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Does Your College Or University Support Linux?
yuna49 writes 'Lately I've been visiting colleges with my daughter, who is a senior in high school. Every school has proudly announced that they support both Windows and Macs, and most of these schools report having about a 50-50 split between the two. However we've been a Linux household for many years now, and my daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04. Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare. We're obviously not concerned about whether she can write papers using OpenOffice and Linux. Rather we've been wondering about using other computing services on campus like classroom applications, remote printing, VPNs, or Wi-Fi support (nearly all these campuses have ubiquitous Wi-Fi). Given the composition of Slashdot's readership, I thought I'd pose the question here. Does your school support Linux? Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?'
1 semester of "Linux" is a required course at my college
Yes.
I've been out of school for a long time, but my alma mater doesn't support linux. Most of the computer services on campus are supported through old Novell servers.
Concord University, Athens WV proudly supports Linux =)
Most universities/polytechs/etc. are quite Linux-friendly here. They generally have a mix of machines, and avoid doing anything particularly hostile to any one platform.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I've found it fairly impossible to use Windows in concert with my college's computing services....but I don't think that has anything to do with Windows.
I would speculate that most IT staff at many Universities have MicroSoft Certification- and have been told that Linux is insecure. There are exceptions of course, but I've met many people at three different universities where I have worked that fear Linux. -Those who don't understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it..... poorly. (the Spence)
I've had no problem connecting to the wireless here using Ubuntu. Sometimes finding a networked printer is a pain, but once you track down it's IP address you're good to go.
.... do you care?
portfolio
Unless she intends to pick a job in the future based on whether they use Linux, then whether the University supports it is probably a moot issue. It's like having cable TV, or private bathrooms, or a pool table in your particular dorm. Nice to have, but not essential.
Either she'll get a school that supports Linux (Good), or she'll get a school that doesn't, and be well prepared for what the rest of the real world is like, where Linux people are a minority who do what they want because they want to, not because their IT department puts their stamp of approval on it (Also good).
Really, I mean... really? I know this is /. , linux fan capital of the world. But, this is worthy of a story now? What's next "Linus Torvalds has allergies, we must sacrifice goats so that he may be cured!"
Dual-boot or VM, duh. It'd be silly to choose a university solely on their level of Linux support. Besides, it would help to stay up to date with Windows in case she gets stuck with it at a job, and she will.
As far as classroom software on Linux, BlackBoard may work half-ass on Firefox with some workarounds (been awhile), and Pearson Coursecompass won't work at all(probably reads the browserUID string and rejects Linux, I used Firefox), but YMMV and didn't use a VM etc.
-- ethanol-fueled
I imagine any CS dept (and maybe other technical departments) will support Linux.
Outside of that, its probably potluck between Windows and OS X.
Your daughter uses Linux. Whether or not the university will support her OS/lifestyle/moral choice is the least of your problems. You need to figure out which one of the rooms in your house can be made into a makeshift nursery.
Since the college's "mandatory" spyware only runs on Windows and Mac, you're out of luck.
Last I checked, Ohio University did not support Linux. Granted, that was a few years ago.
Now, Microsoft's implementation of VPN tech, PPTP, is supported on Linux via "PPTP client" and Wi-Fi is fairly straight-forward once you get your card setup, which is becoming increasingly easy as more drivers make their way into the kernel. Getting support would be nice.
Mine is pretty Linux friendly but that's because it's an engineering school. I'd imagine that you'd have less luck at a liberal arts school. There's always the odd program that requires Windows, but that's what VirutalBox and Wine are for. I'm taking a compilers class right now where we spent the last 2 weeks covering the basics of Unix.
Actually, if you could put dog shit in the gas tank and power the car with it, it would solve two problems at the same time: It would save oil, and dog shit wouldn't lie on the street any more (it would be far too valuable!).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Greenwich University proudly supports *NIX
Seriously? These are usually freshmen or sophomores in some club (for resume building) that are hyper outgoing and love showing off their brand new school. In addition they're trained to know quite a bit about everything. I bet they couldn't even tell you what some of the graduate students were working on either.
If you want an answer, find the school's IT department or LUG and ask them. I bet that my tour guide wouldn't be able to tell you that our CS department hosts a Linux Mirror for quite a few projects or that Debian was started by a student, doesn't mean that it didn't happen.
Let me ask you a question in return..
Do you think the average college helpdesk is prepared to answer random Linux questions?
Asking the tour guides is just plain silly. You might as well ask them what brand ERP the college uses.
Most colleges would allow a linux installation but are unprepared to provide support to every possible linux variation and configuration.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I remember Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo, coming to Indiana University to talk. I'm surprised that Indiana had such extensive support services when Purdue is known as the engineering power house in the state of Indiana.
I am currently attending UCF and my main laptop on campus is running ubuntu 9.04. I have no problems using any of the online course work/websites and have no issues connecting to the internet.
My university (university of Brussels, www.vub.ac.be ) promotes Linux (and not mac/osx). Every program we write has to work on the CS server, which runs slackware. We (the CS student organisation/club) provide wireless network that works under linux (and not under vista >:) ), do linux InstallFests where people can bring their computer or just come into our room with a laptop and we'll happily help em. We try to promote opensource as well, for example when people had to reinstall and left their microsoft office disk at home (and somehow think we have an illegal version). In the courses no software that doesnt run under linux is being used by the CS department, but for courses like statistics with SPSS we're pretty much pooped. Luckily we had to make a task about Machine Learning instead of messing with SPSS, but that doesn't count for people not studying CS.
At my university, lab computers are iMacs with Vista, OS X, and Edubuntu installed. Almost all students use Windows, but the tech staff can easily handle requests from linux users. Seriously though, if you run a linux distribution on your laptop then you really ought to be capable to set up wifi and printing yourself.
Does. I'm actually the president of an organization that prominently supports and promotes free software (Laboratory for Recreational Computing). http://pohl.ececs.uc.edu/
But then again, I went to a Polytechnic where one of our classes involved remoting into the old Unix Box...
Fun times!
If the college campus has an Information and Computer Technology (or ICT) wing/branch/faculty, talk to those guys. Considering THEY are the ones who set up the servers, tested applications, WiFi, etc etc, they'll be able to give you the whats up on whether your linux box will work. DON'T waste your time with the "Techs" they have set up for the quick laptop repair. If its a Mac, they'll have you uninstall some software. If its a PC, they'll tell you just to have the image ghosted and it'll be fixed in a few hours. And if its Linux, they tell you to go try Windows. *FACEPALM*
Your daughter can consider her university's Mac/Windows-centric policy as simply part of her preparation for the "real world" in which application developers and IT departments favor Mac/Windows and largely ignore Linux.
The reason you get a blank stare is because said student is usually a business or communication major and has no clue what Linux is. Heck as I computer science major, I don't know what you mean by 'support' Linux. Do you mean, do they have it in labs? Do they allow you to connect to the dorms using Linux? Do you mean as in what limited Tech support on campus and does it support Linux? Or do they have Linux in the computer labs?
Assuming you mean computer labs, I can tell you here at UNT they do not have linux, but they do have (on every computer) an ssh client that allows you to connect to your Linux account (CS Major).
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
My college is pretty Linux-friendly. There have been a few issues with Wi-Fi and Linux, but most things are compatible. Also, the Computer Science program is done extensively in Linux, and the CS majors who haven't got Linux by the end of freshman year are clearly in a tiny minority who experience serious difficulty with things like homework. I know the average tour guide might know there are a few pro-Linux people around, but our school's tour guides are given a careful script of things they're allowed to discuss, and I am not sure what they can say about Linux.
UAF sent out a general call for papers and presentations last spring for the Fall 2009 Tech Fair- an opportunity to give workshops and "how-to" instruction on any number of computer applications and facets of IT. I emailed back, offering to do either a general presentation on Linux with a focus on the more popular desktop applications and managers, or alternatively give a workshop in which students bring in an older laptop and I would walk them though the particulars of loading Ubuntu or Kubuntu until everyone was up and running and all the kinks were worked out. UAF never responded, and I did notice that people from Mac will be on hand this year with a number of presentations.
If you have to ask whether Linux is support then you probably shouldn't be using Linux.
Here at the University of Kentucky, Linux support is kind of spotty. Some IT guys support it, others don't. When I was doing biology research at the University back when I was a high school student, the sysadmin for the building with my lab was a diehard Windows/Dell guy, and discouraged use of other stuff, saying he couldn't guarantee data integrity, etc etc. When I moved on to computer science research, the sysadmins in that part of campus tend to be anything-but-Windows types. In the fine arts department, the sysadmins tend to be more partial to Apples.
If you live on campus, though, the campus internet (ResNet) people officially only support PC and Mac, and they only support it if your computer is directly connected to the connection they provide. If you have a router between you and the campus network, you are required to remove it and directly connect to the cable modem or other gateway device that they provide. I think the policy is bollocks, but judging from the stories I've heard of how inept some of the L1 techs are, maybe it is better that way...
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
I think what you will find on many colleges is that they don't officially support it, but will help you as best they can. Pretty much every college IT services department will have linux knoweladge, ranging from the lone 'Linux Guru', to the department where everyone knows some, and active support from many of the staff.
I believe that the biggest hurdle is simply the difficulty in documenting it.
Instructions for XX Distribution of linux using YY windows manager and ZZZ hardware/service/browser is simply not worth the time to document.
Sure something similar can be said for the various flavors of Windows (or even for Macs), but just not to the same degree.
My suggestion? Find someone in the school's IT depeartment help-desk area, buy them some of thier favorite caffinated beverage, and make a friend. It may not get 100% of everything working, but you'll get a lot farther than trying to do it on your own.
seen, kinda. Certain classes require certain programs that only work on Windows, but that's down to a class by class basis. Hell, the lecture I'm sitting in as I type this, Digital Logic, requires Quartus, which ... you have to pay for if you use Linux, as opposed to the free version available for Windows. Some require certain discs that only work under Windows, etc.
However, everything Uni wide works totally fine under Linux.
IU's Computer Science department is held in higher regard than Purdue's by many who attended neither. Engineering != Computer Science != Information Services.
I was a CS major at a public University in Ohio. While the College of Engineering and the CS Department were pretty Unix/Linux friendly, the physics labs which every engineering student is required to take through the college of arts and science at this university, required the use of MS Excel 2003 or 2007, because the physics lab reports had to use a highly customized excel 'template' file which included Excel macros. Now, it may be possible that you could open and save the Excel file using OpenOffice, I was rather worried to try, because of the extensive use of macros in the excel template, I was afraid something would get screwed up, which would cause me to unfairly lose points for the lab(s).
The point of this story is, even if the college/university is generally friendly towards other OSes (Linux, *BSD, whatever), you may run into some classes which require the use of some sort of software which isn't available on your chosen platform. For example, in an Engineering program, there might be some sort of CAD program which is Windows only, or in an architecture or visual arts/graphical design program, they may require some software which is only available on a Mac. It might be worth taking some time to look at the required and elective courses that your student is going to be taking, and finding out the requirements for those particular classes.
A lot of 'services' like wifi, or citrix don't really care what OS you are running, so why do they *need* to support it? If you get stuck with a 'windows only' application they *require* you to use, you can run it under wine, or inside a VM worst case. Problem solved.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm not sure my college "supports" Linux, as I'm not sure exactly what you consider supporting to entail, but my departments (astronomy and physics) only have linux computers in their computer labs (with the addition of one or two windows boxes. All of the personal computers and laptops owned by faculty and staff are Linux or Mac). Of course, the IT guys are incredibly lazy and it's still Fedora Core 1.0, but it works most of the time. If you're talking about software and hardware help, I wouldn't even trust the University with a windows computer-they are notorious for breaking things and voiding warranties, and most of the people working at campus computing services don't know what they're doing or even care.
As a recent grad I can speak to the fact that NCSU supports Linux in a big way by deploying it in computer labs, supporting it for students, having a very active LUG (the mailing list is very friendly, they meet several times a month and host regular install-fests), making Linux desktops available remotely through a Virtual Computing Lab and giving students remote access to a couple of on-campus beowulf clusters. To the best of my knowledge support is strongest in the College of Engineering and in the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. I believe most of the other Colleges (Life Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Textiles, Natural Resources etc) tend to use a mix of Windows and Mac workstations (and I'd heard somewhere that Design uses exclusively Macs).
Any school with a halfway decent CS department or even engineering will support Linux just not necessarily through IT. Most students will need to work to get their machine working with the various idiocies of the universities but your daughter will have an advantage. She is a woman. If she's able to find those poor lonely linux geeks, she can manipulate them into helping her do just about anything. Hell if she tires hard enough, she might even be able to get them to worship her like a goddess, so becarefull there. This is also good preparation for the real world where smart independent women are able to manipulate men in just about anyway they choose.
Just don't expect the university IT departments to be competent, they usually aren't.
Good luck.
This is sort of like asking if the University is friendly to Ham Radio operators. The honest answer is 'no' and that the hobbyists will have to continue to cobble together their own solutions.
I currently attend Chalmers University of Technology. In the Physics house basically all computers run Linux. New students are required to take a class to get familiar with the Linux environment. The computers that run Windows are only used if all other computers are taken.
Doesn't matter; you need to pass high school level English to get in no matter where it is.
I graduated in Dec 2005 from James Madison University in Virginia. The main CS lab actually ran RHEL exclusively, so that might say something right there, but none of the Linux users I knew had any problems. Granted, Linux users began to become rare well before that because OS X became an attractive development environment right around the time the university adopted wifi en masse.
The ultimate question is how much she needs you in order to keep using Linux every day. If she can't handle most of or all of the details on her own because all she knows is KDE, then you might want to consider just erring on the side of caution with a MacBook.
One of the problems that I ran into back in college was that OpenOffice's MS Office compatibility is not perfect, and faculty in non-CS classes had no problem telling you to get stuffed if you ran into any problems because you weren't using MS Office.
The University of New Mexico certainly doesn't. Though you can ssh to the universities linux computers, their wifi is barely usable for linux users and is getting less usable as they implement "network access control" that only supports windows or macs, they have outgoing ports blocked off, you can't have more than 8 characters for your computer account, and you can't even contact the IT department via email. You have to call or go in person.
...I do live in a college town, so I have some contact with campus life. I've been able to get online with the school's WiFi without much trouble, so I imagine students can, too.
I think the important thing is not to try to reinvent the wheel. Probably every college and university in the US (and a great many other nations) has someone who's using Linux. Find those people. Ask them what they do.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
At Brunel the computer centre does not support Linux and will not provide assistance however they do provide settings details for WiFi and mail as well as suggesting the use of Evolution.
Our VPN is Cisco based, so if you want to go through the config file and decode the share secret then I suppose you could connect with any client supporting the protocol though this would technically break the rules/policy.
The university uses BlackBoard as it's e-learning portal, and Firefox is a supported browser. In general they are very Microsoft focused and are heavily dependent on Microsoft formats for word processing and such, though only supporting the 2003 versions.
Honestly their Mac support is little better than their Linux support in that there are step by step instructions for OS X (they won't help you with it) and they can point you to Cisco's own VPN client. They are still recommending Office 2004!
Or are they just simply supporting the Mac version of Office? What happens if you want to use iWork or OpenOffice instead?
NCSU provides help-desk support for Linux clients, and all Freshmen are required to pass (or test-out of) a class that covers basic competency of a Linux/Unix environment. No problems here when using the required online resources or connecting to the wired or wireless networks. Additionally, the university has deployed a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux machines throughout campus (albeit with a dominance of Windows).
My college doesn't even support Firefox, let alone Linux... every PC on the site has IE6 the only satisfactory browsing experience is using Safari on the Macs in the music department, of all places.
In 90% of cases, SMC supports linux. There are a few minor exceptions (ISYS 110 is windows focused and can be tested out of but is required), but in those cases you can simply use a computer on campus to complete the requirements.
Those of us in the IT department tend to use linux for most of our servers and even some of our desktops. I myself use a mac full time. I'm always pushing to remove the dependancies on a single operating system.
Everything will work for a linux computer here as most of the techs run linux too, but if she takes any computer science courses she might need windows. Depending on the class it could be exel, word, or SQL/C# .net/specific compiler the teacher wants. I have managed two years in CS with a linux laptop and had no problems(have to VM windows for an assembler class). Also most schools require spyware on windows machines to check security, firewall, AV, and for "illegal" programs, mac and linux machines are exempt and if a virus goes wild on the network she won't get it.
Orwell was an optimist.
Wine doesn't run all programs perfectly correctly (some programs don't run at all). As for the VM, most VMs don't allow accelerated 3D graphics (I think I rememember recently hearing something about VirtualBox adding 3D support for VMs, but I think they may be the only one). Granted, not all programs require 3D graphics, but what if the program you are required to use is something like SolidWorks, which is a Windows, 3D-accellerated CAD program? If it doesn't work well under Wine, and doesn't work at all in your VM because of the need for 3D graphics, then you pretty much run the native OS for that package.
"Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare." I doubt that it was a "blank" stare. The student tour guide, and everyone else in earshot, was probably wondering if you're a complete jerk, or just utterly clueless. Why would you ask some 18-19 year old kid giving tours stuff like that? Are you trying to prove something, or do you really, honestly believe that some random kid giving tours is going to know what "Linux" is?
I don't respond to AC's.
My high school is surprisingly high-tech. We have numerous courses from Java to Cisco, which are both courses on my list.
Last year in computer science we had a few old laptops and desktops lying around, so we bought the needed parts for them booted them up slapped Ubuntu and wine on them and played LAN Starcraft :)
Many of the students are trying to push for an open source movement. Every computer in the school has a browser choice of IE, Chrome and Firefox and on many of the older machines there's a linux distro running.
-Sophomores kick ass.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
But, for calculus, you may be forced to use Mathcad, which you will need to install in Virtualbox. There also may be some other trivial programs that require Windows. But, you will almost always have lab computers available for these. You may have to use Texmaker for math classes: aptitude install texmaker in Kubuntu. At my school, nobody prints from their laptops, so running linux on your laptop isn't much of an issue as long as you save your office documents in MS Word format.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Yes. In fact, most of my CS classes require linux.
At the Naval Post Grad School, my Fedora laptop can do anything the Windows and Mac computers can do. This includes VPN, remote e-mail services, daily check-in, campus wide secure WiFi using a secure DoD certificates, printing, local/remote Intranet access, etc. Also, the school makes a lot of software (what's available) available to linux users. I've been a linux user for about 9 years now and I have never really had any complaints about not being able to do anything that I absolutely had to do.
I work in the IT dept. for a college.
I have used linux as my primary OS since '93/'94. But even with me as a strong advocate, some products are chosen which only work with windows (or are only supported on windows). For instance, I cannot use the VPN to connect from home.
Unless the school is willing to make a huge commitment to only use commercial/non-commercial products that support Linux (and other OSs other than Windows), I don't think you are going to find a school that is able to state "support" for Linux.
For example, the new line of wirless stuff Cisco sells (from Airspace), only supports M$ IE for logins to the captive portal. Of course, it works on other browsers (works better on other browsers; no ssl version issues with other browsers), but Cisco only supports IE.
Other things, like Luminis (a common student portal built on top of uportal) have had issues with Safari users on Macs.
There are a lot of folks involved in the purchase/selection decisions, and compatibility with non-windows is usually not even on those folks' radar. Hell, most of these folks think Windows is the only OS there is (although a number of them have started hearing about that "Mac thing" lately).
The school I went to didn't have a single M$ box for student use, but that was a long time ago-- Just 100's of Sun and SGI workstations with a few Macs, and an occasional Symbolics thrown into the mix (and one Linux box running 0.9 kernel with ~10K student email accounts!). So, if UCSD hasn't crossed over to the dark side, they were pretty *nix friendly, back in the day.
Here at Colorado School of Mines, most of the computers I've seen run Windows, but there is definitely a thriving Linux culture here. However, many teachers require assignments in .doc format, which is a real letdown.
You are now manually breathing.
I graduated in May, and my school did support Linux until my last year there. By supported I mean "let me get online with." The 'support' ended when they enabled the Mac OSX client for Cisco Clean Access NAC (AKA the biggest evil in the known universe), and in turn disabled the web login form. You could still go give them your MAC address for a device that wasn't running XP, Vistaids, or OSX, but they only allowed this for Xboxes, PS3s, and Wiis. I ended up having to set up a Server 2003 machine to act as a router to get my linux computers online (and remain the ONLY user of Linux that lived on campus).
I go to the University of Waterloo, so you would figure that we are big on it. After all, not only does our Computer Science Club (CSC) host the largest linux download mirror in the country, we are known for computing ("MIT of the North" is one of our less savoury nicknames). Despite this, while we have some computer labs running unix based systems (some distro I don't remember with just a basic WM over it), the big thing is our Mac labs. We have rooms upon rooms of shiny Apple computers. Pretty much the entire CompSci department has converted to Mac as well (some profs have two of those 30" apple monitors in their offices. Two!). I mean, linux exists here, but c'mon. We (comp sci & math students) picked Richard Stallman up from the airport, brought him to our school and he gave us stickers. Like wtf.
If you have some class that requires the use of some particular
application on some platform you down own, then use an emulator.
There are very good FREE ones. You just have to supply your own
operating system.
These are very handy for when there is 1 or 2 applications on
some other platform you might want to run.
Back in the days when this "other platform" would have been
MS-DOS, I had an MS-DOS emulator to deal with the Microsoft
only software that my University pushed on people.
You don't need to suffer Windows 24/7 just for the sake of a single app.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I would say University of Michigan is quite Linux friendly. Although it is bound to vary from department to department, I never had a problem in my coursework (hard science major + liberal arts classes).
Had I been your school's IT policy planner, I would give the same answer I give to employees at the software company where I work: "We support Windows XP, OS X, Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSolaris". The "Linux" title covers so many idiosyncratic distros that we can't reasonably offer to support them all. Many such distros are poorly documented/tested, to make matters worse for a support team.
The wired network throughout the campus has not worked for 2 generations of ubuntu now, but all posts on the bug report are from Aberystwyth University students, so it seems the problem is to do with the setup of the network rather than something common to all networks... I would be interested to know what change broke compatibility though, since old versions of ubuntu and other most other distros work.
Wifi is unusable, the connection being lost sometimes within seconds of connecting, however certain parts of campus have a second wifi network that works if you use the VPN (see next line).
The VPN is awkward to set up in Linux, especially if you do not want to edit gconf.
You won't official get help with linux from the Information Services support desk, but depending on who is working you will sometimes get help.
The Computer Science department is very Linux friendly... infact, anything you do in the first year at least can be done using linux. A lot of the staff use Linux as their main system and so will probably give help within reason.
Related to schools, if your daughter is looking to apply to med school in the US after undergrad make sure you have a Windows or Mac kicking around somewhere because AMCAS locks Linux computers out of their online application.
mmmm...forbidden donut
Labs are either filled with Linux or mac machines, depending on which major they are for, and Linux is practically expected, at least for Computer related majors.
