter what OS the node runs. As far as lib purgatory, if you've never had to deal with programs that require different versions of the lib, header, and binary files on Linux, then you haven't spent enough time trying to load software that wasn't in the standard repository for your release. Try it sometime. It's fun!

Re:Linux lib purgatory .. ?

[Cederic]

From personal experience Windows (heavy use by game players) I find the opposite to be true. Windows requires a total reinstall at about the four month mark. It just sloooows down so much, defrag cleaning out the registry and so on, has no effect. So by the time I get to the last one, the first one requires a reinstall. There was even a company selling a utility to keep your heavy apps on different Windows partitions so as the machine won't slow down over time. The utility provided a hot key to switch between apps ..

As someone that owns computers for 2-4 years and has been running Windows since 3.11 days I always laugh at people with this problem.

Yes, it can happen. No, it never happens to me, or to other people I know that are competent with computers.

No, it never happens on my work PCs.

I refer you to the 'properly configured' comment you responded to. Your random installation of any old crap (games, etc) is not proper configuration, and does not reflect business (or academic) use of Windows.

Ignoring all of that, even were you correct and all Windows installations needed to be reinstalled every four months.. a properly configured Windows setup can be reinstalled in minutes, unattended, overnight. Every night if you want.

Your personal experience is interesting and not uncommon. It's also not representative of well managed systems.

Which you've clearly not had experience of, as you lack knowledge of the 'excellent' management tools that are available.

Personally I hate Microsoft's tactics to leverage their monopoly position, I prefer OO.o and think Vista sucks donkeys. Windows XP however is a very stable very usable and legitimately competitive operating system, and I'm happy to have bought it. I dual-boot Linux on this system but until the software I want to run works in Linux I'll continue to predominantly boot into the OS that lets my apps work.

Which comes back to the point about educational software...

most educational software ..

[rs232]

Most educational software isn't worth the bits it's written in, best just let them have at the desktop or use the

up to $500 million each year

[PMuse]

Because software is about as expensive as the hardware in these deals, the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft.

Why $500 million/year? Isn't it closer to $12.2 billion--the revenue generated by Microsoft's software licenses?

Re:Dumping.

[JohnBailey]

That's the crux of the matter here.

The relevant computing skills can be taught with Apple II's.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Teach someone Office, and they learn Office. Teach them word processing, and they can learn any word processor.

Re:Anybody saying how to moderate his own post ...

[religious freak]

Thanks for your opinion - way to create extreme irony... hopefully it was intentional.

Re:Dumping.

[Hal_Porter]

They are not taught concepts that is for sure. I once installed Open Office for an accounting friend of mine. He had been using Excel for years. Upon showing him how to add columns in OO he cheered and said "Cool I don't have to use my calculator anymore!"

Not only have you invented an imaginary friend to quote in arguments about rival office software packages on the internet, that friend is also an accountant.

I think you know what you have to do.

Re:Dumping.

[jtev]

Here's the cool thing though. With Linux/Unix you can use diskless, or semidiskless workstations, where there is only one location where software is installed, making it easier to deal with than heterogenous desktops. If everyone has the same /usr then changes are kept in ONE place. If someone needs more software they request it from the admin, who can then install it on the NFS server. The users have no need to have root access. Ever. Users shouldn't be installing software, even in a Windows environment, that's what admins are for. As for comfort zone, it's a recession, adapt, or get laid off.

Why MS wins and will keep winning

[superbam]

Microsoft wins because they make a better product. Saving $500 million a year is meaningless if you can't get what you need to do done.

It's time to face the facts people, Linux on the desktop just isn't as good as Windows. Windows (and OSX) sell because they are better. Really the only thing Linux on the desktop has going for it is that it doesn't cost anything. Unfortunately free just isn't enough to make the pain worth while.

Re:Dumping.

[PitaBred]

Knowing where to find Bonzi Buddy and install it to piss off your IT department ;)

Re:Dumping.

[Tenebrousedge]

Removing viruses and reinstalling the OS after failed updates. I can think of little else that's specific to Windows.

Although at least Microsoft doesn't try to push BIOS updates through Windows Update. Nothing is better for bricking a Mac than a failed EFI update.

Learning Computer Use

[srobert]

My experience:
  People who learn on Linux do well with both Linux and Windows.
  People who learn on Windows don't do well with either of them.

Re:Dumping.

[WiiVault]

Apparently you haven't used the new Office with the ribbon from hell.

Re:Dumping.

[WiiVault]

So all OS's operate the same now? No significant difference at all? Come on man, you know that just isn't true. There are some serious similarities, but you are kidding yourself if you don't think there is a learning curve.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[ozphx]

Are you a good programmer?