The Evergreen State College has Linux machines in the lab, but not the library. Last year I tried to send a document to the wireless printer and it didn't work. The kid in charge opened up a terminal on my lappy and futzed around for a few minutes, finally apologizing for not having it set up properly on their side, and sending to document to be printed. It worked fine after that.
USM (University of Southern Mississippi) strongly supports linux. The default student userspace is hosted on linux (until recently you had to ssh into a shell account to check your campus email, they now have a web interface as well). The CS departments higher classes generally require the use of linux as a programming environment (more specifically ssh shell accounts into the CS departments server). As for IT support for linux desktops/laptops? I am not sure, but all the CS computer labs dual boot into SUSE and win xp when I was last there.
Whether or not your campus supports Linux is a moot issue. As long as all their equipment is standard, you should be fine. The way to be sure is to just bring your Linux laptop to campus during the tour and try connecting to campus WiFi, etc. Also, look up security policies, class syllabi, etc. to ensure that there aren't anything Windows-specific.
Truth is, most professors don't care how you got something done, as long as you got it done properly and honestly. In many humanities classes, I've typesetted my papers in LaTeX and often became the only person whose papers aren't in MLA. Even then, nobody complained -- it was all about the content. Then, if the professor was really fussy, you can always use a package that formats your paper MLA and makes it basically indistinguishable from a Word document.
In fact, the only department that will probably notice that you weren't using Windows / Mac is probably the CS department. In that case, there will probably be better support for Linux anyways.
Point is, if you want to use Linux, you can. However, it's difficult to provide support to all the configurations, so if you can't set up everything based on OS-neutral instructions, then you should either get a geek friend to help or just use Windows / Mac like everyone else. Windows-specific app? No problem, virtualization is the way to go.
If they support Macs, then they probably do not require the use of IE to access their websites. It seems that practically all services which use IT at universities are served through a web gateway. If they truly support macs, then they're probably not using IE only pages. At that point, you're probably okay if you're daughter is competent running linux. If she needs a Linux help desk, see if there's a good LUG on campus, or make sure you can provide the remote support yourself (or pay for it).
I presume that most real applications which might actually require win/mac would be either runable under Wine, or she might just have to break down and dual boot or run win in a VM. There are fairly few classes which require specialized software - those that do are normally using the most common commercial applications, so she may as well get used to the native OS for those apps, or risk being hopelessly undertrained for a job when she gets out of school.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Now that leads to an interesting question: would it be possible to sue the school for discrimination because they're unfairly penalizing students based on their choice of computer and/or OS? And if so, could you win?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Check out the web. Search the college website for Linux, look in the IT departments for Linux. I found information on connecting to the WPA-secured wireless network in the darkest corner of the IT website for mine. Life isn't as easy as it is for Windows users (you'll have to edit text- based config files instead of having an automatic, friendly GUI), but it's still usable if you try hard enough, and for those tasks that are impossible, just use a computer lab. If she takes computer courses in say Matlab, then she may have problems. You should also find out if intro CS professors are familiar with students that run Linux too if she's going to take those types of classes.
Some universities (like Boston University) even produce their own Linux distro. So just do research on the website instead of asking people who aren't supposed to know
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
The supported VAX though. In fact, that was pretty much all we had.
AND WE LIKED IT.
There might be other issues here. At my university I was required to use certain software packages for various classes which did not have a linux version and would not run under Wine.
I don't care how "similar" or "equivalent" the linux version of the software package is, if the prof. says you must use Mathcad, then you're going to need a Windows machine. (note, this was just an example. Other situations may apply).
Barring stupidity, which is likely to occur at some point, if the universities program says they support Windows and Mac, then it's likely you'll be able to find software for both platforms that satisfies the course requirements. What the coursework will require, this should be your guiding force.
Linux is probably not going to be officially supported by any school's IT department. However, that doesn't mean that they won't allow you to use a Linux computer. Of the 3 school networks I've used as a student (1 as undergrad, 1 for summer research, 1 for grad), all followed this rule (I graduated from undergrad 3 years ago). The least supported will be custom applications for scheduling/payroll/etc... But many of these are being moved to the web in a cross-platform environment (this is the case for my undergrad school). You may also have problems registering your computer. Very often, you can just call up the IT department and provide the MAC address. A bit annoying, but not difficult. Worst case, boot into Windows (or use VMware/VirtualBox) for anything that requires Windows.
You shouldn't need a VPN as a student. Most schools now proxy library connections. It's a bit annoying, but very easy. Wifi can be problematic since Linux sometimes has issues with WPA2 Enterprise connections. But it gets better every time I upgrade my Linux laptop and recently I've had as many problems with Macs as Linux for wireless support. I've had problems with printing because my undergrad institution used a custom Kerberos application to do it, but worst case print it as a PDF and use a flash disk at the library. Any classroom applications needed will usually be installed on lab computers and won't be something you can use on your own computer anyway.
In short, install VirtualBox/VMware in case she needs it, be a bit flexible, and don't worry about it.
But as others have said, this is the least of your worries. She should be picking a school based on everything else, not their support of Linux.
At my Alma mater, I entered my freshman year being asked to take a course on how to use Microsoft Office and windows tools. When I graduated, the entire math/cs department was raving about Linux and even teaching kernel courses on Linux. But in the end, it was a dual (duel?) boot environment. The media department was still into Windows, and whenever you booted up Linux on the, yes, dual boot lab computers they looked at you as if you had two heads. They were fine with you using Linux, but whenever you were doing so they behaved like Dell tech support when you install additional hardware: You can do that, but it voids your chance of an A in this course if it doesn't work for you, and we can't help you until you go back to Windows. To this day I hate one of the professors in the CS department who lives and breathes Powerpoint presentations and continues to be in the department because of their ability to give the school media attention, but teaches their courses in Windows while everyone else is doing the Linux dance.
I'm a computer science major at the University of Arizona, and they recently switched all of the lab computers to Ubuntu. We also recently held a "Linux install fest" to dual boot linux on people's home machines.
I have had this problem too myself, I have been a Linux user for the past few years. In my college, the entire network is run on Windows, using Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP on all the desktops. Apart from one tutor that uses a Macbook, and another that uses Linux on his laptop, all machines are Windows, and there are various problems with the network services requiring a temporary boot into Windows under VirtualBox, mainly to print documents.
Georgia Institute of Technology software recommendations.
When I went to uni (2002), they weren't that fussed, but if you wanted any help with it you'd better be running Windows.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
My bet is for personal systems, they'll allow anything. We do where I work (I work for a university). However support? My bet is no. For one Linux is by far the minority. Not worth it to hire.train people to support something only a fraction of people use. Also Linux isn't standard. What applies to RedHat doesn't apply to Gentoo and so on. No way you can support all the different distros.
As a practical matter, support for end user computers is generally very limited. They'll give you general advice and help, but complex issues you are on your own. The university doesn't have the resources to spend time fixing every issue that students can come up with. They can offer advice like "Here is where you download the campus AV software," or "These are the settings to check your e-mail," but they are not going to walk you through getting X working on a custom kernel with non-standard drivers, or something of the like.
Also, if your kid wants to use Linux they need to learn to support themselves. That is how life is with Linux. Heck you should learn some self support either way, but in particular for Linux. Most IT departments don't have a lot of Linux people, if any, on staff and none of them have any patience for cowboys. If a company does use and support Linux on the desktop it'll be well defined. They will support one version, in one configuration, setup their way. They well not at all be interested in spending time doing things your special way.
That's how we do it here. We do support Linux on campus research/educational machines in the department where I work. However, if you want it centrally supported you run Fedora, we install it with our config, it uses our auth/file servers, we have root, you don't (you can have sudo), and you don't fuck with it. You wanna do your own shit? Best of luck to you, we don't support it. We have a very limited amount of staff and a lot to deal with, we cannot spend time hand holding for special configs.
Ay my university they let us know that is is not officially supported. They have some security app that runs on windows and mac, no linux version. I had to call the IT dept with my MAC address and they registered my system for me. They did let me know I was on my own for support though.
I just graduated from the University at Buffalo where they supported Linux. They had their own distrobution called SENS Linux which was just a spin-off of Red Hat.
I used Ubuntu/Fedora for most of my college career with very little difficulty, including wifi, ssh, email, etc.
The CS labs all ran either Red Hat or Unix, but that's rather irrelevant to the general population.
Yes, Linux is supported here (TUT, a Finnish technical university). In fact, a lot of computer work is done in a Linux-environment through a SSH connection with a terminal, open formats are accepted in homework, and you can often choose between Linux or Windows computer classrooms.
Almost all high performance computing environments, as well as a great deal of scientific computing in general, is handled on Unix platforms, almost all of which are Linux or Mac OS X. If your daughter is interested in a career in science, she is sure to encounter Linux as part of her education in the sciences.
FWIW I'm a Mac user who is reasonably familiar with desktop Linux, and also happen to be employed in the computing group of a university department.
It basically comes down to: What sort of "support" are you looking for? If there are applications needed for courses and those applications are Windows only - are you expecting them to find a work around other than saying "Install VMware" or "use the Windows computing lab"? Are you hoping the official computing folks will be able to help her if her distro won't plug-n-play with a scanner? Either of these is an unrealistic expectation.
If the university isn't a Windows-only shop, then anyone who knows anything about Linux should have no problems with any of the items you mention. Heck, even if it IS a Windows-only campus, any Linux user who isn't just a "I downloaded the Ubuntu install CD" type of user should be able to figure out how to print and connect to wi-fi at a minimum. I have no doubt that, if she were to send a help request to the university's support folks, they'd do their best to help her - but are you honestly expecting them to keep someone on staff who is familiar with every distro? That's a lot of money to pay someone who's not going to have much to do, most of the time. She's better off getting familiar with the local LUG and talking to people who've already dealt with whatever problems she might encounter.
#DeleteChrome
I tried linux in my gas tank and dog shit on my computer, with mixed results
I think it is going to depend on the classes she takes. I ran Linux at UNT and had little to no problems connecting to the internet. I had no problems with papers, vpn, etc. The problems I did run into where the classes that have a little course application that came with the book that needed windows or mac only. My wife ran into an issue like that where her statistics software would only run on Windows or Mac. The school IT department is not going to know about that. Most of the wi-fi is DHCP, or if it is like UNT you have to register your mac address but it was just a browser based application.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Stevens Institute of Technology does NOT support it (as in provide help if your computer is having trouble with their networks) but they do not prohibit it.
I for one have trouble in certain buildings with the Wireless Routers timing out (Wicd tells me Validating Authentication... then Obtaining IP Address... then nothing) I put in a help ticket that the Wireless was timing me out and was sent to an outdated and useless webpage about setting up Linux to work with the Campus Wireless
Tbh, I often feel like strangling the dolts who work there
I currently study at the Turku university of applied sciences and it's the asshole of the world. The education standards are poor all around so it's no surprise the IT solutions come from M$ only. They never even heard of Linux here.
I studied also at the Helsinki university of tech and that's another story altogether with hundreds of Ubuntu machines on campus. Also the quality of teaching and atmosphere were pretty consistently good there.
using linux for me at my school has been a major issue.
our school requires that you register your computer using this terrible program (bradford security agent) that checks to see if anti-virus is installed and if it is up to date. But... it only works with windows and mac (plus as a linux user I dont have anti-virus)
my school also refuses to register your computer by hand.
so the only way i have gotten around this is to install windows in virtualbox, install the schools anti-viris onto this windows and use this 'fake' computer to register mine (i also have to spoof the virtualbox's MAC to match that of my computer or it wont work) once im registered im set for the year, but every year i have to repeat.
so be sure to check with each school
Yes thankfully it is. It's also a very Microsoft'ish (IT Academy) school though.
Half of all computers in engineering are Linux. OSU also hosts the osuosl. You get a free vpn client and other useful free stuff on a cd as a student.
A good chunk of the labs at my school (Carnegie Mellon) are linux. We actually are in the process of finishing a new Gates building, in which all the labs will be linux. There are definitely groups on campus which can help you and a large percent of the student body probably can too. Go find a few computer labs and wander through them. If you know what you are looking for, it shouldn't be hard to find out.
My university here in Oregon doesn't support Linux, so it's more of a, "you're on your own." So for the VPN, I had to hack the config files provided for Windows and Mac users, decrypt the group password, etc. I then wrote up directions, and submitted it to my university's tech department, to include on their wiki! I have yet to get printing support functional---they use some kind of weird print thing I have yet to figure out.
For wifi, I had some problems using NetworkManager, KDE4, and Arch, so I dualbooted into my Windows install to check settings, etc. I then got it to work by using iwconfig, etc.
For documents, teachers want Word documents (to do revisions, etc.), so I use OpenOffice.org and save in DOC. I also requested a copy of Office 2007 Enterprise using my college's licensing program, and installed it in Wine. It has OneNote, which is one of the Office programs I like, and haven't found a good replacement on Linux (I've tried Tomboy and BasKet).
Good luck!
I'm in University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and I feel like Linux is well supported here.
It goes without saying that one doesn't get the same level of support with setting up certain systems as they would with a PC or a Mac, but everything works fine, and all the essential programs (Remote Desktop access through an NX client, ssh, engineering programs (like MATLAB), VPNs) are available from school's servers in Linux versions, and there ARE detailed instructions on our web, describing how to ssh that even a user that doesn't know what bash is can follow successfully. About a third of all computer labs here are running Red Hat and all engineers are required to take introductory CS course which among others teaches the basics of using the terminal (stuff like file management, submitting work, creating/opening archives, etc).
So if you're an engineering student here, you have this nice intro and then because the system is all around you, people get used to working in it.
Oh and all online course materials are almost always available in multiple formats, but with the current support of MS Office files by Open Office, I'm not sure whether the opposite would really be an issue...
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
Well, here at OU we have computers in some labs and here and there actually running linux, but then again, it is required for cs majors to program in VS (or at least have it installed ;) )
My computer must be broken, I do not see any pics of the daughter.
I work as a Network Admin. at UWO, and we do support well known Linux distros, as well as the MacOS and of course Windows. We find the number of students choosing to use Linux is increasing every year, so we try to accommodate it as best as possible. Many of the folks in the NOC use Linux (an have used *nix OS's for years), but the weak link so far is in getting documentation to accurately reflect alternate OS's as much as Windows. Statistically, we're at about 5 to 7% *nix, 20% MacOS, and the rest as Windows (in the student population).
Due to a few bad decisions in college and the economy imploding at work, I am now going to Indian Hills Community College, trying to at least keep it together for a semester or two before I invest in a four-year college again.
I have no idea whether it's required, but there is a Unix/Linux class. But then, there's also a Visual Basic class.
Aside from the fact that a few things (VB?) will require Windows -- though they at least have the decency to have an MSDNAA license, meaning free copies of Windows and nearly everything needed -- there's also the fact that Macs sort of get a passing reference saying "We hope it works, but we can't support you," and Linux gets no mention.
The wireless fails out of the box with Ubuntu, yet works with Windows. Talking to the help desk, they basically said "We don't support that, we don't know much, but our vendor assures us that the problem is not with our equipment, but with Linux."
To get it working again, I had to switch DHCP clients. Neither dhclient nor dhcpcd worked, but udhcpc did. It's worth mentioning, this is not a common problem -- I used NetworkManager's point and click interface pretty much everywhere, and it worked pretty much everywhere, from hotel rooms to hospitals to crappy little Linksys routers -- it even worked if I plugged into ethernet in school -- everywhere except the school wireless.
The conclusion to this story? I mailed the helpdesk again with my findings, and with the little script I wrote to disable NetworkManager, bring up wlan0 manually, and run udhcpc. They seemed very glad to have a solution.
So, I'm not really sure what to make of it. On the one hand, it was obviously a priority, and I was pretty much left to fend for myself. On the other hand, no one actually has a problem with me using Linux, most of the time.
I realize that doesn't answer your questions about printing or VPNs -- I haven't had to do either yet. Printing, I've only done from lab computers (all Windows, naturally), and they don't require a VPN, though my personal VPN works fine from the school wireless. Their website is an abomination, but it mostly works fine in Chrome, with only one place so far which requires Firefox, and I haven't had to use IE yet, except on lab computers.
Just for fun, another anecdote: Iowa State University, when I was there, had a lab full of top-of-the-line Linux workstations. In the classes I was taking, they were used mainly to run rdesktop, which seems profoundly retarded, but I never had a problem due to running Linux or OS X. This was around 2005-2006.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
yellow dog linux?
Here at WVU in the CS department we run everything on linux. Most of the greater campus is penguin friendly. There's two clubs here working to make the campus even more interoperable with linux.
I support 900 machines and about 2 dozen servers on a community campus. If the college has done things right. The only access any student will have from their personal laptops is internet access.
Generally the classroom/lab computers will have no interaction what so ever with a student computer. We go out of our way to prevent the student computers from infecting or even being able to connect to the academic\business networks. The students do have a wireless network which depending on the campus implementation of their wifi shouldn't have problems with linux.
I go to DeVry. If linux support is a concern for you: this isn't the place to go. We spent exactly 1/2 of a single course talking about linux to the extent that we learned the linux version of the windows shell commands.
I have to load a windows VM in order to submit half of my assignments, use any of the labs, go to many of the websites, and in many cases even read my book. I can connect to the wifi and print like normal, but that's about the extent of it.
No more than you could sue for being forced to buy a specific edition of a textbook, or being forced to pay for lab supplies. No one said school is cheap - and given that you can buy an OEM copy of Vista for $100, being forced to buy Windows is hardly that bad. You could maybe complain about an OSX requirement, since that would require buying a whole computer to go with it. But realistically, any school that requires you to use a specific program has student computer labs available with that required software. I know several people who finished off an entire CS degree without even owning their own computer. (I kind of questioned why they would want to do such a thing, but that's not my business.)
I work for the IT Department at a university in Virginia. It was within the last two years that I noticed students trying to use Linux (mostly Ubuntu) outside of the classroom setting. Ever since then, I have worked with our Network Engineers and Support Technicians to make sure that we have support for Linux in-place. We have tested Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE (to cover the main basis of RedHat-based, Debian-based, and SUSE-based distributions that we had been seeing). At this point, less than a year after we really started pushing to have support for them, we can now proudly say that our university supports these distributions (and similar derivatives) on our residential network (where students are required to register their computers), on our wireless network, with our online classroom/course system, and even with our campus-wide printing program (print from your resident hall, class, or wherever and pick it up at a campus printer).
While being able to offer this support is great, I can almost certainly say that none of our tour guides would probably know anything about us having Linux support (they would direct the student to our IT Helpdesk to ask the question there). Hopefully, that will change in years to come, as Linux becomes more prominent across our campus (presently about 73% Windows, 26% Mac, and just shy of 1% are using Linux; ~3200 total residential students). Just thought I'd share some of my experiences here. :-)
"Does your school support Linux?" There are several problems with this question. The tech savvy would reply "Which version of Linux are you talking about?" Unlike Windows or Mac OS X, there is no coherent thing that you can point to and say "This Linux.... support it!" What you've got are competing distributions, and within them competing windows managers like KDE, and GNOME, each of which do things differently. The second level of this question kind of begs the question... what kind of support are you asking for? Are you expecting them to have printer drivers available? Are you expecting them not to require Office? Or are you simply expecting requirements to be watered down enough so that the user is not asked to go beyond what software/hardware support there is for Linux compared to Windows and to a lesser degree, Mac? Expecting the same kind of support is sheer lunacy given the current state of the Linux non-platform in that it is far from being the unified platform the two big contenders are. Linux varies tremendously not only by what flavor of distribution, but even what window manager is being used. And I haven't even touched the driver issues! Expecting campus tech support to deal with that evershifting morass is simply not realistic given the limited resources usually available. If all you need is network and web support, then you should be golden, of course as a Linux user, you're either a competent user who knows how to search for and install drivers and handle networks, or you were handed a Linux system by some tech geek who's of the delusion that Linux is at the same ready of desktop user accessibility that Windows and Mac are. In short given the current state of the Linux desktop, that is a rather unrealistic and even meaningless question to ask at this time.
9 years ago, my University actually forbid it in the dorms as a matter of policy. "Linux is not secure enough." I'm not trolling--that was the explanation I got when I inquired about the policy with the head of campus IT--and in 2001, they went so far as to deploy an active port scanner looking for non-windows machines, some of the early P2P (napster), and a few of the really common RATs. I got into linux about 2000--and learned almost all of my skills as a result of circumventing university IT policy.
It took me about a day and a half to go through my firewall logs, find the host and ban it, borrow a windows laptop to get reactivated (working at a helpdesk helped), and firewall off the entire IT department (dormitories had their own DHCP server on each subnet). A couple of support request/emails to senior sysadmins had a webbug installed in them and got me the IP addresses of many of their home systems--and those networks were promptly banned as well. My best guess is one or two of the (incompetent) admins got curious when they saw traffic coming out of a port that routinely dropped *anything* from their administrative networks.
When code red/welchia/nimda came out, I had one of the few functioning machines in the dormitories to download patches (campus nameservers were windows machines that immediately died)--my own DNS worked just fine...if slowly on a badly congested network.
They also wholly forbid the presence of WAPs as they "interfered with DHCP"--while they had every right to refuse connection to their network, that policy resulted in a very loud complaint to the FCC and a badly needed clarification of their unreasonable policies. Score one for my own private subnet.
Really--don't ask if they support linux--it doesn't matter. If they don't--just run it and work around them--it's how I learned most of my more ...fun sysadmin type skills. If your daughter doesn't need or want to learn...she'd probably be happier with a mac anyway. But speaking for myself--running circles around campus IT became a bit of a fun game.
I learned the hard way in the same school never to submit a word document to a professor--you're just asking for issues. By junior year, every paper I turned in electronically was a signed PDF. If they've got classes that require use of word/excel specifically, she's in the wrong Uni anyway. Don't let an incompetent Uni interfere with anyone's education--you're paying enough that you deserve better.
I go to Purdue University, and the official word is no, they don't support linux. There is, however, a VERY large user community here, probably ~20% of the students use some form of Linux, be it as a hobby or as an everyday OS. That said, you can almost certainly get help from someone you know. The best part, though, is that if you go to the official IT support desk and ask for Linux help, they'll ask you to wait a few minutes while they fetch one of their IT guys from the server room across the hallway. As long as the problem isn't something you can easily get help for on the forums (e.g. setting up the campus wireless), they're happy to help out, even though they aren't supposed to according to "University Policy".
The school in question shall remain nameless because it has a lot of haters (and I understand why it does), but I can assure you that any Linux user who wants full access to all of the university resources that come with a tuition should have few problems. First of all, most Linux users are pretty saavy about getting what they need out of technology anyway. Secondly, most campuses use web services to run the majority of the software that your daughter will actually need to register for classes, interact with her library, and collect necessary course information that is placed in centralized services by professors. This will obviate "college software" as a reason to choose another OS for her work laptop.
Linux labs will be available in almost any decent college. After the tour is over, peek around, and see if you can find the Computer Science and/or Mathematics department, and ask them if you can see their Computer Lab (if they have one). I remember many times the secretary who worked the desk at the department would be more than happy to escort the prospective college candidate downstairs. Most of these labs have dual (or even triple, nowadays) boot machines because hey - CS kids gotta know em all. I would frequently pick Linux unless there was software I would have to use for a specific class that required Windows. Most labs have rules that say "CS students only", but every lab is run by a human - some of whom are students - and they actually don't mind the extra company most of the time if you ask politely. You would be surprised at how empty those labs can get sometimes, especially when the library was packed. The buisness kids would make their way over to us though, and we didn't mind them at all. Just as long as they didn't print out 500+ page presentations. Yikes.
There is a caveat - some course work will require proprietary software. Most colleges avoid it unless absolutely necessary, but it happens. An example for me in my college experience was in Computer Architecture class. While there may be PLD software available for Linux, not every university invests in them for various reasons, and mine choose to go the 'old standard' route, so to speak, because VHDL will drive you up a wall even when it's working. Your daughter may be able to learn on her own on this software, but there is a very good chance the TA or Professor grading the homework will require you to hand over the project in a certain file format. I'm not saying your daughter is going into computer science, but that's the reality of the situation and it will vary greatly depending on what she feels her major may be. I would strongly suggest that you perhaps arrange a situation where she has a dual boot machine.
Don't worry too much about learning Windows. My dad was a computer scientist/mathematician, and he refused (on principle) to let me use a Windows machine, so I ended up using mostly Mac 6-10.5. It's not that bad, once you realize that Microsoft hides all the most important controls in the deepest level of interface because it has an inherent assumption that *all* people are idiots. ;)
The State University of New York system uses web-based applications, so it's really not an issue of what you use, as long as you have the ability to use it.
This post caught my eye because I'm taking Biology online which is my first online class to take ever, and I just moved from a 6 year old iBook as my primary system to a System76 Pangolin Performance laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 which I bought last month. I figured I'd run into some problems with the online classes, but after some tweaks within Firefox everything seems to work great.
What I've found is even though the college or university 'proper' might support Linux as far as VPN access and such goes, the question is do the third party applications required for each course also support Linux? For example the Virtual Biology Labs I have to do with my online Biology class are written using Shockwave, and Adobe Shockwave isn't natively supported by Linux. I had to jump through some hoops to get Shockwave working with Firefox - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Shockwave - which got me going. Also Blackboard, which is my college's Student Information System, had a bug where it didn't support Firefox 3.5, but that's since been ironed out.
Unfortunately Linux is still in the realm where those outside of tech still know nothing about it, so unless a question like this is posed to the IT department most have either never heard of it or have no clue what it is if they have. And even some IT departments will simply say it's not supported or say to dualboot, which is what I've seen some do.
For me it's not about 'do you support Linux', but rather get a list of the applications they do use and find suitable clients for Linux. For example if they offer Cisco VPN access to the network, even if they don't support Linux the client is out there plus a few FOSS compatible clients as well. Likewise with the Student Information System whether it be BlackBoard, Angel, Moodle, or whatever. See how those work in Linux and go from there.
Even if Linux isn't officially supported, which I'd bet only the largest colleges have an IT department geekly staffed enough to say they'll support 100% of the Linux systems students come in with, I'd bet 99% of the applications they use are supported in one way or another. But not unlike most other things in Linux, if your household has been running Linux for years then you're probably used to that.
Take care --
My school wasn't exactly linux friendly. I was going to Penn State Delaware County/Media Campus. However, to log in to the network, all that was needed was your previously set up student Id and password and connect via vpn which was trivial with my linux laptop. Non of the desktops had linux because it would've overridden their security. For my first year IST class, I brought in a linux boot disk for my teacher to show the class a linux desktop. While the desktop was fully connected to the network, there was no need for any credentials when running a boot disk. That is my guess as to why the school didn't have a permanent linux setup. I also had the same problem at my high school. The network administration realized how powerful to intelligent kids with a linux box would be on the network especially considering how easy it was for us to get root even though he changed it ten times. So he wouldn't allow us any network access with our linux box. So at least you can connect to the WAN with linux as long as you know what your doing at PSU.
Here LInux is fully supported and encouraged, and "forced" during classes.
All the university "applications" are Web-based, all the computers are Linux-powered, every student has his own account, which can be accessed from home via NX. I doubt Winblows could hand the load! In the start of the graduations some students are like "meh" about the Linux environment and ask "why not Windows?" but at the half / end of the graduation they are in love with it =)
Universidade de Brasilia - Brazil
My rural Vermont school supports Linux. Tour guides may or may not know about that (I do, because I run Linux) but I would suspect that at most colleges you can use Linux especially for wi-fi, and even remote printing, if you do a couple extra steps. IT should know about whether Linux is a breeze on campus or not. In fact, they probably run Linux.
The question you should really be asking is whether the school has decided to require everyone to use Microsoft everything or if they've chosen to support standards. This boils down to supporting HTML standards so non-IE browsers work, supporting SMTP/IMAP for email instead of Exchange, using PDFs instead of -latest word format-, etc.
In that kind of environment it doesn't really matter what OS you use. If your daughter already knows all the linux stuff anyway, what do you need the IT guy for? You're going to essentially be the support guy for anything hard anyway.
AccountKiller
At the University of Saskatchewan if depends on which part of campus and department you are talking about. For general campus computing Windows is the most prevalent. Having said that:
1. Can you bring a Windows, Mac, or Linux laptop onto campus and expect wired/wireless net access and support... Yes. Although the wired access is more rare but more departments are supporting "laptop stations" in labs sporting wired connections.
2. Is all of the software available for all three platforms and for personal installation... Of course not. This depends on the vendor and also on the licensing. The department of Computer Science, as an example, does have a MSDNAA license to give students access to MS software used. Where possible they use OSS that works on all three platforms. Where not possible due to licensing, etc. students can remotely access the software through a Windows and Linux clusters (if Apple would get around to releasing a decent clustering technology, i.e. terminal services like, there would be one of those also).
3. Can you use most campus services such as printing, VPN, etc. with your laptop (regardless of OS)... This depends on where and which department but generally most are supported as possible.
4. Will potential students on tour get blank stairs about Linux and Mac questions... likely.
I would suggest the following:
1. Contact the campus IT help desk and ask your specific questions. Most of the tour guides are volunteer students and may or may not have the answers you need or that represent all of campus.
2. Contact the department (specifically the IT staff) that your daughter is thinking of joining (Engineering, Ag, Commerce, Math, Comp Sci, Nursing, etc.) for her major. Ask your questions about Linux support. Note that sometimes the college that hosts the department in question may have a different IT support staff (Ex: Department of Computer Science has its own IT staff and so does the College of Arts & Science that the department is part of).
Good luck.
Well if Linux was the be all end all of computing, you wouldn't need to ask would you?
But seriously, with all the flavors of linux compared to vanilla windows and mac, can you blame them for using front ends that only support the two "big" Os's ?
No one will tell you no don't use it, but more than likely if they use custom applications you might be screwed. No IT department on a university scale will "support" linux the way they support a windows environment and now Mac, it's just not feasible.
Now, if we could agree on a standard linux OS to push, it might make things a little easier.
Linux was a required course for my System Security Certification course, but it was no where in depth as the windows equivalent, and was based of basic REdhat linux.
You'll probably find most places will have a linux box or two, maybe DHCP or just a file server, but that's a far cry from the IT guys being trained and versed in Linux.
Maybe there's an article in this, the top 10 or 50 Linux friendly campus's ? Ya yas, anonymous and my comments, as ALWAYS will get deleted, but come on, this one's pretty valid.
As a sysadmin at a secondary school I've supported ms win os', novells' netware, apples osx, and several GNU based systems. I don't try to push anything, for the time being. Currently our school run our systems as we like, but there will be some standars enforced from central IT departments. Those will only support ms os' at server and desktop.
Why would you care how he/she cuts pieces of paper and pictures together? We're talking about schools here.
I just moved up to Rochester to attend Rochester Institute of Technology, and I can tell you that Linux is very welcome, as well as PCs and Macs. Most of the student labs are UNIX systems, and our CS filesystems require knowledge of UNIX to submit work. The professors here haven't just heard about other operating systems... most of them (professors) are intimately familiar with almost all of them (OSs).
I doubt it would be possible. You're not being discriminated against based on an inherent characteristic.
For example, you are essentially asking if you could sue the school for discrimination because they require you to have a textbook for a class. You would not win. You would not even lose: You would be laughed out of the building.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
My school supported linux, sometimes bending over backwards to do so.
Then again, it was a programming school. And a major Open Source supporter (several classes late in the programming streams have courses dedicated to adding to open source software, such as Firefox or OpenOffice.
If I ever had any issues, I brought it up at the weekly Linux club meeting. That was usually more than enough to take care of any compatibility issues that I had.
The only real problems I had were when courses required Windows only software that didn't really play nice in Wine.
If my kid wants to play on a pool table, he can find a bar to go play.
Not until the second semester of the junior year, when the student is expected to have turned 21.
You certainly couldn't win if they provide free access to computer labs where students can use that required software. In other words, it's not OS-based discrimination if they give you free access to the required software some other way. Remember, plenty of courses require computers, but you're not required to own one; they're not contradictory.
Now, I rarely used the school's CS lab to do my CS assignments, but there were people who didn't do any CS programming at all outside of the lab. (IANAL, YMMV, to each his own, etc.)
All your remote windows services are belong to us.
That's what they seid.
I did my degree in computer science at Heriot Watt in Scotland, where it was frowned upon to use anything but linux. Basically every lecturer encouraged and used some variant of it, usually pushing fluxbox and terminal use. Great uni.
I've used my Linux desktops/laptops here for years without a hitch. It's actually a bit easier. If you login to the dorm network on windows, you're forced to install all windows updates (not a bad thing, of course), then install their anti-virus and let it scan (ALL) drives. Most people with multiple hard drives just disconnect them on the first boot (or perform a clean install on a spare disk), get their OS checked, then swap config around. On Macs, I believe they have a similar procedure (or so I'm told). For me on Linux, I boot up, try to go to google, get redirected. Login with university credentials, and am told to reboot. In reality, a simple 'sudo /etc/init.d/networking/restart' and I'm good to go (1 minute from start to finish, compared to several hours).
For VPN/etc., we're surprisingly agnostic. Only 'real' issue I've had is the online course websites used by a lot of faculty (elearning, similar to moodle/desire2learn/etc.) It's a javascript-whore, and would timeout often under native firefox. Worked fine under Wine, so I used that and reported it to the help desk. They responded that it wasn't a 'supported browser', so I continued using wine when at home. It was eventually cleared up after a month or so, 'unofficially'.
Any large research-based university, or one with a decent CS department will support Linux. Smaller liberal arts colleges, not so likely.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Those questions, however, would have not been worthy of asking on Slashdot.
After all, you're daughter won't be living in "your" household anymore. She'll be living in her university's environment. It doesn't matter if you're a FOSS zealot. You won't be there to support her machine at 2am when she has a paper due the next morning. Nor will the normal student IT help drone who probably doesn't understand anything about Linux. Make it as simple for the people at the university to support her as possible. And, unfortunately, that usually means either a Windows box or a Mac box.
In the end, if you are choosing a college based on what OS'es they support, your priorities are way out of line (unless you happen to be RMS and you're looking outside of MIT for a school for your illegitimate love child). Your daughter, if she's smart enough for college, should be able to adapt to a new OS easily enough.
My recommendation? Get her a Mac. Almost all colleges support them and her time spent with the IT dweebs will be minimal (which will greatly enhance her college experience).
That is all.
in my day, you didn't ask if it supported linux. you booted up and you 'made it work' (TM).
Webcollage. Awesome screen saver.
http://www.it.unr.edu/network/InstructionsUNRWPALinux.asp
The college I went to had most of the labs in the Engineering department running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and most of the professors where accommodating for assignments, and there was very little problems running in a Linux only environment. Outside of the Engineering department, the math department and our library were using some Solaris systems, but the rest of the college was a Windows world. But I had no problem using any of the network, school mail etc with Linux.
They told my friend he wasn't smart enough to use *nix. That may or may not be true.
If your daughter is going to be an engineer, she should be fine here. There are a lot of computers on the engineering side of campus that run Red Hat on them, so they're used to dealing with Linux once in a while.
If she's going into another major, she SHOULD be fine, but she'll need to go to the libraries once in a while to watch a video or use some software that isn't supported by Linux.
To be perfectly honest though, your best bet is to get a dual booted computer with Windows (and partition it to have a shared data partition!).
I attend Indiana University. While the majority of our Student Technology Centers (STCs) are either Windows Vista Enterprise or Mac OS X, the Computer Science department has rooms full of Red Had Enterprise Linux workstations.
There are some programs that require a specific OS (like Journalism, Fine Arts, etc) most don't care what OS you use. Moreover, Debian and friends, SUSE, and RHEL are supported just as much as Windows and OS X (there's a 24X7 support line). All of the campus resources support Linux and most are online and don't use ActiveX, so they're browser neutral as well. Our course management and application portal are both open source.
With that said, there is much more commercial software available free to Windows or Mac users (Microsoft Office, all Adobe products, etc) through our IUWare Program. To answer your question though, Linux is supported just as well as the other major OSes.
On the user side, the UF Help Desk also provides basic computer support for Linux (and other platforms, of course) wherever possible. They offer a walk in laptop service and will try their best to help you with whatever problems you may be having, including the installation process if need be. We used to have a fair number of issues with various portions of our WebCT/Blackboard based online system which made using it on linux kind of a pain (spotty java version support in the system). However, I've been led to believe that we're migrating to the open source Sakai Project... so those days may be behind us.
Silly me. I read the question, and assumed there would be responses about specific institutions.
My daughter is a senior at the University of Redlands. As far as I know, they have no official support for Linux, but she has been aggressively pro-Linux since high school (I made sure I sent her off to school able to dual-boot to WinXP, but on the rare occasions when that might be useful, I have to remind her she can). There have been a couple of situations in which she has needed help from the campus IT folks, and there has always been someone Linux-savvy available.
And her on-campus networking experience has been uneventful. While we helping her move back in last weekend, one Windows user complained to me about the spyware the campus network requires him to run - my daughter does not seem to need that, her system "just works". Her main complaint about the campus network is that they throttle the dorm traffic pretty severely...
I'd look to see if you can find the webpage of the LUG that's probably on campus and e-mail them. Haven't been at school for a while, but in my experience the LUG always knew the details of what could be done and what couldn't.
I have the same issue at my place of employment. I run PCLinuxOS on my home desktop & netbook and have to access Windows apps on my office desktop and access a web app that runs ActiveX. I installed Virtualbox & XP. Problem solved.
Speaking as an EE Undergrad at McGill(in Montreal), I don't think it will affect her at all. I've been using linux exclusively for nearly a decade and in my experience, everything that has worked for other students' (windows & mac) computers has worked for mine. This includes everything you mentioned except classroom applications. For the most part, any program I've needed for class has run perfectly fine using WINE(well, technically crossover linux that I get when there was a free give-away) except for a program that I needed to program a Lego NXT robot (BricxCC), but even in that case there was a linux alternative that I could have used had I been so motivated.
Not college, but my son just started at a private boarding school for high school. As part of registration we met with the IT staff to get logins and have his laptop checked out prior to use. When I told them that he is running Linux they were delighted and approved it without even looking at it. I asked if they needed to see it and they said that they only needed to see laptops running Windows as they were concerned with students' systems infecting their network. Technically, they don't support Linux, but they were more than happy to accept it.
At my University, the respective computer labs of each department is handled internally. When I take one of my rare strolls over to the humanities buildings, their workstations are almost completely Windows XP based machines. In my native CS department however, we have over 200 workstations that are running CentOS Linux distro. We do have a windows server that has remote login enabled. We also have an NX server running a linux remote login. We've got full ssh, ftp capabilities. A friend of mine works in psych department, and she has zero access to any linux or remote login capabilities. So, I would say the more technical your daughters particular field is, the more likely her specific college/major provides the resources she would enjoy.
It's arguably the best UNIX workstation available and she'll look hip to boot. Seriously, Macs and college are like bread and butter these days. They just go together. Linux is cool, but it's too cheap and free to complement five figure tuition costs. :-) Sending her to school with some dusty old pc running linux is just going to cause her more headaches than she needs while trying to learn. A new Mac provides a solid UNIX environment along with a world-class window manager and it'll work with everything your daughter encounters in school. Why handicap her just to make a "I use free stuff" statement, or because it is what she's used to at home? College is about learning new things. Learn OSX!
Speaking as a senior-year student, and ex-engineering student, pursuing a Computer Science Information Systems major at one of the nation's leading Liberal Arts universities, I think it is rather interesting to note that while UNC Asheville is not very recognized for producing many computer science degrees, our CS labs, servers, and faculty run Linux Red Hat Enterprise exclusively. Additionally, the multimedia department uses Macs exclusively, and there is some overlap with the rest of the student population which also tends more towards Microsoft and Macs.
No, not remotely - except you get a free copy of Oxygen - they also only support macs as a curiosity and always are 3-5 years out of date. Even in Computer Science linux is considered a curiosity. Getting my first laptop for college that wasn't second hand, and running on a cheap linux box (followed by a mac 2 years later), it was a tiny bit of a shock/annoyance
My school doesn't "support" LINUX but that's the beauty of Linux when faced with a barrier go around it.
Been running Backtrack ( http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html ) since year 1 (going on 4th now)
Found that I actually have more "options" with my BT than my Windows partition.
If they don't know of/support Linux make them wish they did ;)
History: I was using Linux in college back in '92. Then Linux was still sometimes called a "training O/S" or a free broken UNIX variant. But I used it and wrote my computer programs on it. When forced to use some commercial/expensive Mac software... I would just go into the common computer lounge... but this was not common.
But really, if your not smart enough to figure out how to configure Linux for yourself... you shouldnt be running it. Support desks rarely provide anything beyond what future shop staff would suggest already... so why worry about whether the college does or does not support your operating system.
For the most part... she will not need to have Windows.
For network connections and remote shell access and web pages... linux will do everything Mac or Win will do. usually better.
Sincerely,
jeffa.
My school doesn't officially support linux, but everything works fine with it as long as you're willing to figure it out. (Which, if you're using linux, you should be used to ;)) ;)
My office computer and my personal notebook both run Ubuntu and work fine on campus despite the fact it's "unsupported" by the IT staff. Ironic, as I work as part of the IT staff
dont try to bring a Linux pc into Radford University or Virginia Tech, they force you to install Symantec AV Corporate before they let you hook it to the campus network, wired or wireless. of course you could sneak it in i'm sure.
Summary of your argument: "Linux users are niggers".
We not only support it (somewhat), but we offer our on spin-off on Ubuntu distro!
http://linux.oit.umass.edu/
When I was majoring in CS a 4-5 years back, the mandatory spyware (Cisco Clean Access Agent - the reason I despise anything with the Cisco name on it) was only required if you ran Windows. If you ran Mac or Linux, you were not required to because you were not susceptible to the malware / viruses they so feared.
Besides, the viruses cam from Johnny Football player who thinks Windows is the only OS in existence downloading porn from bad sites that caused the problems, so targeting Windows only was pretty obvious.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
i use mac, windows, Gos and ubuntu and have found that my campus tech services department is categorically a bunch of Microsoft fan boys. despite what the individual techs prefer. Although they do try to provide a VPN software for all 3 major groups of os.
NC State has very good Linux support. There are remote Linux and Solaris servers that can be logged into via SSH, Linux labs, a set of packages to make Linux computers work more seamlessly with the campus Linux machines (RealmKit). NC State University is also the current home of RedHat. There are two active and helpful LUGs on campus (one's a student-organized group; the other is more open to the public, and hosted at RedHatï).
In fact, our public clusters run a customized version of Ubuntu called Debathena: http://debathena.mit.edu/
I'm a System Admin. at a smallish University, we're just shy of 20,000 students. Do we support Linux? The answer is complicated, no, at least not officially. A student may get varied responses when walking up to the service desk for help with Linux. The service desk personnel know that the Linux System Administrators are often willing to lend a hand with 802.1x wireless connectivity, and Cisco Network Access Controls on Linux machines. Those are two of the biggest issues for incoming students, regardless of operating platform, whether it be Mac, Linux, Windows. We took the time to publish instructions for Linux clients, with the disclaimer that "*Linux is not a full support OS through the University's Computing Services department".
The truth is, the System Administrators are more than willing to help students with basic problems, within reason. A few of us are Linux users. Nobody on staff is going to track down firmware for student's wireless cards, or compile wireless support into a kernel for a student. Just as nobody on staff is going to re-install a hosed Windows client, without charging an hourly rate for the work. We're not going to troubleshoot microphones and webcams for students, when we have other responsibilities like keeping Oracle databases, mail, web, and DNS servers running smoothly. I personally worked on half a dozen Linux laptops during freshmen move-in weekend. Every single one of them had Ubuntu, and while the laptop manufacturers varied for each system, I didn't have any problems getting Linux users onto the wireless network. I couldn't get any Linux users registered with Cisco NAC during move-in weekend. So I talked to one of our networking guys, and we got Cisco NAC problems resolved first thing, the next morning, first official day in the Fall semester.
I recommend getting a laptop with a newer Intel wireless card, works out of the box in Ubuntu. The wireless firmware for the Intel wireless cards, are in the default package set of Ibex and Jaunty versions of Ubuntu. I, also recommend either finding a school that has a Linux User's Group, or your daughter can start her own Linux User's Group. It is a resume builder. It is a good way to meet and support other Linux enthusiasts. It is a good way to advocate, and encourage vendor neutral I.T. policies. Most importantly, that is what Open Source and Linux are all about. It is all about sharing with each other, and supporting each other in the Open Source community.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I work in my college tech department and both the only non-CS student and the most hardcore about running Linux. No one officially supports it but if there is trouble with Linux AND we're not busy AND we have someone willing to field the call we try and send someone out to take a look or at least google the error and see if they can find anything. Most colleges won't support Linux, but most people who use Linux will support Linux. A lot of larger colleges have linux usr groups and other forums you can go to for help - it's not too hard to attach computers (especially 'buntu variants) into wireless networks and samba servers a lot of universities use for storage. As long as you can do your own troubleshooting I wouldn't worry about running Linux at college.
you make it work yourself.. goddamnit what is happening to america? FIX IT YOUR GODDAMN SELF DONT RELY ON THE SYSTEM
My graphic design program hardly supports even Windows. I've had two teachers (the only two I've asked so far) outright tell me "If you use a non-Mac operating system, we won't be able to help you if something goes wrong."
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Computer Science Department. Based on personal experience, I'd say take a look at the school's CS dept. If they teach mainly off Open Source tools and platforms, you're set. There was strong group of Gentoo users at the school I went to and there was almost always someone around in the CS lounge that was eager to help. A lot of these folks also worked at the school's help desk and while Linux wasn't officially supported, the school did (maybe still does) have a custom Fedora build and assuming you got the right (read: knowledgeable) person, they'd likely help. Based on that experience, I'd guess that if the school sees Computer Science as a business degree or solely teaches Microsoft tools and processes, you'll have significantly less luck.