If you're not, you're not likely to understand how picking up maintenance of some complex software is a waste of your goddamn time, and its much easier to just do your day job and pay someone familiar with the code to fix it.

Why the hell do I need source for my OS? All the problems have been solved in some 70/80's textbook, and any modern algorithm is described in a research paper + patent doc.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[ion.simon.c]

Why, yes I *am* an arrogant bastard. Thanks for noticing.
Be aware that "Free as in beer (anything)" and "Free as in speech (anything)" are two *very* different -often non-overlapping- concepts. "Free of charge" is an attribute that *anyone* can see the benefit of. "Free to modify" is an attribute that Joe Sixpack will never care about. Joe will almost always grab something that's "Free as in beer", but he doesn't care much for enhancing his television set.

Do you understand what I'm trying to say here?

modding

[CarpetShark]

Someone really needs to consult a bestiary. If that's a troll, I'm an elf.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[ion.simon.c]

I'm a fair-to-middling programmer who's weak on his maths. Thanks for asking.

I do understand just how long it can take to spin up on a complex project. I also know my hourly rate, and can figure out just how much money I could have made had I not chosen to fuck around with KDE 4.x. (Or Gentoo, or whatever else strikes my fancy today.) You seem to be *really* serious about making money. I'm not. I *really* like playing around with software. *shrug*

Most folks -myself included- have no need for the source to their OS. However, freely available source code ensures that your current systems are always maintainable. (Until the underlying hardware changes too much, that is.)

Does your company depend on a closed-source app? If so, what happens when the current maintainer unexpectedly goes out of business, or stops supporting that app and has no upgrade path for your old data or workflow?
I suppose that *you* would seek out another vendor and purchase their offering. Assuming that I was in charge of purchasing, I probably would as well. (I *know* how much it costs to develop software in-house.) But, what if your app was a one-off product, something that's very specialized, maybe something that you contracted out for in the first place? What then?

Re:Dumping.

[JohnBailey]

So all OS's operate the same now? No significant difference at all? Come on man, you know that just isn't true. There are some serious similarities, but you are kidding yourself if you don't think there is a learning curve.

What level of use are you referring to? Because that is a very important aspect, and very easy to twist to support either point of view if not defined.

For this discussion, we are referring to the basic level of knowledge that someone should have to operate a computer properly. So not maintenance, not servicing, not configuration, but using the computer as a means to an end. Anything outside basic everyday use is irrelevant for the purpose of this conversation. Because, if we are being honest, the aim is to create office workers, not sys admins or tech workers at school level. So when you confine computer use to everyday office tasks, my point is valid.

Does no one know recent computer history?

[sowth]

You seem to think Apple, Microsoft and Unix were the only sources of Operating Systems in the 80s and 90s. They weren't. In the 80s, there was the Vic 20/Commodore 64 and the 8bit Ataris (400 to 130XE)...they didn't really have an OS (unless you count Basic), they were really more a hardware platform which programmers often had to hand code.

In the late 80s and early 90s, there was the Amiga, Atari ST, and OS/2. Perhaps others, I can't remember. I think that is also when DR DOS was out too. Late 90s, OS/2 was failing but there was also BeOS.

This may not be all of the consumer OSes, but they are the ones I remember, and they are certainly not limited to just Apple and Microsoft. All of them are completely gone. You have to ask why.

I could go into the reasons why people don't like Microsoft's tactics, but this has been hashed and rehashed on slashdot a thousand times. Wikipedia seems to have a good enough summary of criticisms. No need for me to repeat.

Re:Or ... it could be that MS gives it away!

[ozphx]

Where I contract for at the moment doesn't really *depend* on a closed source app - which is saying a lot considering we develop using the MS .Net toolchain. We could switch to SharpDevelop and move SVN and the devs onto *nix boxes - which wouldn't be overly difficult. We could probably target Mono - theres a few dependancies that could likely be replaced.

I'd imagine Infrastructure would have the worst time, exporting everything out of Exchange / AD. Say a $250k of peoples time for the switch?

Productivity would be down. Taking Resharper away from the junior developers would probably drop their output 30% straight up.

Bigger companies tend to understand risk mitigation - even if only via natural selection. We make software that is used in automation - people rely on this, and downtime is expensive. The code for any deployed binaries is in escrow.

It would be hard for Windows to end up "unmaintained" anyway. Windows as a property is worth probably around a hundred billion dollars. Any company that ends up owning it would have to be publically listed - and would be obligated by its shareholders and the massive investment in aquiring it to keep developing/selling.

But yeah theres a definite "free as in speech" fixation by some people. I'm not sure where it comes from either - I'm personally sick of reading other people's code - it usually drives me insane. ;)