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
At the Vienna University of Technology you can't do some courses if you don't possess basic GNU/Linux knowledge (basic meaning ssh/scp/cp/mv and other fairly trivial stuff). This however does only concern the computer science departments. I can't really talk about other departments, but i would guess that those are fairly windozy.
As a CS student my school supports both Linux and Windows. It can be a little dis-orienting at times as some instructors will insist on Linux for course work while others insist our solutions run on Windows.
We have labs that are either Linux (Fedora Core) or Windows XP with the Windows machines being the older, less capable ones.
Personally I prefer the Linux machines but I don't mind Windows. I wish they would have at least one Mac lab just to round out the experience.
Other departments are generally Windows or Mac.
I would say the original posters daughter ought to get familiar with all three if she can. She could always get XP from the colleges Microsoft academic alliance and run it in a VM (Sun's virtual box for example). I find Windows works better in a VM hosted on Linux than the other way around, but this could be due to my older laptop.
Concordia University in Montreal dual-booted XP and Fedora on all lab machines, and supported Linux, going so far as to give instructions for setting up wireless networking under Gnome.
A good portion of CS courses also took place in Linux; most software development courses that I took worked under Linux, as did the OS course.
My school - where I work full-time in IT Support - does not "support" Linux on the "desktop" (laptop/desktop). Our datacenter is CHOCK FULL of Linux servers & boxes. If you know WHO to call, directly (not via help desk) then they would likely try to walk you through it ...
One thing you should consider is that OpenOffice, while supporting Word documents, doesn't support annotations to Word documents. My wife ran into this at her school. The prof wants her to turn in her assignments in MS-Word format, and then add annotations to parts of the document. When she gets the assignment back, she can't read the annotations. She's perfectly happy using Linux whenever she can, but in this case, Windows was required. (Yeah, I know about Crossover Office, but the license fee isn't worth it when you can simply install XP for a few dollars more.)
The CS department of Cal Poly Pomona uses Fedora, at least in the one lab I've been in.
Find a university that mirrors a Linux repository. They are very commonly hosted there. If it hosts it there, then there will be some kind of official Linux support on campus.
Appalachian supports Linux. Now, that being said, if you asked any tour guide or just about anyone on the public facing side, they will have no idea what you're talking about, and it's not mentioned on any website of course. However, most everyone in IT has a Linux box somewhere (in my branch of IT which is mostly concerned with web development, we all run Linux on our desktops and just use VMs for testing in IE), and some of the people at the student computer support desk can even help out. We also have a fairly active LUG that just went through a rough patch and seems to be gaining some momentum again. Actually, when I came here as a student several years ago, the main selling point for me was ALUG... Before I even applied I was on their mailing list making sure there would be no problem with me living in the dorms and doing class-related stuff.
As much as this is a plug for ASU, I suspect that many universities are like this - they're not going to mention it in public materials and the everyday joe in Admissions is not going to have a clue what you're talking about; you just have to find the right people to ask.
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
We got almost all XP machines and a "Mac lab" of about 15 Powermacs... I've been trying to get a "Linux Lab" started for years, but it's very hard to push.
It was actually my pressure to have Ubuntu partially adopted that got me the job here in Information Services, I'm somewhat friendly with the director and he's always excited to get a fancy new copy of Ubuntu to try.
I've gotten Ubuntu via ShipIt in fancy mailers for years and handed them out, got a lot of students to try it and got about 3 to completely switch to it just because it's not windows.
Maybe I just haven't put enough effort into it, maybe it's just not the right time. Despite the Microsoft contract Linux isn't morbidly opposed here, but neither is it greeted with open arms. More like a "Oh, how cute, we'll have to check that out sometime."
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I'm currently attending a University out in the Po-Dunk west... and our support is limited to roughly 98% PC, and 2% Mac. The biggest issue I've experience thus far has been finagling a wireless connection to the Universities WPA enterprise connection, but I have seen plenty of documentation on how one achieves such a task, I just couldn't quite get it going before semester started...
I am a poet whom is very fond of bananas... >.> I'll fix this up all special later...
most universities have very decent linux-support.
I'm actually visiting my 3rd university now (not as a student any more) and all of them focused on standard technology. For logging into the network, I can use a web-interface or vpnc, all had activeX-less webmail and imap/smtp for mails, document-exchange is done purely in pdf and weblearning is done via moodle. The last university I worked in had a rule that you have to have a special antivir-software and a special firewall installed, unless you use linux. In the department I work in now, you won't find a single proprietary system, everything is linux based. In the certain field I work in (bioinformatics) everything is very linux-centric and I know most informatics-departments at my current university are, too.
I am very very happy, that I made a switch to linux 8 years ago and learned to work and develop exclusively on that platform, since otherwise it would have been a lot harder to find a job.
Oh, and I looked for some non-bio IT jobs, too, and about 80% of those jobs were platform-independent(esp. java).
http://osuosl.org/ I realize that page alone doesn't speak toward the everyman experiences of linux users on campus, but I can say, they [comp support services on campus] do a very good job.
Instead of asking the tour guides about areas that are 99.9% of the time going to be outside their areas of knowledge, stop in the IT Department after the tour and ask there. Generally, the IT staff of universities are very well versed in using *nix boxes, and would be able to provide you with a much more useful answer.
However, to more directly answer your question. Based on my experience at my school (Northwestern University), I have found Linux compatibility to be very situational. At the most basic level, I have found that I sometimes have problems connecting to my school's wireless network on Ununtu 9.04 due to some incompatibility with 802.1X authentication my school uses. At a software level, Linux compatibility tends to vary from department to department. For example, an engineer needs MatLab, which is available on OSX, Windows, and Linux; but an journalist needs InDesign, which is only available for OSX and Windows. So, unless your daughter has a clear idea of what she wants to do and knows the software she will need is available for Linux, there is no guarantee that any school will be "Linux Compatible".
I work for an anonymous state college in the northeast.
Does your school support Linux?
No, but we don't specifically block it either. In other words, you're on your own. If you can figure out how to get your distro to connect to our wireless network (WPA2/AES) then you can use the network. If you can't you might get lucky and find a student at the Help Desk who knows Ubuntu and can help you out, but if there's no one around you're out of luck.
Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?
For the most part, no. Connecting to the network is simple enough. Linux has a remote desktop application that's compatible with Citrix. If there's a particular web-based application that requires IE then you'll have to run it through WINE or use one of the Windows desktops found in one of the many computer labs across campus. Or install/tweak a native browser so that it represents itself as IE and see if the application is really dependent on IE or not (usually not).
Now for my own question/answer: Why don't you actively support Linux?
It's used by a very small minority of our users and those users tend to be technically savvy -- at least enough to configure their wireless connection and get IE running under WINE. Thus the number of support requests for Linux is virtually zero. Why invest in training techs in Linux if they'll rarely (if ever) put it to use? We can better spend that money on network infrastructure and computing resources.
I don't understand the question. I mean how can a university support an OS? By giving workshops for it or encourage you to use it? Imo the better question would have been: "Is your university linux friendly?".
The answer for my university is: no it isn't. It starts pretty simple by requiring Times New Roman as font for homeworks which is a proprietary, not open, font by the Monotype Corporation and goes on the using CiscoVPN for the university-network instead of OpenVPN. Everyone who needs to use vpnc or the cisco-linux-vpn-client knows what this means...it simply pretty bad. A request by me asking for a simple proxy-server with authentication or ssh-forwarding was denied with the sentence that they couldn't controll these. Whatever this means...
If it is about the infrastructure: most of the single departments use linux boxes in cip-pools or as servers. The university themself uses a pretty old special purpose prorpietary server + os for its homepage..
Next question please..
Similar answer. Case Western Reserve University's software center (free downloads for everything available) offers Linux support for everything from antivirus to VPN programs.
Remote printing is unsupported for Linux and pretty much broken for Windows. But the Wi-Fi works fine as does dorm wired. One of the labs that's open to all students is a Linux lab, as well as many of the engineering labs.
UPenn is also very linux friendly, and you should be able to get support if you know who to ask (they also have several SUSE computer labs in engineering).
Widener university is downright hostile to Linux. I never managed to connect my computer to their netweork. They are so restrictive, that you can't even get a windows PC onto their network without an "approved" antivirus program, as judged by their spyware-esque .exe that must be run before connecting (the only options are symantec and mcaffee).
those are the schools i have experience with. I think based on the posts here, someone could compile a nice webpage with "linux-friendliness" ratings for a bunch of schools.
You would think that being a locally supported College would drive our school towards a cheaper alternative like Linux. However, supporting linux is more expensive then supporting Windows or MAC. Our servers run Linux but when it comes to supporting Linux on the desktop, the qualification needed to support all the flavors that come out, or even supporting the latest version of Ubuntu is just impossible with the pay rate expected. Larger University's have the budget but again, it cost more in man hours to support Linux then it does Windows or MAC.
As a previous poster pointed out, Linux can do the open office documents etc for course work, however in the "Real World" people are using Windows and MAC for their daily job functions.
Linux is not officially supported at Princeton, but we do have a pretty good Linux user's group. This seems to be the case at most research universities: official support is rare, but there are enough Linux users among academic scientists and engineers to form a linux-oriented community. At smaller liberal arts universities, I'm not sure this remains the case.
Princeton linux resources:
user's group website http://plug.princeton.edu/linux/
community-provided documentation http://webscript.princeton.edu/~pug/faqwiki/index.php?title=Special:Allpages
no, they don't. Even those that support Macs often have certain Window's only programs that have no Mac equivalent. In general, however, I've found a Mac with OO is more than usable so Linux ought to be as well; with the caveat that you may occasionally need o use a lab or rely on a friend for a few things. Look at it this way - you can send her off with a Linux machine and always add Windows; or partition and dual boot so she has it when he needs it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I go to school in Denmark and when I asked if there is Linux support the answer was "Yes, of course. A lot of people use Linux", same thing with my online banking.
They are also VERY friendly to help me with any of their services and Linux, probably because they run Linux servers and almost all the IT staff uses Linux.
Supporting Linux is a big undertaking for a University...
If a kid shows up with a Windows-based PC, filled with viruses and spyware - there are loads of qualified college kids working at the help desk who can get it all up and running. If a kid shows up with a Mac, likewise, there are people who can help them out/set it up/do whatever.
But when a kid shows up with Linux....good luck.
Please, don't take this the wrong way, I'm not flaming or attacking Linux. Linux is great. When it works. But there are a lot of situations when it doesn't and the techniques you'd have to know to try and fix it or work around it ends up being more complex and certainly, has fewer qualified people who can do them, to get it up and running.
I spent several days, and several pages, on the Ubuntu forums trying to get Ubuntu 9.04 to install on my relatively new desktop PC. After all the headaches I went through, it still wouldn't install and the people on the forums simply stopped replying to my thread. If the types of people who hang out on the official Ubuntu forums can't get the installer to come up, I doubt there are many Universities that really have the depth in their helpdesk to support Linux.
When I attended, my University didn't 'ban' Linux, but it didn't support it either. There was a Linux users group they would refer you to. Since then, they've required some 3rd party software to access the network and there is no Linux based equivalent of it. I'm sure a handful of Linux users have worked around it, but people talked about it like it would be the end of Linux on the campus. I'm no longer a student, so I'm not sure how it turned out.
In Illinois State's case, depending on who is working at the helpdesk they will be able to get you on the wireless network, etc.
The issues to keep in mind are:
1. You have to have a distribution that has functioning wireless EAP support (kubuntu, unless fixed recently, is somewhat broken but I think ubuntu is fine)
2. Be prepared to convert the VPN configuration from cisco's client that they give to you on the website to your linux client (they will not give out the password in plaintext). They claim juniper's webvpn software works on linux but I am doubtful unless you are running the thing as root.
3. You are possibly still going to be stuck with Microsoft Office depending on the exact requirements of the course (not that big of a deal, enterprise only costs $80 at the university).
They aren't hostile to linux support, but they don't actively support it. They use Blackboard which seemed to work in firefox on linux but I never had to try getting the 'lockdown' browser working.
...Teaches it. Supports it. You can connect to the campus network from your Linux (or Win or Mac) machine.
I finished University at the University of Southampton in England 3 years ago. There were two IT departments, one for the whole University, which used only Windows, and then a separate one for all of the CS/Electronics students. I was a CS student and as most of my lecturers preferred either Mac/Linux, basically UNIX-based systems. Because of this we had a 50/50 split of Windows and Linux machines in our computing lab (running Red Hat Linux). We then had various Linux-based servers that we could screw with in pretty much any way we wanted, and use to host various bits (like mysql databases) that we could use with our own personal webspace. If it wasn't for the fact that some programs we needed to use for our courses ran on Windows only, I think the whole computing lab would have been using Linux :)
Consequently, the very first lectures we had were a primer on basic Linux usage. I needed it too as I'd never used Linux in my life at that point :D
Few schools are likely to formally support linux at this time. Too many distros, too few knowledgeable support professionals, and extra cost for what will be a small percentage of the student body at most universities. Most won't prohibit it but you'll be on your own getting it to work - though there is a very good chance the techies that actually run the place will be nice and help if you can reach them. The general feeling seems to be that if you are interested in linux you probably know what you are doing anyway and don't need much handholding.
My alma matter only formally supported Windows but they made all the resources available for those who wanted to run Macs and linux. When I wanted to do something offbeat they were usually pretty cool about it since professors and grad students were often working with unusual operating systems and hardware. I seldom had to ask for more than some server addresses and configuration settings which the admins knew from memory when they weren't documented. Pretty much as long as you don't cause the administrators any problems, odds are they'll be indifferent at worst and helpful at best.
To some extent. The wireless networks work and you can authenticate yourself as a student (required before getting access.) The networks even recognize you as using Linux and say so on the network authentication page. I haven't tried much with remote printing, etc... but I think it could probably work. The only Linux labs on campus that I know of are all in the CS building, but there are several of them with Fedora on the machines.
Sometimes, the easiest of means can defeat an entire army of complex configurations. I was at a conference at a university in a classroom a year or so ago and when we took a break for lunch we all got out our laptops only to see that the wireless required a student ID/Password and so did the wired connection. A friend of mine ran out to his car and got a cheap Linksys wireless router, plugged it in and there was internet for all, no configuration, nothing, just plug it in and we all had wireless.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
To go a step further, I was enrolled in a business degree where we had to lease laptops from the school. $800/semester to LEASE a thinkpad. Why? Because it was a common platform for computing, it 'prepared' us for the real world business policy of standardized computers, and (unofficially) they were sick of people complaining that their choice of computer wasn't supported.
... schools have been ripping people off for years with textbooks and tuition (do I seriously *need* another course on computing? It's a marketing diploma, ffs).
Also, I'm sure they got to skim off the top. But
I go to a small (~2700 undergrads) private university in a proportionately small town. I can't speak for schools that size in general, but here at least, Linux is at warmly accepted. The IT department largely see "FLOSS-running-on-every-computer" to be an ideal that will remain out of reach for a few years, but they approve of those who do use it. While none of the computers in the computer labs run Linux, there's no trouble in connecting to the campus network on a Linux box; in fact, where Windows PCs and Macs need to have Cisco Clean Access Agent (*shudder*) installed in order to connect, Linux computers can just connect directly--the idea being that if you run Linux, you probably have a good idea of what you're doing. Also, there's a lab specifically for CS majors in which we have several Linux boxes and a couple Solaris workstations. I'm pleasantly surprised that a school this size has any support at all for Linux, but it does. Obviously, YSMV.
Our internet is provided via a Juniper Networks Gateway.
The Juniper device offers to install the required binary when attempting to access the internet, although it is for a RPM based distro.
just some basic sym-linking required to make it think its in a RPM based distro: /bin/true to /bin/rpm
- link
- link the Debian/Ubuntu named ssl libraries to the equivalent named RPM ssl libraries, plenty of examples on the net.
The actual juniper tunneling app is written in Java, just relies on RPM filesystem layout for location of SSL libraries.
Im currently writing this on my Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook from within a lecture.
As a computer science student, I was allowed to use an OS I wanted. Most of my work was done on MidnightBSD or OS X. If I could use MidnightBSD on wifi and with other university services, Linux is easy. I didn't need technical support, so I don't know the policy on that.
I also minored in writing; I was able to use MidnightBSD for some of my work in combination with Koffice. On a side note, the english and
umass lowel does.
The University of Notre Dame does provide at least minimal support for Linux, giving instructions for setting up both NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant for wireless. VPN access is provided via MS VPN and Cisco VPN. I have vpnc working perflectly for the Cisco VPN. As for classroom requirements, I'm not sure what software is used across campus as I'm an employee rather than a student, but I do know that there are a number of professors and/or departments that use Linux in some way, shape, or form.
My daughters have been to Messiah College, PA and George Mason, VA, and NoVa Community College. All three schools have no problem with non-Windows as far as infrastructure (network access), administrative web pages, etc. The big problem has been that teachers will require students to purchase some specific Windows application for statistics or whatever (and not a really pervasive one like Matlab, either - 3 different statistics programs "that real professionals use" so far that I've never heard of). The corresponding courses are short on actually understanding the math, and long on memorizing the menu layout du jour of the app. I wonder if the teachers get kickbacks. The one bright spot was an Arabic course where the teacher used a Java Applet - which works beautifully for all concerned.
???
When I was at YorkU all computer science course work I received was assumed that you would complete it on Linux/Unix. You were free to use Windows/Mac but they made it clear that they would be compiling/testing/grading all code/scripts on Solaris and it was your job to ensure it worked there.
the main compilers we used were GCC and Java which are available on all platforms.
I did all my work under Fedora and OS X and never had a problem.
Actually the office support you dismiss is what I found to be biggest sticking point. I found no shortage of assignments like "create a powerpoint slideshow about x" and for the most part submitting assignments in word format was common. Printed papers were not.
I studied computer science at Corunna University (Galicia, Spain) some ten years ago.
Unix systems were used for almost all subjects, although there were many PCs with DOS and Windows (which were also used to log into Unix servers).
I was an MS-DOS power user at that time and I had never seen Unix before, so it was quite shocking for me. You can imagine how it was the first time I logged into a Sun server and tried to open a text editor. I was told that the standard editors were VI and Emacs. Go figure.
Of course all students had a PC with DOS or Windows at home. Almost no one used Linux, the local LUG hadn't even been born yet and Debian didn't have apt-get (it was 1996).
However we had to use Unix in many of the subjects. We learnt programming in Pascal, and we were all using Turbo Pascal, but the exercises had to compile in the Sun Pascal compiler installed in a Solaris server.
As time passed we got used to Unix more and more. I think that by the second year Microsoft systems were not used in almost any subject except for a very few cases.
Some people still used DOS/Windows ports of some Unix compilers (GCC, Caml) but others dared to install their first Linux distributions.
I think it was around 1999 or 2000 when the first Linux server was put into production (it was Debian), and people started to use it a lot because they could use the same tools they had at home (besides that, the rest of the Unix servers were using very old versions of some programs).
By that time the PCs at the University were basically being used as X servers to open the apps we ran from the Unix servers.
I think that most students had dual boot in their PC and knew that Linux was the OS they had to use for work (although they kept Windows for gaming and the rest of their stuff).
I finished my degree shortly thereafter. A few years later almost all machines running DOS or Windows NT had been replaced by Ubuntu PCs.
And this is how it is now, as far as I know. People still do almost everything related to their studies using Linux. The main difference is that everything is much easier now.
So the help desk may not be able to help her out. Truthfully, I have not even heard of a campus that used VPN and remote printing. In fact, they probably won't even need a login to access the campus network (ask about that - most just let you plug in to the ethernet or give you a WEP key, and setup DHCP on the thing). I mean, I went to a small Christian University, and they could care less what OS you used, and it was the same with the two other universities in town. Shoot, we had LUG meetings that we held at a different college campus every month. Never had any issues. In fact, I would be shocked if not somewhere in any university she chooses that they do not have at least a couple of Linux machines - CS majors tend to love them.
As for your classroom portals, worse case scenario, set her up a Windows session in a virtual machine. She probably won't need it, but in case she does, she will have it.
Main thing is, just make sure if the univeristy requires a login to use the network in the dorms. If not, assume she can use her Linux laptop there. Shoot, may even want to take it with you and see if you can plug into the ethernet in the dorm and see if you can get on.
You'll find that Linux support, or not, varies widely between different departments on campus. At the school where I went (long, long ago), the computer science department hires most of their part-time computer support staff from the campus Linux user group. As you might imagine, their Linux support is pretty good. The law school, on the other hand, requires all students to have an approved laptop, which must run Windows, and may not dual-boot any other OS. This is both because of their required (and provided) software package, and because a certain utility they use while taking tests requires direct access to the master boot record and is incompatible with dual-boot configurations.
It's unlikely that any university will have good campus-wide Linux support, but you may get good support in specific departments. If not, you can likely get good support from the campus LUG, unless you're in a situation like the law school where Windows is explicitly required.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Here at UMCP we seem to use Solaris for most programming applications. Well, scratch that. C programming applications. Eclipse is used for Java, so every computer has Windows XP installed. I guess support for Solaris is easier than linux. But at the Robotics Club everyone uses Ubuntu. I'm actually the only one running Slackware. Yep, I doubt our university is going to change soon.
Education is something that you get for your life, not something that you get for your job. If you are getting an education for your job, then blind obedience is the most pragmatic way to approach a class so long as you make the grade and it enables you to perform a particular task. Sometimes going to school can be a requirement of parole. Often times just being in a school and being in the environment is better than sitting around at home playing video games. I even have friends that go to school because their parents require it if they are going to continue to pay their rent.
On the other hand, if you are getting an education for your life, not only can it help you in a career, but it helps you in every part of life you want to apply your education. That is a bit more of a challenge because there is more to consider. When you are looking for an education for your life, a school that matches your principles and values become important. Class size, diversity of staff, which federal programs they accept money from, non-discrimination policy, How good the Chinese food is, and the range of technology they embrace. Schools are ranked all the time by other peoples standards, and they are generally good guidelines. However, imho, one should check the data that is used to determine their ranking, but why not take it a step further and feel whether or not this is the type of environment you want to immerse yourself in that you hope will guide you for the rest of your life.
From what I have seen, a person that takes responsibility for their own education for themselves and on their own terms will be more successful in life and in their career, and likely to get better grades on top of that, than anyone that has gone to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT cause their parents told them they had to.
And if you are a wack-nut Linux fanboy RMS worshiping FOSS junkie, or just someone that has grown up Linux and take pleasure in being a part of the community on some small level, I believe one is going to be much happier and successful in an environment as important as college where your culture is going to be embraced.
This is really about any belief or ideal. If you can' stand up for what you believe in, just little selfish things that YOU want (keeping in mind this is you going to college, not anyone else when it comes down to your choices), how are you ever supposed to stand up for what you know once you are there, let alone later in life?
Of course if all this just sounds silly, then it probably doesn't matter which school you end up going to. (obligatory straw-man)
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Reading other poster's comments I have actually been surprised. I attend OSU's IT campus and not only do they go out of there way to make sure all formats are supported, They actually assume working knowledge of all 3 OS. In database classes we run Microsoft SQL so you are expected to use Windows or are provided with virtual machine licenses. In web scripting we are advised to use Ubuntu or a Linux distro, but provided with support and tutorials for Windows as well. I guess it all comes down to what the focus of the campus and college is. If you want ubiquitous Linux support you should probably lean toward a more technically inclined environment.
As a senior at BYU (#9 - Go Cougs) I can attest that Linux support here is fantastic. You can freely access school networks (when authenticating it explicitly shows you as Linux, including when I sign in on my Android-based G1), use ALL online tools (all registration is online), and each and every school computer's plethora of installed software always includes OpenOffice.
Do they have lab machines at universities anymore? Are all students required to buy computers? I hope laptops aren't required at least, which double the cost at least. What do students on scholarships who still can't afford computers do, drop out?
I'm a CS&E major at Ohio State. Starting way back with introduction to C++, you're immersed into the unix environment (Solaris 8). Yeah, it's old and such, but it's good enough for what we need. The choices of desktops are CDE or openwin, but if there was a decent GUI on there, I think most students would try avoiding the command line whenever possible.
My only gripes with them is the only show you how to use Emacs and never suggest there are alternatives to it such as vim (though they only installed vi, so they must be emacs fans :p. Another gripe is they teach you C-Shell and awk/sed if you take a course strictly on Unix. How often is Cshell really used these days over say bash? Same with awk/sed. They have seperate courses on perl, but perl has much more use than awk/sed do.
I'm also not sure how much they upgraded the system, because I'll see warnings and errors for things in java that are part of the latest revisions to the libraries, but javac doesn't like it on Solaris even if eclipse says it's okay. That wouldnt be such a problem if the guidelines said you had to make sure it compiles in Solaris not to receive a zero. So in other words, they're telling you to use outdated implementations of code.
The University of Wisconsin - Superior uses Windows-based computers on campus (sans a few that are Windows/Mac dual-boot in the Fine Arts center [that are usually always booted into Windows, anyway]). The school uses Cisco Network Access Client (later referred to as C-NAC) for Windows/Mac computers for network registration/sign-in. Funny thing, Windows 7 isn't supported by C-NAC, and neither is OSX 10.6. For Linux users, web-based school credential login is required for network access and is as easy as clicking "Login" (I have firefox and chrome save my passwords) and the occasional "I accept" to the Acceptable Network Usage Policy that is (sporadically) visible.
The C-NAC client verifies that the machine has the latest updates and has the antivirus software installed and up-to-date. As far as I'm concerned, it has proven exponentially easier for me to be a Linux user on the network - no C-NAC. Also, the process for installing C-NAC had our RESNET department 30-to-50 laptops deep in troubleshooting various issues with installation, updates, upgrades, antivirus, etc.
I don't want to be an elitist, but it sure was nice sittin' pretty with my one-click-network-access.
Maybe it helps that we're a state school of 40,000 (and that's only counting undergrads) but Penn State University has full official support for Linux through both the residential computing services (where you go to get general tech support and get your network setup in your dorm) and through ITS (the guys that actually maintain everything). And if all that fails, there's always the campus LUG.
So yes, my school supports Linux. They support it very well. Though to be fair the residential computing services is kinda hit or miss, as that's mostly students so while they usually higher Comp Sci majors and generally people who know what they're doing, they still don't all use Linux, so it kinda depends on who you get. But ITS will always try to help if you send them an email, and as I said the LUG has solutions on their site for all the common problems.
In the Maths department I am working in, all the computers in the labs run Ubuntu. I was told that there are a couple of Windows machines in a hidden room, but I have never seen them. So, the right question for us would be "Is Windows supported in your department?"
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
think about using Linux??? You might want to go to a psychologist and see if they can figure out why you're sitting around rubbing two sticks together when the rest of us are lighting fires with a zippo.
In fact, to get on the wireless network, you must run a Windows application for authentication. I think the campus LUG figured out how to bypass it, but I haven't tried it myself.
Speaking of which, you should talk to the LUG's of the campuses that you visit.
Like Mac OS X, Linux anti-virus is primarily there to intercept crap on their way to a Windows machine.
- oZ
// i am here.
I am a university student in Australia studying software engineering. Everything in regards to email etc. is compatible so whenever I bring my laptop I am fine.
However there are no general use labs with Linux on them, it is entirely up to you to bring something running Linux if thats what you want, while there are courses entailing linux tweaking and hacking on the kernel, these are at best using an outdated server that you can ssh into.
Moral of the story is, only university matters --- and even then if you find one that runs Linux, it will never be exclusively as universities and high schools all have to cater for the less technically minded attendees. Being able to run Linux is fine, but being shunned for using Linux means a change of institution.
If the school requires you to use proprietary Windows software and drivers (why using the standard protocols is out I'll never guess) and Wine doesn't work, you can set up a stripped-down Windows in a VM (MicroXP or TinyXP or an nLited-XP might work very well for this, but they have compatibility issues with some software so you might end up having a full-blown XP machine in a VM... test test and test to find an optimal setup) and then simply set up the VM to bridge your virtual machine network with the proprietary driver's network (or using Internet Connection Sharing is another option), then your VM will act as a router and your network should see all traffic coming from the authed VM and be happy.
Of course this isn't going to work with ALL crazy proprietary network stuff, it all depends on how they filter traffic/block leechers/whatever crazy reason they have.
I should probably add that I don't use Linux myself on a regular basis and had to do no crazy stuff at my college. However I've used Windows VMs to do stuff like try out iTunes without it leaving a trail on my host OS, and I am happy with it as a solution for trying out untrusted software or software that I don't want to have the run of my real PC.
Reminds me of the old-en days, years and years ago when our campus supported MS-DOS/Win 3.1, Mac OS 6/7 but
no support for my Amiga 500. I had no trouble writing papers or even using the nascent internet (telnet/ftp/gopher), but
certain homebrewed applications were a problem.
Unless she intends to pick a job in the future based on whether they use Linux, then whether the University supports it is probably a moot issue.
Truth. Don't get hung up on anything to do with the computer that a particular college degree program wants its students to get.
I made a mistake that way when I went to college in '91: VA Tech insisted that CS students get a commodore Amiga. That made zero sense to me (the world had already made up its mind about IBM PC compatibles) so I went elsewhere. Later on I found out that the CS department made that odd choice because that's the machine that they found a cheap way to put unix on. The students had their own unix box instead of relying on a terminal to one of the campus's central unix machines like at the place I ended up. 'Doh!
On the flip side, if I'd been puttering with unix on an amiga, I might not have gotten any exposures to Sun equipment and would likely have looked down my nose at Linux 0.9 in the summer of '92. Neither would have shown up on my resume when I applied for summer internships in '93. The researcher looking for an intern with Sun experience because his IT department was hassling him about supporting only Windows and Macs might have skipped my resume and that might have cost me the lucky break that launched my career.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
the very nature of linux, an open community and an open OS negates you ever needing an institution that supports it... university and city LUGS, installathons, IRC, and forums are all examples. the community will usually provide. if not, well, there are other universities out there.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Very Linux-friendly. Red Hat EL is available for download and installation for any student or employee, all network services are authenticated using Kerberos and LDAP. There are several computer labs of each persuasion (Win, Mac, Linux) on campus.
you seem to be confusing interesting questions with stupid questions.
they are not the same thing.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The LAS department does not support linux, but it does not go out of its way not to support them, either. We have a "if you use linux, you're on your own" policy.
Many of the dorm net techs will be available and will be willing to help you. You said "Daughter," right? Since she is a girl, she can simply walk to the ACM office and someone will solve whatever problem she's having for free. No problem.
I asked the IT folks at UC Merced Parents' Orientation Day this summer if my daughter would be able to use Linux on campus when she starts there this fall. Their reply was that she would need a PC that supports DHCP to get on their network, and that everything else should work. They said there was an active LUG on campus and that the students in it were helpful, but the school does not provide Linux support for students or faculty.
In general, this may be a good thing. I would not want the people who designed the UC Merced morass of Web sites to be maintaining my PC, anyway.
I'm also a senior in high school and just sent an email to the people who run dorm networking there. They told me that they don't support Linux but that there shouldn't be a problem connecting to the network. I grow weary of these types of responses. :(
My university (Belgium) did have a focus on Linux and Windows during my computer science education. Linux was treated as a beginner course (what's list, grep, cron,...) and Windows as an advanced course (what's ldap etc). But some of us end up as system or network admins. So learning to set up a DNS server was done in both Linux & Windows. Programming classes were also divided. For example: C in Linux, C# in Windows, java was free choice: use whichever you prefer. And some people ended up doing their C# tasks in mono anyway. There wasn't much of a Microsoft lock in. Thesises were advised to be written in Latex. While at my sisters college thesises have to be written in Word. Oh, Mac wasn't even mentioned.
The Department of Computational Biology at Pitt (and CMU, for that matter) supports Linux quite well, with many faculty, students, and postdocs using it. Opensuse seems to be preferred, though others like Ubuntu are common. When Windows is required, we run it under VMware, which works very well. An increasing number of folks are starting to use Macintoshes as well. Linux also seems to be more popular in some of the other computational sciences (CS, engineering, etc), though for most of the rest of the campus, such as undergraduates and even the experimental sciences (like cell biology or surgery), the most popular choices appear to be Windows or Mac. The general rule of thumb to follow is, if your research or schoolwork is computationally intensive or requires a good amount of programming, use Linux. Otherwise, if you're mostly reading and writing papers, checking email, doing presentations, just stick with Windows/Mac. For presentations, especially, I'd recommend sticking with Windows/Mac -- I've noticed many connectivity and resolution issues with both Opensuse and Ubuntu when connecting to various LCD projectors. And you're average tech support guy that specializes in connecting PCs to projectors still doesn't know the first thing about getting Linux to work with a projector,...
ohio state university and columbus state community college offer no linux support or computers running linux. I was surprised to hear the 50 50 split with mac...it used to be more like 70 - 30 split favoring windows at ohio state and columbus state comm college. Now that MSFT has a sales office right here in Columbus the split now favors windows 95-5. Also the student email accounts are now managed by microsoft (started spring 2009), so students can log into hotmail.com and enter lastname@buckeyemail.osu.edu, which works better on windows based systems. Also many professors are saving documents in docx (new office format) instead of regular .doc files. And lastly, MSFT has suckered OSU into buying their table pcs to install in classrooms and libraries....
At Fresno City College and at the University I've been unable to get a Linux laptop onto the wireless because of their setup. I went in to the IT people once to try and get it going, and they said "Oh there's the problem, you're using firefox. I'll just open Internet Explorer and get that set up for you.. where's Internet Explorer?" *facepalm* Naturally I let them try and search for it for a couple of minutes, because I tend to be kind of a jackass. Either way, meh Fresno. I'm not too sure about the UCs and other State universities, but I know we're not able to log our machines onto the wireless here. Kind of sucks for us computer science majors since a lot of stuff can be done on our machines rather than the schools, but there's only like 10 of us in total, anyway.
Notre Dame's oit provides a fair amount of linux support, and generally provides applications and installation instructions for windows, mac, and one linux distribution (typically Red Hat or Ubuntu)
UOW in Australia uses Ubuntu desktop (LTS, I think) in over half of their computing labs and XP in the others for windows-specific software.
"daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04"
Then I call bullshit. Real linux users dont use (K)Ubuntu
University of Texas at Dallas is Linux friendly. IT prefers SUSE enterprise, but there are no requirements. I would imagine most university IT departments have a policy as many research machines run linux (in the behavioral and brain sciences).
Yale College and the School of Arts & Sciences (vs Med School; Law School; Forestry etc.) provides fairly extensive computer support irrelevant of operating system. The vast majority of ITS backend stuff runs on Linux. It is entirely possible to connect to the VPN and access library resources using only free software, wireless works fine WPA2-AES or unencrypted. The level of software support does depend on the experience of the people available, but we have internal lists for contacting the Student Techs who might know how to fix a given OS problem (BeOS or Windows 3.11 you won't really get much ). But if the Internet says that your printer won't work with Linux, then there's not much else to be done. Remote printing and such things work just fine (or better than Windows). If you were to take a class on GIS or in statistics you very well may run into Windows only software, but that's not really relevant.
We keep Linux install cds in our offices for good reason, but generally we won't help a person build a computer or compile anything (unless they need to use something for class distributed source only and compiling it actually makes it work). If your running gentoo or doing everything from scratch, you should know what your computer's problem is, if its software.
Regarding hardware, we can generally take apart and replace parts under warranty for Dell and Apple, others we'll see what we can do if its out warranty. Our student tech population is somewhere around 80-100 out of approximately 5000 supported people.
As a current CS student in the UC system, I can say that Linux is by far a minority but there are users out there. I have been lucky in that I have Windows and Linux (Fedora) machines running on the school networks, and have had more trouble connecting Windows to their networks than my Linux boxes. This is due to the school network's fright of viruses and their obsessive behavior of making you keep your Windows box patched.
While they do not actively support Linux, the students working in IT know enough to trouble shoot with you. Also, I found that Facebook is an incredible help tool on campus. I just joined my school's local Linux support group and I found a lot of people both in and out of the dorms who were ready and willing to help me.
As for the school, the entire Engineering college on my campus uses Linux for all of their student activities, but doesn't provide much support. But because the entire department is Linux, the students are their own IT department.
On a side note, I always get blank stares when I say Linux. So only ask if you're in a Computer centric major's office (i.e. in the Engineering Sciences) if you want a real answer.
At GWU, Student Technology Services does not support Linux. They told me that using Linux on the wifi was impossible. I proved them wrong, typed up a how-to, and now they give that to anyone who asks about Linux on the network. Turns out they didn't know how so assumed it couldn't be done. My email address is on there, so Linux-using students email me for help on occasion. Discovered that EeePC Xandros doesn't reset the default route and thus fails with the usual vpnc method. Should probably give them an updated version that mentions that...
There are Fedora and Ubuntu machines in the CS dept, and CentOS in Physics. Servers and some CS dept desktops run Solaris. Most everything else is Windows XP. A few Macs for design people.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
which is no surprise as i decided to have the uni running almost exclusively on open source. however, there is hardly any end user support as we dont have enough people to do support at all.
i basically dont care whether our students run some sort of unix or something else as long as they dont clog the wireless with infected windoze boxes.
There is very little support for linux on our campus and the student help is centered on mac and windows. But my senior design class for engineering has specifically outlawed the use of open office due to formating issues... pretty stupid if you ask me.
I'm one of the network admins. We don't officially support Linux, but plenty of the techs in our department have good understanding of it and if you get the right person they'll be more than happy to help, provided you need that.
We do absolutely nothing to stop you from running whatever you want on our network, so long as you're not doing anything illegal. Our servers are pretty much a 50/50 mix of Linux/Windows and I can state for a fact that everything on the network works perfectly in Linux as I use Linux on my desktop at work.
Heck, we even unofficially support game consoles on the network. :)
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Clarkson University is very linux friendly
We only support BSD, and it is NOT DEAD!
Here at Colorado State linux support is awesome. The whole engineering department and computer science depart use it almost exclusively. In fact Engineering Network Services supports linux with how to pages on their website along with friendly tech support. I really doubt any tour guide on campus would know that though.
I can say that it depends on what you are asking about. The Biology Dept. and Math Dept. both use Macs. The campus library uses Windows XP. The Computer Science Dept. uses Linux. Wireless support under Linux works for most modern Distros (I have personally tried several versions of both Ubuntu and Fedora with minimal hassle). I have not tried printing on campus as I can just print from home for cheaper anyways. Granted, I am a Computer Science major, so using Linux on a daily basis makes sense for me, its what all my classes use, it has very good dev tools, its robust enough to not be Utterly Destroyed (TM) by a college student. Your milage may vary.
Montana Tech in Butte, MT used to support some linux workstations in their Computer Science department. Not sure if they still do. It was pretty easy to VPN in. Their Windows-based network accepted my computer when it was running SUSE with no problem, just don't tell their IT department that! ;)
University of Southern California currently has some SUN servers that supported Unix-flavored environments. I haven't spent too much time on campus or in campus computer labs to ascertain what environments they are running in. Navigating the VPN procedure, obtaining the accounts and setting everything up took me about an hour the first time. On subsequent log-ins it was a matter of double-clicking an icon.
I would not ask the college tour guide the Windows/Mac/Unix question unless he or she is majoring in computer science or information technology. You would be surprised the level of computer illiteracy in the general population, even among the young. I would save that question for a department head or professor in that particular department.
Lately I've been visiting colleges with my daughter, who is a senior in high school. Every school has proudly announced that they support both Windows and Macs, and most of these schools report having about a 50-50 split between the two. However we've been a Linux household for many years now, and my daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04. Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare. We're obviously not concerned about whether she can write papers using OpenOffice and Linux. Rather we've been wondering about using other computing services on campus like classroom applications, remote printing, VPNs, or Wi-Fi support (nearly all these campuses have ubiquitous Wi-Fi). Given the composition of Slashdot's readership, I thought I'd pose the question here. Does your school support Linux? Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?
I work in central IT at a Big-Ten university, and I'm not surprised you got blank stares from the campus tour guides. All our tour guides are students trained into the position, and are very knowledgeable about buildings, academics, that sort of thing. Ask a technical question, like "Do you support Linux on campus?" and unless the guide happens to be an EE/CS student, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a "huh?" response.
Our university officially supports Windows and Mac. But we don't specifically prohibit Linux. In fact, many people who work the call-in help desk know about Linux and will do their best to support you (even though it's "unsupported") in getting connected to the wireless network, or checking your email.
In practice, I suppose most universities are the same. Nothing to actively break Linux, but not really looking out for Linux's best interests either.
Our basic services don't care - central email is platform-agnostic; use any system you like as long as it talks POP or IMAP (or use our webmail system.) Wi-Fi is open to anyone with a valid university account, nothing else required. I've connected to our VPN using Linux vpnc. Calendar has downloadable clients for Windows/Mac/Linux, or use the web interface. Our web-based file share for students supports all major browsers, doesn't care about the OS. (There is a desktop client for Windows that integrates the file share at the Windows desktop, but this is just a convenience.) Similarly, our web registration and many other central web-delivered services only check the browser, not the OS.
That said, you may run into problems with things like e-learning if you aren't using Windows or Mac. Check first. The e-learning platform used at each institution may dictate what OS you can use. Some commercial e-learning systems may only support Windows and Mac. I think I had problems accessing our remote classroom system (to participate in a remote meeting) when using Linux. It would be better to ask things like "What is your campus e-learning system?" (which a tour guide would likely know, by the way) then google that e-learning system later to see what clients are supported by the vendor.
Specific systems at the college level may also depend on platform (CAD or GIS, as two examples) and departments may run their own web systems that assume Windows or Mac, and may break for Linux (use of ActiveX or Silverlight, for example, if that's what the collegiate web developer wanted to use to build that system.)
Based on what major your daughter is interested in, you may also ask students in that college about their use of Linux in the program. If you explain "I'm visiting with my high school daughter", students are often inclined to answer questions about the program and what they use.
The major also could be a clue. Engineering or Computer Science? Probably running Linux. English or Fine Arts? Probably Mac or Windows. Physics or Chemistry? Could be anything. Or, just wander the lounge and see what students are running on their laptops - that may give you an idea. At our university, I can walk through the lounge on any given day in the semester, and guarantee seeing at least one GNOME or KDE desktop.
Linux is supposed to support YOU. This smacks of Red Menace indoctrination.
if they support macs, they're not using activex web interfaces or other proprietary MS junk, in which case a sufficiently crafty linux user will be able to use any/all of the services a mac user can.
however, depending what you're daughter is studying it might be worth getter her a NOT linux pc to use at uni. if she's not studying something that will directly make use of her linux l33tness, then you're just giving her more work to try and get done (all her B.Business friends just have to write up a nice business plan while she'll have to work out why the 802.1x authentication randomly stopped working last week and she can no longer get onto the university network, and why she's been getting oo.org segfaults after that last apt-get update AND write a nice business plan).
I love linux, but Uni is already quite a lot of pressure; there's no need to pile on more just for geek kudos, especially if it's irrelevant to what she wants to do. I'm sure she'll get enough "geek kudos" just for having breasts
I work in an American university physics department. Your comment is right on the money here: we support both operating systems - Linux and OS X.
I can't think of anyone who uses Windows at all.
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
If you showed a professor or tech at GSU a Mac they acted like you were holding a dead mouse. Linux, you might as well be holding a diseased organ.
They barely supported their own system, but they were also one of the last campuses in GA to have Wifi
Beyond introductory courses at UW-Madison, the entire Computer Science major is directed and expected to use Linux machines and is provided with multiple Linux computer labs. The School of Engineering also has multiple Linux computer labs so I would think Linux would be a possible use for anyone, except for those older Chemistry professors who require Microsoft Office.
At my school, the tour guides go through a couple weeks of training covering a lot about campus. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask if linux works well with the campus services especially when they're force fed figures such as how many bathrooms are on campus and what year each building was renovated last, in their training. I'd sincerely hope that it's not just some random kid giving tours, but someone that knows a good deal about campus.
In my university in order to register to courses you MUST use INTERNET EXPLORER 6.0 (YES YES! YOU ARE READING CORRECTLY!)
assignements are of course - microsoft word only, the university sites don't work with mozilla firefox. (god bless greasemonkey)
A shame.
I have a windowsXP virtual machine only for these purposes and it stinks.
If they use some flavor of Unix for their network services then it shouldn't be a major problem using Linux. However there are two caveats: websites that only support Internet Explorer (yeah they are still out there, especially on intranets) and required client side software that only runs on Windows (and maybe Mac if they are feeling generous). Despite the reputation that many Universities have for research and academic excellence, the IT infrastructure often leaves something to be desired. My advice would be to purchase a Windows license and then run it in an emulator or set up the laptop for dual boot just to be safe. Does this mean you have to fork some cash over for a Windows license? Yes, unfortunately it probably does; but look at as just another expense (like textbooks) and move on. Besides, with what tuition, books and room and board go for these days the cost of a windows license is trivial by comparison.
I convinced my brother and his girlfriend to make the switch to linux (ubuntu for him, kubuntu for her) slightly over a year ago. They claim to have proudly announced to everyone who asked that the operating system used on their laptops wasn't windows. This love affair came to an abrupt halt this semester at EKU as they found the college they are attending doesn't support linux on it's wireless network. Not only do they not support the operating system...their IT department actually confiscated a students laptop because they didn't know what linux was and thought he was hacking the network! How absurd! (the student eventually got it back with a rather large apology from the administration)
I haven't been to the campus myself to make an attempt to connect to their wireless network but after spending several hours with the schools IT department attempting to do so, he finally decided it wasn't worth the effort and has made the switch back to windows much to his...and my....dismay.
We have decent support at Case Western Reserve University. Our software center has a linux category (but of course that really only has matlab and mathematica since there is no office for linux). ITS also caters to all the nerds here. If you know what to ask for, they'll probably tell you (for example, vpn passwords). The student base does a lot of linux work, and I'm sure your daughter could find a linux boyfriend on campus rather easily. That's TRUE tech support. :)
I am finishing up my senior year as a computer science major and I have found no problems on my college campus while using Linux. Not only does our CS department use it extensively, but it works with most campus services. I can connect to the wireless I can connect to the printers, though they can be picky so I keep a WinXP VM around I can use Open Office for my papers and send them in as PDFs I doubt you will run in to many problems and anything that is problematic can probably be resolved by using a computer lab
I am doing a Masters of Information at the University of Newcastle (Australia) and they require WinXP .. they do not support Mac or Linux. In fact they seem to go out of their way to avoid all acidemic discussion of anything not Microsoft related. needless to say I am very disapointed with their attitude to FOSS and learning in general
Quite a number of fortune 500 companies rely on Linux heavily. Almost every investment bank certainly, ...
After the crash of Oct '08 I'd say investment banks aren't the world's best role models of successful operations. (Unless you count sucking money out of governments.)
The one bright side is that nobody's blamed the financial meltdown on Linux. Yet. (Give Microsoft a few more months...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The University of Maryland (College Park) is extensively linux-supportive. The Office of Information Technology on campus offers support for linux based personal laptops. There aren't any OS-specific requirements for any of the networks. For computer science students in particular, Linux support is detailed right up there with windows and mac, and is often mentioned in class.
The first 200-level CS class, in fact, requires logging into the debian-based server to write C code in Emacs. In the discussion sessions for that class, the TAs go over instructions for PuTTY in windows and SSH in both linux and Mac OS X. Many students either use linux distros specifically or dual boot (like I do.)
The larger issue to consider is what major the student is considering. I am a double major with comp sci and mechanical engineering, and the engineering classes are much less supportive of ANYTHING besides windows. Software such as Pro/Engineer, Engineering Equation Solver, and some circuit building software such as PSpice, do not have mac or POSIX based ports. Half the time the instructors for these classes ignore non-windows systems, or just recommend going to the university provided workstations. Sometimes they sponsor remote terminals, but often we're sort of left out. In short, the more pressing question is what your daughter wants to do in college, because some majors in general (comp sci) are OS-tolerant, but other technical majors may not (engineering), and it doesn't matter at all for others (humanities.)
Either way, come to Maryland! It's an excellent school.
Not only does MIT support Linux, but its pretty hard to graduate without learning to use a Unix command line. Most students run Windows at home, but all the computer clusters around campus are some sort of Unix, whether Solaris or Ubuntu.
In a word, no. Windows is officially supported; Mac users are warned that they "may have to rely more heavily on support from Apple or commercial service vendors"; Linux is ignored completely. Luckily the story is different in my department and I've never had connectivity problems (internet, printing, local network) that were due to linux compatibility issues. And even across campus (outside the umbrella of my department) my laptop connects to the university WiFi without any trouble. With that said, if I ever do have problems, I'm on my own to fix them or find a work-around. I would suggest setting up a dual boot machine for your daughter for now, until she gains some confidence in troubleshooting her own problems.
This is your daughter's education that you're messing with, not another opportunity to evangelize Linux or force it into a place where it's not yet welcome.
Just get her a Macbook, top off her debit card from time to time, and STFU so she can be a successful student.
U of Iowa -- in short, no problem.
When I went to the U of Iowa in the 1990s, I used Linux -- the comp sci department was transitioning from HPUX (PA-RISC) and SGI (MIPS) to Linux (Redhat I think?) x86 systems. They now run Linux boxes exclusively I think. This saved me SO MUCH time going to computer labs since I could do my work at home on my own Linux computer. Engineering uses a mix (some engineering software is windows-specific), they also have some PA-RISC and Itanium kit as well there. Business had not heard of anything but WIndows -- they seemed to just be using word, excel, and acrobat anyway though. ITS was transitioning from IBM AIX systems to Windows, increasingly greatly the number of boxes they needed to get the same work done. (Note I still work at the U of I so I have more current info than 1990s...) ITS I think only "supports" windows, but honestly they quit actually providing support to students etc. (beyond resetting their university login and password basically..) by the mid-1990s anyway.
Wifi -- ironically, it was *easier* under Linux than under Windows or Mac -- they were using a non-standard Cisco crypto setup, which Linux distros support out-of-the-box, while on Windows it requires a piece of software that only works with a limited number of wifi cards. They now are using the very non-standard PEAP-MSCHAPv2, but Linux supports that out of the box too.
Both then and now, the web stuff at the U is *web* stuff, not "Internet Explorer" crap. Payroll, course work, etc. are all fine. The current students, their computer use seems to consist of 1) Web, with occasional videos. Naturally these play fine on Ubuntu. 2) Word processing (OpenOffice). 3) Acrobat files. Ironically the Windows boxes will randomly choke printing the Acrobat files, printing garbage, while the Ubuntu systems print them fine. So... if the plan is art, they'll probably be constantly using photoshop, or using proprietary page layout for that type of class; if they don't want to spend all the time in a computer lab, they'll have to get a copy of 'Doze then. Otherwise probably not.
With all that said, I'm glad I graduated 1 year before the "technology fee" started getting funneled to Microsoft to fund those like $4 or whatever student copies of Windows -- I didn't use Windows once in college, and I'm glad my money wasn't shoveled into paying Microsoft for a copy I did not use.
University of Chicago does not "officially" support Linux on student machines, but Residential Computing is very friendly towards it--sometimes they'll even (unofficially :) recommend that students switch to Linux if they're having too many issues with Mac or Windows.
Furthermore, most CS courses use Linux and the department operates a Linux lab.
I have been attending UoP since June, and they most certainly do NOT support Linux. Jokes aside about my choice in schools, I have had a hard enough time sticking with openOffice and Windows 7.
I'm pretty sure that we are technically required to have MS Office, but I have been using openOffice since the get go. When I tried to use it instead of Visio to build a chart, I was quickly told that I HAD to use Visio (and then converted to jpg and placed in a Word file, but I digress).
This fact alone eliminates Linux, which I can ALMOST understand since this is UoP, but I sure would hope that UC Berkeley supports it.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
When I was in college (around ten years ago) we were encouraged to use Linux, especially in our later years. Granted, I was taking programming and sys-admin courses, so that probably factored in a lot. The instructors and staff who ran the IT department on campus were all programmers and professional admins. We had one smooth working network, with a collection of Mac, Windows and (if we wanted) Linux clients.
Chances are, the campus your daughter goes to should not be chosen based on which OS they support. That should be a bottom-of-the-list concern. Also, as others have pointed out, this is a dumb thing to ask a tour guide. If you must involve the guide, ask if you can be directed to someone in IT.
At ISU ( www.iastate.edu ) Linux is widely used. The university has a Red Hat site licence, and any student has the right to have RHEL for free also for his machine ( https://www.linux.iastate.edu/ ).
On campus Linux is widely used in labs and workstations, especially in engineering departments. Support is offered for RHEL users, but essentially you have no problems to use university services or to access the network. Also, the university provides some documentation to configure services specific to the campus network.
Well, I never expected that we'd be getting over 400 replies to this posting. I'll try to cover some of the most common responses.
First, some background. I've been using Linux on servers for fifteen years and on the desktop for perhaps six or seven. I have no qualms about editing config files or searching online for help with arcane problems. We don't use Windows here much any more for the obvious security issues it poses, and because I'm sick and tired of futzing with license keys and the like just to install a copy of XP on a machine licensed for Vista, or searching the web for drivers for a network card I pulled out of the closet.
Despite these experiences, I'm hardly a "Linux zealot." If my daughter chooses a school that makes using Linux difficult, we'll do what's required to cope. I do believe that institutions of higher education should make at least some efforts to support free and open computing platforms, especially ones like Linux with over fifteen years of development and millions of users worldwide. I understand why Linux adoption has been slow in homes and businesses, but colleges and universities should represent a much more fertile ground for open technologies to grow.
As for my daughter, she is looking to major in the biological sciences en route to veterinary school. She's not going to be spending much time in CS classes where I'd expect Linux to be much more common. She's also not going to be attending a school whose focus is on training people to use computers in a Windows environment. The computer she has now can dual-boot Windows and Linux; she just doesn't use the Windows side all that much. If she needs to run Windows-only applications, we'll deal with that through dual-boot or a VM.
My concerns are more targeted at the campus infrastructure. At some schools we've visited we heard that people needed to install a specialized Windows or OS X application to authenticate to the campus network or to print remotely. While we could certainly accommodate this requirement via a mixed Windows/Linux configuration, it would be a pain to have to switch to Windows just to print a paper. Some of the responses here suggest these are not unreasonable concerns. Qualifying a computer to run on a campus network isn't always a simple task either given the concerns about spreading malware across the campus. So I don't think it was out-of-line to ask whether other people who use Linux routinely have had problems interconnecting their machines with their campuses' IT infrastructure. I'm glad to see so many people reply that they don't really have this problem at all.
As for the "Linux support" is a misnomer response, of course I know the difference between the kernel and a distro. I don't really care if a school supports Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, or none of the above. What I do care about is whether schools support open standards and open protocols, so that we won't need to worry about authenticating against an AD server, or installing a proprietary application that doesn't have a Linux build, just to use the network.
Nor did I expect that campus tour guides would be a useful source of information on Linux support. I've only asked this question a couple of times during our round of visits thinking that perhaps the guide may have had a friend who used Linux or heard about it from an acquaintance. In general the answer seems to be that half the campus likes Coke, half likes Pepsi, and no one has even heard of Royal Crown.
Finally, I thank my fellow Slashdotters who took the time to write reasoned and often detailed descriptions of their experiences. I appreciate your efforts very much.
I attend RIT and we have a very well-connected campus. While there are no university-supported machines running Linux, we have Windows, Mac, and Solaris machines. Plus, the campus IT crew provides Linux help. And of course there are many Linux users/enthusiasts here.
Not only that - RHEL is available for free if the student so chooses to use it.
Go Beavers!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
(Note: I am still in highschool, but I spent 6 weeks living on the cmu campus and taking courses there. I had the same computer access as a regular student, and brought my own Linux netbook.)
Carnegie Mellon fully supports Linux (in fact, a large percent of university-operated desktops run Red Hat), though the documentation for this support is a little lacking in a few areas. For example, they have a fairly complicated printing setup requiring special software in both Windows and Mac (technically not needed in Mac, but advisable). Since this system is using cups (iirc), no extra software (beyond the obvious) is required in Linux. However, finding the ip and such for the print server really required some digging, eventually taking me to user-provided documentation hosted by the School of Computer Science.
Overall, there is absolutely no problem with running Linux at cmu. However, non tech-savvy users may find themselves needing to seek help. Getting that help should hardly be a problem, considering they types of people who go there.
Of course, individual classes may have software requirements. However, you should just be able to use the public terminals all over campus for this. (I had to do this every now and then on lab reports since OpenOffice doesn't support y-error bars).
I am a student and tech support coordinator at an Ivy League university, and my school, for one, is very Linux friendly. Campus services are mostly platform-agnostic (currently, there's some talk of using Silverlight for some class video supplements, but I had a conversation with the administrator running that and he's promised that if they go with it, they'll also have quicktime and flash options available). The campus network is based on EHA/MAC address whitelisting, and is thus platform-neutral. Getting some site-licensed software is a pain on Linux (MATLAB requires several more hoops to download on Linux than Windows, but it's doable), but any and all required class programs are available in computer clusters (which have Windows and Mac machines, and a couple of specialized clusters have Linux). Our tech support group (the largest in the nation, at ~130 student employees and 3 full-time staff) doesn't totally support Linux machines, but we support it as we can; we keep a group of designated Linux specialists who offer limited tech support to Linux users with computer problems (we don't fully support just because of the difficulty of doing so, especially with a staff that's only 5-15% Linux users).
We have some non-savvy professors who will occasionally require closed solutions, but the average Linux user is smart enough to work around those restrictions, rather than suffer under them. Overall, we're very FOSS-friendly. It's a great place to use Linux.
The University of North Texas, in general, supports Linux. I worked in the university library's IT department, and also used Linux on my laptop. The University's Wi-Fi can be logged into using any modern web browser and OS with a dhcp client. The online class system needs java, and some of the online video support requires realplayer format playback. Rarely, quicktime support may be needed, but again, any sort of playback support will usually do (Mac uses like to integrate videos without knowing whether others can support them). Word documents are the standard text document format. Now, maybe some class requires a proprietary application, but I never encountered any. The university provides discounted software and free antivirus, but typically that's all for Windows/Mac. So, I would declare UNT a Linux-friendly campus (or at least OS-neutral).
It doesn't matter if they teach you C, C++, FORTRAN, COBOL, Assembly, Visual Basic, LISP, Scheme, etc.
It doesn't matter if they force you to use emacs or vi.
It doesn't matter if they use Windows, UNIX, Linux, etc.
It isn't what they make you use. It's what they teach you that matters. A good university will teach you the ideas behind computing - how operating systems work in general. Nor should a university be predominant in any given language - they should be exposing you to several different languages that showcase the fundamental differences between them (i.e. procedural vs. functional vs. object-oriented).
What matters is that whatever it is that they teach you; will allow you to take any of the above technologies and be able to become proficient and productive with them. People get bent out of shape over a particular technology, but particular technologies either evolve or fade away in time. The foundation that was taught to me in university was sufficient to allow me to adopt new technologies, understand them and implement them within any environment as required.
=
There are two labs, I believe, full of computers running Fedora on the GVSU Allendale campus (though they're mostly for CS/IS majors, I believe you can pay to access them). There are numerous Windows labs, and I believe there's also a Mac lab somewhere. The computer science school here is pretty good, I have to admit. However, .doc and .docx are widely used, and most professors require assignments to be submitted in either of those formats (if submitted electronically).
Cedarville University has support for Linux on their wifi and lan, via submitting your mac address or just registering it with an online interface. The internet terminals on campus also run Ubuntu, and their servers run Suse.
Umass Amherst supports linux for all network and class activities and in fact has an entire division of it's office of information technologies dedicated to linux tech support.
in Dayton, Ohio is a Microsoft school. They used to have Unix labs (full of Sun Sparc workstations) and numerous Mac labs, but now the Unix labs are completely gone and the Mac labs are fewer. You can use Linux on your own computer on campus without too much difficulty, but there is no support offered for anything but Windows or Mac.. There is a solitary Linux lab tucked away in the engineering building but it's restricted to people enrolled in certain CS/CEG courses. In most courses it is assumed you will use Windows (even in the CS program).
But why am I going on about this... you really wouldn't go to this school unless you were unfortunate enough to be stuck living in Dayton, Ohio.
at my school there wasn't "support" from the university IT department. The gen ed class apps I used were web based anyway though as an EE student the number of such classes i took was minimal.
the electrical engineering department however had a "separate" network and all machines running general hardware dual booted win XP and slackware. There was also a mac lab that was given to the department that i rarely saw anyone use, it was a bunch of system in the back of the robotics lab. There was also a sun sparc station lab for ASIC design work (early days of 64bit x86 hardware)
The CS department had a linux lab that we had remote ssh access to that was mostly used for operating systems classes.
The EE department also worked with the CS department to build a large compute cluster that could be booted as a whole into linux, OS X or (as i recall) BSD with a controller that would boot the cluster into the proper OS depending on the next job in queue.
I'm studying Masters of IT at University of Newcastle. They have NO Mac or Linux support.. They require IT students to use Windoze, and seem to discourage any academic discussion about FOSS. but they are a M$ partnership Uni, so I guess that blows their academic credibility out of the water. Needless to say I'm very disappointed with them and their attitude to anything not sanctioned my M$
I guess Carnegie Mellon does, since we've got clusters running RHEL 5, and the AFS system (the one any {student, faculty} member can SSH into to do work on school computers) recently went to Red Hat. However, I don't think Computing Services will troubleshoot your OS for you if you do something stupid with your personally-owned Linux computer.
CMU has Linux clusters, and they do let Linux computers onto the networks, but I don't think they help with repairs. Granted, the stereotypical Linux user should be able to save himself, anyway, but anyway, I can't really answer this for my school, because from certain points of view, the answer could be "yes" or "no".
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
I hooked up one Ubuntu laptop out of dozens today at the U of R. We do have a Kununtu guide on our website.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Clemson University does Mac and PC support. One of the images they use is a dual-boot of Vista and Ubuntu.
My suggestion to you is to not even bother asking clueless tour guides. Instead simply give a call to the head of Residential Networking, or whatever they name the department there. Note most colleges have separate IT departments for Staff and Students. Anyways, Support Linux can mean many things. Since my college didn't allow for remote printing or anything fancy besides being able to access your "Student drive" remotely. In this colleges case, I'd say they were more Linux friendly than Windows when it came to getting on the network via WiFi/Ethernet. Windows machines were forced to go through this stupid test that took about 5 minutes at least once a day before they were given an IP address that was outside of the zone for the tests to run only (you could access Symantec AV update only.)
Linux and Mac users simply had to send a quick email to the head of residential networking their freshman year and he'd add their MAC address to a list of users who just get access instantly and it would expire after 5 years. I'd suspect that things are similar at most colleges besides the biggest ones around.
I just finished school...my school didn't support Linux, but they don't have to. They have to support Windows and Mac OS, because of the audience that uses those platforms. Think about it. If you're using Linux, why the hell are you looking for support from the IT staff at your university? Chances are pretty good you know more about networking than they do.
If you don't know how something works, learn it. RTFM, ask the online community, etc. BTW, I ran Linux on my laptop & desktop machines all through school without too much problem. I too had to switch dhcp clients....no big deal. Collaborated with other students just fine with Open Office and the like.
I attend Embry-Riddle as an Aerospace Engineer and all the programs i have needed are hosted through the citrix client so i can access them from my linux machine at my dorm. I save it all to a shared HDD on their sever and its there no matter what kind of machine i use.. it works suprisingly well. As for normal internet use, the internet is not the fastest but it works fine on my computer, so far no troubles. By the way i use Ubuntu 9.04.
I just started grad school at The University of Texas at Austin in the Electrical & Computer Engineering dept. The services seem to be very compatible with linux (or at least all the ones I have used). The school wide wireless can be accessed fairly easily on a linux box. The ECE dept. even has a couple dozen linux (Suse I think) workstations available for the students to use. National Instrument's LabView (required in some undergrad courses) even runs on Linux (supposedly... I didn't try).
Now if only they would discuss some of the linux tools in the beginning programming courses (through cygwin for those with windows laptops?), maybe this world could move on to a modern OS.
Mac Mini or Mac laptop. Now you have it all. Sun has a free one. http://www.sun.com/software/products/virtualbox/get.jsp
Duh!
qz
#include usual-disclaimer.h
We don't actively support Linux. Many people use it. 99% of our network services work with Linux. We recently upgraded our VPN to a Cisco Anyconnect that downloads a Java app, and reports from the field are that it's working across everything from Linux to OS X to Vista 64.
802.1x wireless authentication is flaky depending on your distro, but in Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora things seem to be working perfectly fine. Eee PCs have a bit of an issue with sleep and resuming their network connection but that's a fault of the Atheros driver and not the network or the OS. Windows and Mac are actually flakier about 802.1x for various stupid reasons (Fast Reconnect in Windows and OS X 10.5's wireless applet)
Students have the capability to print in labs, but Linux boxen can print direct to the IP addresses. I can't seem to get Vista to do that, so it's unique to Linux.
Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare.
Don't harass the student tour guides. They're not there for technical questions. Call your daughter's Info Resources division. On our campus during parent-student orientation we have sessions for both parents and students to ask us anything they want.
Student computer access is granted to the network if the student can show the successful update and execution of a virus scanner. I had to dual boot into windows and run a C: drive virus scan. I got approved and rebooted and worked under linux with the approval of the IT department.
...and if you're in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, I'll be your personal Linux tech-support guy. Seriously though, while we do have a few professors who use Linux for web-servers and analytical processing, very few use it as their primary desktop. All of our University's apps are Linux enabled aside from Microsoft Office--this includes UI email VPN, and wireless.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Whether any particular university supports Linux or not, the very nature of Linux supports quicker and better support for almost anything than Windows does. Regardless of whether or not they support Open Office (I trade docs and spreadsheets with MS Office users all the time, there really aren't any problems at the level they expect college course work to support) and, as for wifi support, I've had less problems with ANY flavor of Linux than I had with Vista (may it rot in hell!), the nature of Linux with its open nature and the open viewing of its source code kind of insures that Linux will be able to support almost ANY application sooner and better than the closed source nature of Windows! I support lots of Windows users and to suggest that Windows actually supports everything better than any other software is laughable! The fingerpointing I get constantly between Windows and [wahtever] manufacturer makes it ludicrous.
My guess is, if you send your daughter to any college with her Ubuntu laptop, no one will ever know that she isn't using Windows. That is, of course as long as they don't use some proprietary software that only runs on Windows or websites that are specifically tuned to Microsoft's inane and publicly derided web browser.
I work at a very large university in Austin, Texas in central IT supporting various UNIX-like systems. Most of what I do is for faculty, but I'm in touch with a lot of the Linux/Solaris community on campus. I used to work a smaller university that was far lest involved in research, but gearing up to be more so. In my experience from these two universities and the ones I've attended or visited, the amount of Linux support you'll see on a campus is closely tied to the amount of analysis done there - often driven by research programs.
University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, for all it's shortcomings, has a fantastic CS faculty - you are using gcc on HP-UX for your compiling, and you're gonna like it. Also, they support Linux. No questions asked - they make you install symantec if you're on a windows box, and they look at you a little funny if you're on OSX, but if you're on linux, you log in with your student log on, and go. Have I mentioned their professors actually teach C and Python because Java is the devil?
theres no place like 127.0.0.1
the worse your school the more likely it is to be windows-only
...it varies.
IT@JH (the enterprise university-wide technical department) has Linux running on a number of servers, though they would love it if you'd only run RHEL4 and nothing else, for reasons too complicated to go into.
The new VPN software claims to support Linux, but doesn't, and one look at the installer script shows it couldn't have possibly worked for a very long time.
The undergraduate networking documentation has Linux explanations (though conveniently this is "plug in, have fun", with a few notes for brokenness in an old version of NetworkManager and another footnote for WICD being Just Broken in certain forms of PEAP).
So, sort of.
But heaven forbid you call the support line about Linux. They'll make a best-effort attempt to fix it, but...I've seen them claim that having Ubuntu in your boot menu could cause your optical drive to not work. At all. (As in, physically won't eject, after a hard power cycle.)
It's only an insult if it's not true.
I attended University of Missouri Rolla, now Missouri Science and Technology from 2005-2009. When I was first there, the campus used AFS for network shares, had Windows XP (and a few NT, 2k, and 2k3 boxes), Linux 2.6.8, some Mac OS X boxes, Solaris 10 machines, and a few HP-UX boxes. It was easy to integrate your personal machines into the network, just install AFS and kerberos. Then came the fateful decision to move to Microsoft DFS for network storage in the name of better Windows support. The Solaris machines, which almost the entire Electrical Engineering department relied upon were unusable, from then on. The linux machines used in research labs all over campus from Nuclear Engineering to Civil, also dead. OS X was also offline. Nobody could even get the HP-UX physics simulators to log in. In one fell swoop, 4/5 platforms on campus became unusable. Someone found this hack called Sharity, which would export DFS as NFS shares. It worked for about 3 minutes after logging in. Eventually the system would a) run out of ram from Sharity's leaks, b) run out of file handles, causing almost any operation file to hang, c) cause a kernel trap (and die). Eventually, the OSX machines were made to authenticate, but not share your files, for that you needed a thumbdrive. You could also email yourself, but email didn't work on Thursdays past about noon. The HP-UX and Solaris labs closed, due simply to the fact that nobody could use them. All linux machines were unsupported for about a year. Eventually linux got running again, but X wasn't stable due to some `lockfile mumbo jumbo`. The IT support at MST said that running linux on my Macbook had voided the warranty. Luckily, the network itself was pretty good and well-maintained (all Cisco and Nortel gear), so the only time I had to deal with MST-IT was for hardware problems. Well, that and every single one of my classes that dealt with computers, but mostly my instructors had to talk to IT for that. Personally, not having functioning computers on campus was a detriment to my education for about a year. Computational Physics, Senior Design, and a load of Computer Science, Digital Systems, and Electrical Engineering classes became worthless. We gathered around the dead machines in the lab, and the teacher would tell us what we would be able to do, someday, somehow, maybe.
At Linux (Ubuntu) is available in the student workstation in the classrooms. It is supported for Students needing network access. The school is pretty much agnostic to any operating system on campus. http://www.fit.edu
Georgia Tech fully supports Linux, from ssh/scp, wan, san, and printing, to full desktops and software. Linux student software distribution. In addition, it even provides full linux OS's (just rhel). Everything you stated above is at Tech also.
I never had a single issue running Linux (gentoo) my entire time there, and there was a pretty decent LUG there too. In fact, even my freshman English courses made us use Linux for some tasks.
Nothing like job security.
I'm a CS major at Virginia Tech, and there's mixed support here. The college of engineering requires that all of their students have windows. However, if you are planning on going into computer science, then this is only really an issue in your first year. I personally dual boot Vista (pre-loaded, and required...) and Ubuntu (Jaunty right the moment). This lets me use linux for pretty much everything, with the exception of DyKnow - educational software which from what I've heard is only used your freshman year. There is a Linux/Unix User Group here on campus which is more than pleased to help anyone who needs it. Simple answer: YES you can use Linux, but you might have to dual boot windows (or use a VM). PS - to anyone who's saying that she should give up linux - that just plain doesn't make sense. Its her choice, let her find a solution that fits her.
Well, as a former computer science major at the University of North Texas, I recall that we did have a couple labs running only linux computers used more for school purposes, but if you were a cs student, you had access via putty / vpn into the lab. These included the parallel computing lab which was a networked cluster of about 20 dual-cpu machines, 10 servers using an NFS for shared data storage, and the entry-level class programming labs. The majority of our courses which involved actually turning in source code aside from a couple upper level classes oriented towards windows-based programming required that our source code compile and run correctly on the campus run linux machines. We also had numerous small computer kiosks running a very trimmed down linux-based desktop typically only set up for internet usage so we could access UNT's web system and all. I'd say it was fairly linux friendly, but not as much as some colleges? Now, I do know a few people who attended the University of Texas in Dallas. I'm told that the campus actually has a dedicated public-usage linux computer lab. I thought that was pretty cool Whereas with UNT, aside from running on servers which only CSci/Eng students could access, you needed special permission to use the linux based computers. If I remember right, the entry-level lab was reserved for classes only, and you needed a name/password on the parallel cluster to access it via command line only.
AFAIK, the three major universities in the state are Linux friendly. Kinda stands to reason, of course. OSU, U of O and PSU are all mirrors covering most distros.
I attend Earlham College, and we very much support Linux here.
Worse, to get on the wi-fi you need to use some kind of Java applet that I haven't gotten to work correctly in linux yet.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Easy. For Linux support, your daughter should attend MIT, Caltech, or Harvey Mudd.
Kutztown University is relatively GNU/Linux friendly some of the time. They recently outsourced the email system to MS Windows Live. That sort of baffled me. They basically have a war going on at the university in the IT department. The student help desk and IT do provide some level of assistance to GNU/Linux users. There are enough GNU/Linux users on campus to have a GNU/Linux user group- but ultimately that dissipated after some successes. The student help desk was providing GNU/Linux and open source software to students for a while. The user group also donated open source software discs to all of the faculty on campus too. It is still an uphill battle as incompetence remains strong at the university. The Computer Science department was supposedly going to move to GNU/Linux. Don't think that happened. Then again things take forever. It took 4 years to get Visual Basic removed as course requirement for one of the tracks offered. Surprisingly the few who graduate from the CS department are very smart- but not necessarily well terribly well versed. I blame that mostly on the incompetent instructors. The few who aren't idiots are just years behind the times in terms of technology.
I'm in the CE program at the University of Michigan, and our engineering department is huge on Linux. All Windows PC's in the engineering computer labs dual-boot into Red Hat. All the programming courses use the GNU compiler package as the reference compiler. Most of the software the engineering classes use is Linux-based - they even provide a VNC client so you can do your work without a Linux computer or having to go to the lab. (As an aside - most of the engineering labs also have some Macs, and a few have Solaris machines for certain special-purpose software.) The department is structured so that it's essentially impossible to graduate without being semi-competent in Linux.
The LS&A college (Literature, Sciences, and the Arts - the "standard" college that most people apply to) has its own separate IT department, and they're much more Windows and Mac-oriented (very Mac-heavy in the math department for some reason). Even they support Linux, though - I've run a dual-boot on my dorm computer for awhile now, and I've never had any problems using Linux to access University resources. It's not really used as a teaching platform for them as far as I know, and I'm sure a lot of the general tour guides would have no idea what to tell you if you asked, but most of the ones doing the North Campus tours (i.e. the engineers) probably know more about Linux than you, me, or your daughter.
I don't know what your daughter is intending to study, but I would imagine a lot of schools delineate things the same way - Windows for the regular school, Linux for the engineers. If Linux use is a big deal I recommend you talk to the engineering department to get some straight answers. And if that's the platform she's most comfortable working with, I recommend looking toward an engineering major as well.
Also, Go Blue. (obligatory)
Linux has been steadily been taking over my University since 1998. I work on campus now, and a lot of my fellow classmates have graduated and have gotten jobs on campus like myself and we started to slowly change stuff to Linux. Of course if you are in the CS department it's an unspoken rule that Linux is required for your to know and run on your computer either on raw metal or in virtulization.
At Cal Poly, Windows and Mac are supported, and require "Cisco Clean Access", which requires you to download a bunch of crapware and "anti-virus" programs, including conflicting ones that need to be installed in a different order then it directs you (Symantec Endpoint Protection will not allow msoft's antivirus service to start, etc).
If you run Linux, however, it allows connections through to the default package repositories, and all you need to get on the network is a Java enabled browser (which runs an applet that checks that you are really running Linux).
Rather than deal with the crapware, I would boot Ubuntu, log in, and boot back to Windows.
If you're taking a programming track and your "Operating Systems" course involves an OS you don't write or rewrite, you're wasting your time.
The very idea that you can even try to understand operating systems without the source code is offensive self-defeating crap.
And if you get exposure to Windows OS source under NDA, then what? Your career as an OS developer is over before you've even graduated. No idea you ever have in that realm will be usable.
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My daughter attends Goucher College. They explicitly REJECT Linux. If you want to hook up to the network you MUST use Windows XP or newer, or MAC. They prohibit all forms of LINUX. They want to force THEIR anti-virus onto your computer and they are unable to do that with linux. You can do Linux via their wireless guestnet, but you cannot access school resources this way. D
would it be possible to sue the school for discrimination because they're unfairly penalizing students based on their choice of computer and/or OS? And if so, could you win?
No. Operating system zealots are not a protected class. The University is free to discriminate against you.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Linux and BSD are everywhere in the server room. But in the admin section where the MS rep schmoozes with the CIO all the books on the shelf are "Exchange for Dummies" and "JOB: Securing Sharepoint".
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University at Buffalo used to provide it's own customized version of Red Hat. It was the desktop environment that ran on all of the engineering lab computers. I think since they've discontinued it and just promote Ubuntu, but you can still access the technical documentation circa 2005.
I understand that UCSD has a well respected graduate program with a reasonably long history of support for free software.
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I'm running ubuntu on a laptop that is my one and only computer for grad school here. I don't have to work with any programming- nothing more complicated than networking and wifi access. I've yet to run into a problem. Their website even offers support for getting linux up and running on their protected wifi network (requires certificates, they walk you through the process on linux). My one complaint? BlackBoard. If you can find a school that doesn't use it, then give that school preference. It's terrible with ubuntu. I have to user user switching agent with firefox to have a chance at bypassing the terrible setup it has in order to read my assigned papers. Ugh. Good luck!
I hate to say this, but the Citrix client is one of my least favorite apps to get running under Linux. Maybe I'm getting forgetful, but I can never remember which directory to copy the certificate to, or what ownership and permissions to use on it. Why Citrix can't get their install right is beyond me.
That said, once it's installed it works beautifully until it's time to update the Citrix client again.
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The Evergreen State college offers Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (of course) in their Advanced Computing Lab. I've yet to gain access to these computers because they have a different password system on them from the rest of the Macs and Windows on Campus. Also like to add that the network is in fact Linux and all of the staff that manage the computer networks use Linux (but trash talk Ubuntu haha).
If you're studying Electronics Engineering, I believe they expect you to be able to build a crystal radio receiver before you show up, and HAM Radio is definitely a first year course.
Likewise expecting CS students to build their own tools is the essence of teaching them to understand their science. Anything less and the architecture that underpins their understanding can be cut out from under them at any time. College is not a trade certification.
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I know from working and going to URI that it completely support linux just don't ask anyone outside of the computer science department for help with it as most have never heard of it. Whats sadder is that most of the students that have a mac don't even know how to use it half of the time.
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Well do you mean linux used on campus networks, or in a CS curriculum? I'm seeing a lot of people confused about either of them. Personally, I can attest that Lewis & Clark college has a Win/Mac support from IT, but the math/CS department has a Linux lab used for the CS curriculum, and has a lab assistant that can help setting up your machine. Other than that, the network works perfectly with Linux. Wireless and ethernet. If you wanna know more, send an email to the people here, find the contact info at www.lclark.edu. Cheers
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
There are like 10 pages of setting up windows with virus protection and this program SafeConnect to be able to connect to our network, with Linux you just connect and youre done
Boston University has its own brand of Linux, CentOS based. It's somewhat behind vanilla Ubuntu in stable versions, but decent. I don't know how they support laptops and dorms, but I would be surprised if they are not agnostic.
I go to Berkeley, so it of course does.
Fuck Beta
Lab reports using Excel?? Gee whiz, I can't imagine that being productive at all. Seriously. I would be tempted to say that Excel should not be promoted for anything but most basic quick-prototyping, if you are in an academic lab setting. If it's a lab report, IMHO you better had a Makefile for it. Saved me countless times -- usually, when you are close to the deadline, the last thing you want is worrying about all the manual steps (some of which you can mess up). Heck, I'd say that most of my graduate homework done in the last couple of years had Makefiles. Text/layout done in lyx, calculations done in whatever was applicable (Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, ANSYS, you name it), final .pdf was submitted by doing make submit.
well, all the colleges that i know here support linux and windows... is hare to see macs, in my univercity teachers encorage us to use linux, it's extremaly cool
Various flavours of UNIX were used in several labs - though this was ten years ago. The science labs had a fair number, though the most numerous were in the engineering building; some of the labs there were all UNIX. I doubt there were any in the arts building or phys.ed. labs, and I doubt you'd see a light bulb on those students' heads if you mentioned UNIX or Linux. Our campus was fairly large and spread out.
The majority of accountants have jobs because of the convoluted tax code. IT people owe their jobs to the lousy quality of M$ operating systems. If the students start using linux, there will be little for IT depts to do, so most of the employees will be out on the street. Accountants don't want tax reform/simplification for the same reason that IT depts don't want linux to become popular.
I was looking for a couple of courses with basic Linux instruction so that I would better understand the computer and be able to make better use of it. I figured in a city as big as NYC it should be a snap to find a couple of good Linux courses. I did not find a single university that taught any Linux courses at all. I called one back and asked and was told that they would be able to teach a basic computer course using Windows and i could transfer the knowledge to Linux. Don't know about using Linux on the campuses. I am retired and just wanted to learn with some direction. Multi years on mainframe but zero on PC's. Finding some things but still a lot of missing info that I would like to know. No help from the universities at all.
My school, UNT, uses both Windows and Mac for all their labs. Blackboard, blackboard.com, is used to post grades, administer online quizzes, study materials, and has a BBS for students enrolled in the same class to contact one another. My.unt.edu allows students to administer their accounts, accept financial aid, pay/enroll/print/search classes, and even print transcripts (unofficial.) UNT also has online storage, and they recently handed their mail servers off to MSN. I am able to access all of these services from my home on my linux laptop. I have not had luck with a VPN they were testing out last semester, but it turns out I never needed to use it anyway. As far as printing goes, you're going to have to use the labs anyway. Many classes, especially in the College of Business, use software that runs exclusively on Windows (and Mac.) Photoshop, Office XP (had a real nightmare with .docx when it first came out,) Wolfram Mathematica, Hawkes Learning Systems, etc etc.
The textbooks usuallly come bundled with software (for Windows,) but again you are better off using the labs. There is nothing to configure, install, uninstall, or register. Walk in, hand them your ID, and use all their software. When it comes time to sell the books (assuming they haven't changed editions on you, and that's a big assumption,) all that trial software they tried to sucker you in with to diminish the value of your book is still in it's original case, unused.
I never take the laptop to school. The WiFi works fine on the laptop computer, but I don't find it necessary to lug around a laptop when the campus is littered with computer labs. The online storage has an ill-designed interface, but a thumbdrive (NTFS, of course) will solve your compatibility issues. Better to do the work at school anyways, less distractions, and the drab furnishings and lightings are a real motivator to get the work done and go home.
I go to Drexel university which is known for being a big engineering school. The school policy itself is use whatever you want as long as you get your work done. One of the great things about Drexel is they don't require you to load a bunch of spyware on your computer to get access to their network by ethernet or wireless. Drexel also gives students free software and even has a Linux section. The computer science depart itself is 100% GNU/Linux and one of the earlier classes you have to take is Intro to Linux. Many departments are run on Linux so I guess thats a big reason why Drexel is Linux friendly.
Does. I'm actually the president of an organization that prominently supports and promotes free software (Laboratory for Recreational Computing).
http://pohl.ececs.uc.edu/
You Ohioans have it all wrong. A Laboratory for Recreational Computing ( http://larc.unt.edu/ ) should have at least a dozen high end workstations with dual monitors dual booting Windows XP/Vista and a big screen TV with a couch, PS3, and 360.
Oh yes, over there, in the garden of unicorns, under the rainbow, where the pipes of pan make the fairies dance, yes, they support Linux wholeheartedly.
- OR -
He looks around suspiciously first, then leans in, and whispers, Meet me at the side entrance tonight when the sun sets...(Looks at daughter) Bring her with you.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Some initial info....
I am an IT manager of a group supporting faculty and staff of a large university in Washington DC.
Last year, over 70 percent of new students in my university brought Macs to school. We haven't seen hard numbers on this year's freshman class, but we expect Mac use to increase linearly as it has over the past 3-4 years (especially since Intel Macs).
This year, more than 50 percent of faculty who were eligible for a new computer chose Mac.
Linux users are blocked from using the VPN which controls access to the WLAN.
The main driver of faculty and student Mac choice in our surveys has been security (perceived or real) and flexibility. Faculty want the ability to run the OS best suited to the task. One Stat professor uses mostly Unix apps in Apple's X environment, web/email/Word on the Mac, and a few Win-only apps in XP on Parallels. Another prof in Physics triple-boots Ubuntu, Mac OS and XP on a MacBook Pro. A significant number of Mac users run XP in Parallels or Fusion. Several profs only run XP on their Macs, preferring the Apple hardware, and hedging they might use the Mac capability in the future.
To me, as someone who switched majors 4 times, and took tech electives despite my English major, the flexibility of a universal computing platform capable of running the two major desktop operating systems (one of which is Unix-based) plus Linux means all your bases are covered. Setup Mac OS and sandbox Windows and Linux in virtual machines, then use whichever OS best suits your current need. If you find later that you are mostly using Windows, or mostly using Linux, set that OS up as a default boot on its own partition.
Admittedly, you can do all I describe on a PC sans Mac OS, but even if you feel you will never use Mac OS, discounting the possibility that you might need or desire it in the future is shortsighted given Mac OS's current growth vector, especially in education. A less capable PC doesn't even necessarily cost less. I just the other day spec'd a Dell Vostro 13" against a 13" MacBook Pro and the Dell was $50 more.
So, again, hedge your bets. Buy the computer that can do Mac OS, Linux and Windows and use whichever OS you need when you need it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
In general, I wouldn't think universities have much to say about the operating system, but the professors in non-CS departments will likely being ignorant of the existence of anything other than Windows and Mac. Although that is rapidly changing. The hard part may be avoiding a Technical Writing class that is basically a "Using MS Word to write a 100 page document class." Also collaboration with other students can be difficult in such classes where you are stuck in a group with students that are only interested in getting the project done and not if you feel the class shouldn't be teaching Microsoft products.
The Linux users at my university mostly negotiated their way around issues, and occasionally fought battles against so-called web apps that were IE only. I am sure your daughter will manage.
http://www.edgazette.govt.nz/Articles/Article.aspx?ArticleId=7839
At Oregon State University, we have several computer labs that run Linux, and its pretty well supported by everything on campus. We also have the OSUOSL, which is a major boost for Linux on campus, and a very active LUG.
Ok, it's bad form to reply twice. Go ahead and mod me down.
you really should do your research before passing judgement.
Hunh? Research? WTF are you talking about? That's like asking Exeter to research what happened on St Crispen's day. I don't have to research it you idiot. I was there.
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Reykjavik University supports Linux
I took online classes in DeVry University/Keller Management School last year, and used only my home Linux computer for that. Apart from a project management class that required MS Project (demo-version works under Wine), all was fine until the final class, where prof strongly insisted on everyone using only Office 2007 docx/pptx files for everything. At the same time Devry administration issued a letter that whole university migrates to Office 2007, and everyone should have it. It was very disappointing decision.
The University of Auckland has dual boot Windows/Linux machines in its compsci labs (and possibly a few other labs as well). All support documentation has details on setting up wifi/printing services on both Windows and Linux. Oh wait...there's no Mac support! ;-)
Test to see if macro responds to second reply. Please disregard. But what of buckles?
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Although I'm not due to start there until next year, I've seen a mix of Windows (XP last time I checked), OS X and Ubuntu systems.
They seem to be targeting a cross platform environment, which provides the most flexibility. As an added bonus all the Windows machines have Firefox as the default browser.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
If your linux distro has wireless support and can connect in a basic fashion to the campus network it should be no big deal. Assuming you can install and run vmware or parallels for linux on it, you should be able to load any windows OS on it simultaneously to run any windows specific software required (as needed) by any courses. I guess the basic concept here is, are you trying to NOT run windows at all? If so, is there a course or application required that has specific software that will not run on any other platform (there are a few out there like that). Of course, dual boot is always an option to work around vmware/parallels too.
I would say that all Swedish universities runs both Windows and some sort of Linux. Often by dualboot but sometimes as dedicated computer labs for each plattform. The support is about equal for both.
The Helsinki University of Technology offers full support for Linux, and runs several *nix-computers itself.
My school supports Linux is a way of wireless connectivity.
Our University network most certainly supports Linux. Most of our IT labs dual-boot XP and Slackware.
I would hope that any school that offers programming classes should have the option of using linux. Even though programming in Windows is perfectly possible, I have never met anyone who prefers it to Linux..
- Here are the classrooms.
- Yeah but... does it run linux?
I'm a student at Bob Jones University (bju.edu) in Greenville, SC and we do not advertise that we support Linux, although we have many very capable faculty members and students working in the IT dept. that would be willing to help with any needs. We actually have a section on our IT Forum dedicated entirely to Linux where most Linux users can find whatever answers they need to find that are specific to our environment. Those who are not as apt(-get) with the Linux environment are always welcome to ask for support.
I did my undergrad at RPI, which had Linux clusters for general student use, as well as some Sun machines in the computing center. For the Comp. Sci. dept, Labstaff ran almost everything on FreeBSD. Linux/Unix versions of almost all the software they provided were available as well, and probably 90% of the programming work that I did there was in Linux/Unix. I'm now a grad student at the University of Vermont, and I was actually quite surprised to see they have pretty decent linux/unix support. The general clusters are, I believe, AIX and the math dept. has some linux and solaris machines in their cluster. Just like RPI, they too have Linux counterparts for almost all the software they offer (i.e. Matlab, etc.). I think as long as the school has a reasonable Computer Science dept., you'll most likely find pretty good Linux/Unix support at the college level.
I'm currently studying Computer Engineering at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. Almost all of my professors want us to use either Linux or PC. In fact a few push for Linux over PC. Mac users are looked down upon in our program.
Well, I study computer science at the university of Helsinki. Yeah, Linux is pretty well supported :)
UCF (Univ. Central Florida) kinda supported Linux. I could use wifi access, see and print to network printers, etc. The caveat is that they don't "officially" support it, so I was on my own when it came to troubleshooting any problems. Overall, it wasn't bad, I didn't hit any major snags. The techs were a mixed bag. A few knew Linux pretty well, but there were quite a few "Hey, what OS is that?" questions when they'd see my XFCE desktop.
Web courses, however, were a nightmare. The "enterprise"-level app (which had to have been written in someone's basement) was heavily optimized for IE6/7, and it was damn near unusable in any other browser. Switching between pages in Firefox would occasionally throw a "You are already logged in" error, forcing me to close the browser and clear the session cookie to get back in. The file upload utility only worked half the time, the other half the file would upload straight to a black hole (my teachers didn't buy the "A black hole ate my homework" excuse until I showed them exactly what happens). Eventually I got tired of it and tossed an XP guest in VirtualBox on my laptop.
Commander Keen (DOS), Battle Frogs(NES), and a few *nix boxes do us just fine. Who wants a PS3 when we have a cluster of P2's?
do you really, honestly believe that some random kid giving tours is going to know what "Linux" is?
An advanced understanding? No. As an alternative operating system that can be used to replace Windows? Yes. Dell offers Linux as a preinstalled option. I believe HP does, too. I'm not sure how well they market it... but it's out there. Also, high schools typically have technology classes which teach everything from "how to use a computer to check your e-mail" to "programming FIRST robots". I'd expect the technology teachers at these high schools to know the difference between Linux/Mac/Windows and spend at least half a class period talking about it in even the most basic level of these classes (though on second thought, Microsoft spends a lot of money to ensure high schools aren't equipped with a Linux alternative so YMMV).
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
As a freshman, I can say that the comp sci department, at least, has really fallen in love with Linux. The course Comp Sci 1 for Majors states in its objectives, "To learn how to use UMBC's UNIX system to create, test and execute Python programs." What that means for us students is that we (or rather, they, the non-Linux users) learn how to ssh, cd, ls, mkdir, rm... While they prefer emacs over vi, they're open about either. There is a LUG, but I don't know how capable it is, since I haven't had to get help yet.
While the experience of the OP may be disconcerting, there are a lot of colleges and universities that ARE using Linux very heavily. I am a graduate of Michigan State University, which is very heavily vested in Unix/Linux. The labs include Windows/Mac/Unix-Linux. However, many of MSU's services are hosted by Linux servers. Linux on the desktop is another feat, and hopefully MSU and other schools will begin to pick up the slack in this area. They should be offering more courses for Linux though. Learning Linux is a VERY valuable skill, it's like learning a second language. Unfortunately Microsoft has a grasp on many governments, schools, companies, and a long list. Hopefully these entities will open up and adopt more open source technologies. Many many foreign countries have already done this, and are way ahead of the U.S. --apexwm http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux
I am studying in Free University of Bolzano. We enjoy good linux support from the IT support. The university computer lab are dual boot with XP and ubuntu. The University wi-fi is accessible to all OS and the IT support helps you configure your laptop if needed. We also have a local ubuntu repository which makes keeping your linux distro up to date so much easier.Student can use any OS to connect to university resource like mail and printers.The Design faculty has mainly macs, and computers in the library uses vista.thats about it..
If your university doesn't support Linux, then start your own University "Linux Help Desk" in the form of a LUG. Focus it soley on the Universities technology and what is required to use Linux with it... How setup Evolution with the email system, how to print at the lab, how to use the VPN... invite members of the the IT Department to join, give talks, and provide insight... who knows you may be able to influence future decisions, meet like minded people, and it'll look good on a CV after graduation.
I just graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering this past spring and yes they did "support" Linux. If you wanted to put linux on your laptop nothing about the school's network prevented it....in fact all of the servers are running Linux.
UAH supports linux. My first year as a Computer Engineering major we compiled code on Unix then every other class after was all Linux hosted.
I've been working as a software developer/web developer/system admin on a university campus for several years running Linux as my main operating system. Most computer services these days are offered through web sites and at this point most of the web apps I have to use are compatible with at least Firefox. Many of the web developers (like me) actually test things in Firefox and Konqueror/Safari.
Linux is actually used around campus in many places and you could encounter it quite a bit depending on what areas you go into. It is used quite a bit in Physics and Computer Science and many of the important servers on campus run Linux. (But, you won't find it in Business or Law where you will likely be *required* to use Windows.)
However, if you call for help at the help center, or ask lab assistants for help configuring or fixing your personal computer, you are most likely SOL unless you happen to run into someone like me.
I am at the American University in Cairo and the IT department here neither uses or supports any Linux. There is a general suspicion in the wider computing community in Egypt that you must pay for something, particularly software, for it to be any good. So, everyone just pirates copies of Windows and then steals closed/proprietary software from each other. Brilliant situation.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
EIU has some information on their website regarding linux, but they don't really support it so much as they ignore it. Every windows and mac user is required to run Cisco Clean Access software to be on the network, but if you are running, linux, you have to call them and give them your mac address and they make you exempt. Beyond that, if something doesn't work, it is up to you to find the solution, they only really have one "linux guy" on staff, and he has his hands full with managing their servers.
So, I would say that linux at EIU is "tolerated"
The biggest embracers of Linux here by far is the department of Computer and Information Sciences (the school you can get a CS or IS&T degree from). Every computer in their labs dual boot Windows and Fedora 10.
Computer Services, the administrative department of the university responsible for the network as a whole, is not as embracing though. They make absolutely no mentioning of Linux support at all, but they will support it if you bug them enough. When I moved in a few weeks ago, I went through six different tech guys before I found one that was able to just punch my MAC address manually into their DHCP servers (They have an automated process to do this on Windows and OSX machines).
Unix yes. However no one outside of computer science would have a clue. We had a whole lot of Sun spark systems as well as several VMS and some mainframe (old) running unix and dummy terminals. Of course I graduated back in 2000 you whippersnappers! Heck I remember using Pine for email and Lynx for "browsing" (air quotes) when I first started. The coolest thing at the time was IRC, where you could enter "rooms" and "chat" with someone around the world by typing. Brought the world together via flamers.
I remember one educated conversation I had where were we having the discussion about who knew how to party harder. The US folks of course disagreed, stating in fact they were by far the hardest of partyers. I countered with no, we know how to party. Then the said that she was Cajun and thus were the biggest party people in the world. I then stated that I was from Nova Scotia, Canada and that we kicked their ass out of the province back in 1755 because they were not pulling their weigh in the party, which promptly ended the conversation. Good times that was, truly a golden age of thought.
Yes. There is a linux lab. I haven't had any prof's require anything that couldn't be done on linux...Math department mostly uses scientific linux or ubuntu...CS and CE like their unix (particularly gcc) and actually force the windows people to use cygwin ( losers :-p ). I think the only problem you might have is if they required a windows only CADD program or journalism which might force people to have all of their expensive software toys...
I attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and work at their ResNet office. I myself use an eee pc with Arch Linux loaded on it and it works flawlessly, for the most part. There's absolutely no trouble connecting to wireless networks, and the school isn't big on using VPNs. The bigger issues are applications: I obviously can't natively run Maple or Matlab from the netbook, but thankfully you can use apps over the school network via citrix, and they also work decently in WINE.
At work it's hardly ever the case when we get someone who even dual boots Linux. We don't officially support it, but we actually use it every now and then, mostly as a LiveCD. Like macs, we don't turn them away when students ask for assistance, but we're technically not suppose to service them.
Some departments do use Linux for research purpouses, such as our atmospheric research "supercomputer" that runs redhat. In the past the school once also provided RHEL to students, but when I asked for a copy no one seemed to know what I was talking about, so it's likely that they didn't continue the license in favor of a Vista one, and later windows 7.
The biggest issue I've found to using Linux is that formatted .docx documents, which are used often, don't carry over well into OpenOffice. It's been, what, 3 years since Office 07 came out? You'd think that would be enough time to work out these issues, but then again, OO.org has never been perfect.
Here at BYU, practically everything is Linux on the backend and there is plenty of support for Linux. If you are in the EE, CE, CS or IT programs, most classes require Linux.
That's what I thought.
While a definite latecomer to this post, here's some info that may be of use to this topic: linuxaudio.org and its subdomains are all hosted by DISIS/Music Dept. at Virginia Tech (http://disis.music.vt.edu). Likewise, at DISIS we support Linux, Mac, and Windows through curriculum as well as infrastructure. Finally, for the Linux enthusiasts, this spring we've started a new program titled L2Ork, or Linux Laptop Orchestra. For more info please visit http://l2ork.music.vt.edu./ Cheers!
It depends on what you mean by "support." My university doesn't "support" GNU/Linux in the sense that they wouldn't fix your daughter's laptop if the screen fell off, but they might give her the relevant data she needs for networking. And then everything is done through the web, so she won't be missing anything essential for class. This is the very reason the web was built in the first place.
I use a GNU/Linux workstation and have had no problems. I don't know any undergrads who use GNU/Linux laptops, but my fellow grad students who do have not had any problems that they've told me about.
Network connectivity is the big one.
The other important one would be special applications, like Mathematica that she might be required to use for a class. IN that case I just run it off the nearest GNU/Linux cluster in an X server using ssh. Teach her how to do that and she'll be set.
Unfortunately people do shove proprietary software down the throats of every undergrad here; it's really disappointing. They're convinced that they have two choices when it comes to computing.
Many of the big decision makers at universities don't know that much about IT and are scared sh*tless about what innovative students might be able to do with their computers. Dorm living poses a unique problem because the students are in their "private home" yet the internet access is provided by the university. All Slashdot readers are aware of the big sticky mess this creates regarding the sharing of copyrighted music. Basically, if the university top brass doesn't understand the technology, they are afraid kids could use it to do something illegal or unscrupulous that could somehow be linked back to the school. My first year at a major state university (2004), I received an unfriendly call from IT forcing me to take down my wireless router in my dorm because students were not allowed to use routers or broadcast private wifi signals. In preparation for college, I had purchased a laptop and wifi printer (as well as a wifi adapter for my PS2) so my intentions were entirely shut down by university IT over an oppressive technology mandate. The next year, I tried it all again and never heard from IT. By my junior year, everyone had a personal wifi router in their dorm room. The university must have caught on to the trend.
Not just linux.
Much of the campus does IT at the departmental level. The central IT department is mostly concerned over networks, firewalls, site licensed software, and assorted campus services. (DNS, Mail, backups.) Last time I looked they were a sunsite, and had mirrors of several linux distributions.
The Chem department has two labs that during teh day are windows labs, and at night turn into a beowulf cluster doing computational quantum chemistry. It's called werewolf.
Lot of linux labs over in engineering.
Math department had linux, windows, SGI, HPUX, Solaris, Next on desktops. We used openbsd for firewall. Freebsd for servers.
Space phyics had AIX, Nexts, Stardent Titan (SysV) and the world's only myrias MP3.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
If you've got a question about a college when you're taking a tour, why not ask? You can't expect the guide to know everything, but the guide really should be ready to cope with any vaguely reasonable question. If the guide had first found out it was a computer question, and then recommended asking the right department, that would have been reasonable. Blank stares are not.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I am a CS student at Chico State, and if you are not running Linux, you are going to have a hard time. Almost every class is geared for creating software in a UNIX environment (though you can use windows, it is more of pain). Most of our servers also run off Linux
where I am a freshman. Some computer labs on campus contain Linux machines. Campus WiFi is accessible on Linux (I use Jaunty 9.04, too). Shared printing under Linux is functional (actually better; you can do it without authentication because of a current issue with Samba and IPP both sharing the same printer with different setups). The school provides SSH/SFTP access to several campus Unix machines (Solaris & Debian Linux, iirc) for uploading files and running Unix applications.
Boston University offers it's own "BU linux" which is based off of CentOS. Their stance on linux support is as follows:
"What's the status of official Linux support at BU?
We provide help with many Linux Operating systems, such as Ubuntu and Debian, but we have the greatest knowledge of our own custom distribution, BU Linux, which is built from CentOS source code, the Red Hat Enterprise source. Check out the Installation pages for information on how to download and install BU Linux. "
I think BU linux covers remote printing, VPN, and Wi-fi configuration, but as far as classroom applications, a lot of times those are through outside companies, so if you've got trouble with that, you may end up going to the campus lab or borrowing a friend's computer when it comes time to submit your assignments. As far as support for other distributions, it probably depends on how knowledgeable the IT staff you speak with are on your specific need.
Fortunately, in Greece and in Europe in general, Apple has such a small share that is not even considered an option. Most of the universities here, run Linux in their servers and pc-labs/classroms and windows unfortunately in libraries.
Our campus is pretty good about supporting linux.
The wifi is easy to use with Linux. Windows has to undergo a virus and updates check, whereas macs and linux do not.
Printing and VPN are trickier. They aren't really supported, but I bet you could get them working fairly easily.
I know where I went to school (Drexel University in Philadelphia PA) supports Linux. Granted the public access machines are a mix of mac and windows but you have no problems using any of the university services on Linux. The Philadelphia Linux Users Group (PLUG) meets a short walk off campus too. So there is a small but growing community of users in the area.
At CMU: If you are in Computer Science (probably some other departments as well), Linux use is basically the expected case, both at home and in the labs.
If you are in other departments, you'll still be fine running Linux on your personal machines, but the department that runs the public lab machines is Linux-hostile, and the number of public Linux lab machines (outside the CS department's labs) seems to decrease every year.
Posted anonymously because said department doesn't like it much when people complain about it.
Oregon State University
OSU Open Source Labs FTW
So, you think there's a good chance they know what Linux is. It's still stupid to ask what level of support there is. That's a complex question. You don't ask the guide who the cooling plant works either.
I would. They knew about Windows and Mac for support. Why not linux? You can try and claim because they are the OS's used in the real world, but Linux is used widely in the business world. Linux servers run the majority of the business market, and if you want to refute that, please look up some figures first; you'll even find Microsoft admits this.
A tour guide should know at least the essentials of what the college does and does not support. How is it being a jerk to ask a simple question? How hard is it to say "I'm not sure but I can ask a staff member at the end of the tour"? Or to suggest a person or place they can go to to get that information? Or maybe the person could simply ask what Linux is if they are completely unsure what it is and then be able to better explain it. I'm not attacking the tour guide, just your claim that the person is being a jerk for asking if the college supports a widely used Operating System. Thats all.
-Jessica-
Bemidji State University in northwestern Minnesota have Windows XP, Mac OS, and Linux all wrapped into one very nice "restart the computer and choose your poison" package... my only complaint about this setup is that we have to use those little tiny apple keyboards... but what a way to become exposed to the multiple OS lifestyle!
The University of Minnesota Duluth is pretty Linux friendly. Most of the tech support people use it and can help the students out. Also there's at least one nice lab in the CS department running Ubuntu (Core 2 Duos and 4GB ram)
Majority of the colleges use MS OS for daily and wide spread common task . Where as linux is only used in case of platform specific development as such in Computer Science Engineering division....
Interestingly enough, I've had Symantec antivirus on a windows computer detect and delete a Linux rootkit I had on a USB drive.
My university in Belgium does support linux, all the way. The pc's in the pc-rooms even dual boot in win xp and debian.
Until the day I had a deadline and I was required to upload my project as a zip to their website. :\project.zip format". Sigh.
60 minutes before the deadline, I did or at least I tried: "Upload path is not in the
I removed the JavaScript check, tried again and the cgi script returns the same error ....
Ended up installing IE6 in wine to submit my project.zip for a fucking computer science assignment ....
The University of Hannover is very Linux/Unix friendly. All institutes I've had contact with used Linux on their new desktops and servers. Some older machines ran SunOS or Solaris.
The FH Hannover still sticks to NetWare and Windows AFAIK.
Here at the University of Alaska Anchorage our school does not officially support LiNUX (tiao), but I use slackware to connect to our VPN almost daily. I do most thing on slackware or Ubuntewwwww, and I rdesktop in to my work pc to do things that require Microsoft's version of windows software (like some of our purchased SQL tools).
When I develop apps, I try to develop them as web apps so they're to available all our students, faculy & staff w/a web browser; Microsoft, Mac or even that slackware LiNUX geek running Opera on fvwm.
Pat Borjon
IS Consultant
this runs on slack!
http://phb.uaa.alaska.edu/sfra/
In the Netherlands you have colleges where the teachers tell you to forget about Linux, because only Microsoft counts ;-)
I have a friend wanted to make a school project using a Linux server + Apache, his idea was rejected by the IT teacher.
There are also schools where they give stimulation ONLY on using MS products..
Saludos, Anibal Ojeda http://anibalnet.nl
I'm a student at Penn State, and I work providing help in the computer labs, so I can say, here at least, we definitely still have labs, and they are still in use. People use them because they have software they might not own at home, or to print when they don't have a printer, or even so they don't have to pull out a laptop. Even though everyone pretty much has their own computer, the labs still have their place in student life.
Although most of our labs are Windows/Mac, there's a few Linux labs on campus, and a few labs that have a couple Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) boxes in them.
The City College of New York, in my recent experience, doesn't use Linux at all. All the public computers I ever saw there were Windows or Mac. Intro C++ course required Visual Studio, and the assembly course required MASM. (I'm sure there were some Linux-related courses in CS, but those are the only two CS courses I took, so I can't say first-hand.) I once tried to connect to the wireless network using a Linux machine and gave up -- Windows worked fine.
On the bright side, I wasn't ever expected to have Windows on my own computer. When Windows-only software was required (like MASM), I could use the campus computers. (It's possible I could have asked the professor to let me use Linux instead, too -- this was before I got into Linux.) Web services seemed to support Linux okay -- I had to change my User-Agent for a while, but I think they fixed that. I knew a few professors who used Linux on their office workstations.
I spent four weeks working on math at the CUNY Graduate Center this past summer, and while I didn't see much of their computer systems, the public computers in the math lounge (?) were mostly Windows, but several (~1/3, maybe) ran Ubuntu 9.04, with one lone Mac huddled off in the corner. I didn't run into many problems using the Linux machines. (Although they should have set up pam_mount, and there was one that didn't boot for a day or two because the filesystem needed fixing and it refused to run fsck -y without a root password. And Flash wasn't installed, but maybe that's a good thing. :) )
Now I'm a grad student at NYU, and when I walked into my new office for the first time I found my computer was RHEL 5. I was given a login that I can use to access various university servers remotely -- seemingly a mix of Solaris and Linux. I can use a web app to check my mail and set up forwarding -- or I can use GNU mail and create a .forward file. When I was in the office of an administrator talking about my program, I saw her typing out e-mail on a Unix command line of some kind (although it might have been PuTTY). NYU seems very Linux-friendly -- or at least Courant (the math/CS institute).
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Kentucky is Linux compatible, although not mentioned about being supported. Some teachers even advise using open source software. The only issue I've had is when I digitally submit a paper using the online classes or email, I have to save it as a Microsoft Word Document. Still, not too bad, thanks to OpenOffice. I'm suprised about the fact that some people know about Linux there. I use Compiz Fusion with the desktop cube, and while switching desktops, someone noticed and said, "wow, someone's using Linux on the school network." It made my inner geek happy. I am the only one that I know of that uses Linux only though. I've had no trouble with it, and hopefully the programming classes' teacher will allow it, too.
I don't think UMD officially supports Linux though I bet they do partially in their computer science and engineering departments. Most computers here are Window Dells or Apples. However, there's no real barrier to Linux compatibility. You can get onto umd-secure provided you know the information to enter and where to get the certificate. You can use Blackboard, and you can type your papers in OpenOffice and create your presentations with OpenOffice (just have to save them in MSOffice file formats when submitted).
But I don't think there's any official support for VPN or on campus printing (if UMD even has on campus printing without going onto one of their computers).
So because investment banks have a craptacular business plan and fail miserably after they saturate the market with impossible financial instruments their use of Linux to get the job done isn't a recommendation?
Linux didn't screw up their business, their business plan (which probably never mentioned Linux) is what screwed them.
damn FreeBSD trolls
Surprisingly No. I go to DeVry university. They just updated there wireless, and although they say Linux is supported no one has been able to use the wireless. People with windows has not been able to use the wireless sometimes either. It is quite ridiculous...
I work in a college IT department and we definitely do not support Linux. You're free to run it, but when you look at the logistics of support, there are probably only one or two students in a thousand who use it on their laptops, and if they know enough to run it day to day, they should know enough to fix it. Staff on the other hand, only a few of us have experimented with it, and I don't think any of us use it anywhere approaching regularly. We'd pretty much have to have weeks of man-hour downtime to train up on it, or hire a team of specialists for the one student in five years who might come in for help with it.
The only major point of conflict with it though would be that the net admins require everyone to run the Cisco Clean Access Agent (now NAC Agent) to check their PC and virus scanners for updates before they have internet access. It's available for Mac and PC, but I know of no Linux version, so that puts a damper on that. We also do not support OS/2, BSD, Solaris (well, on student machines...), BeOS, Midori, CP/M, and so on... but if enough students used any of them, we'd train up on it.
I have Ubuntu 9.04 running on my net book and wanted to connect to the (more or less) campus-wide wifi (Eduroam they call it). When I first tried to connect I was disappointed to discover that it would not. After some un-successful tinkering myself I took my net book to the uni IT-dept for help.
They were useless! They had 2 linux boxes for "testing" for the entire university and basically told me to leave! lol! If i have enough time a may have another look at it but we shall see.
Linux installed on desktop pc's (since ppl seem to become paralyzed when the ms-word icon is missing but they do have openoffice and the likes installed on every pc as well ... long way to go i suppose
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
i work for IT for a university...
Linux support is very limited outside of the Computer Science dept. and the IT dept.; which aren't really big.
There are about a dozen techs with only about myself and one other know anything about Linux for support. The wireless/wired allows for Linux machines to connect, but beyond that...forget it. Even though Linux is free, and could save a university hundred of thousands of dollars; trying to get the university's systems chancellor to change his mind is near damn impossible. I mean if the tax payers are paying for it, we might as well use it...that how it goes. Hence the usage of Micro$oft stuff on the campus.
the University of Edinburgh had primarily Windows in the public labs and Linux in the CS and AI labs back when I graduated (2004). They had a few macs too, but only in the larger labs.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
The University of Michigan has pretty good Linux support. This goes for both the campus wide IT central services group and the two largest undergraduate colleges (Literature, Science and Arts; Engineering). Linux is used heavily at UM for servers and in many public computing labs (in addition to Mac and Windows). A fair number of the campus IT staff and consultants are skilled at Linux and very willing to help students. The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department has a major Linux operation and supports all of Fedora, Ubuntu, and Red Hat Enterprise. Linux laptops work fine on the UM campus WiFi net. Not all ports are open without a Cisco VPN client (which sometimes works on some versions of Linux), but the web based authentication works fine and it is easy to set up ssh tunnels to get around the port restrictions.
I went to college and learned Linux while I was there because it was required as part of my server training. However other teachers were against Linux because they didn't want to have to deal with it.
I put Linux on a student's computer at my business and put openoffice with the 2007 compatibility and made it's default saving format XP/2003 (doc not docx) Her teacher had no problem until she was kind enough to tell her teacher she was not using Microsoft Office and that the student's didn't need to buy it. The teacher replied to the student by giving her an F on the assignment and telling her that the College rules state that she must use Microsoft Office to make the documents.
I tried to get Helios to deal with it but I guess he was busy.
Wireless should work fine assuming the chipset in her box is supported by Ubuntu (assuming it is). One guy here was talking about having an incompatible dhcp client. Im assuming this is very rare but, of course, dhcp is not required for a connection. VPN should also work. Most likely she will have to deal with the pptp protocol but this is supported in Ubuntu with a little bit of apt-get. Printing is driver dependent (usually pretty good) and application support is dependent on the application (obviously). If its coded using the winapi and not supported by wine then shes outta luck. A virtual machine might be a good solution for her in this case.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.