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?'

Comments

Move to Finland

[AliasMarlowe]

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.

TBH...

[janeuner]

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.

Who cares?

[localman57]

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).

Re:Who cares?

[cptdondo]

Well, there's tolerant and then there's hostile. Take my workplace. If your PDA doesn't run Windows, you can't use it to connect to your desktop. You can check email through the web interface - but only if you use IE. You can use our groupware through the web - but only if you use IE. Unless it runs Windows, you're not allowed to connect to the network. So... Yup, I can bring in my Sharp Zaurus PDA with Angstrom, and my Asus eeePC with xubuntu, but I can't actually use them for anything, or, according to IT edicts, can't connect them to our network. So on the few occasions when I brought them in, I used the Public Library WiFi connection. So the question has real substance. If their email is MS Outlook, and their web interface is written in ActiveX, then you're screwed if you have linux.

Re:Who cares?

[nine-times]

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.

I wouldn't think it's comparable to cable TV or pool tables at all. Pool tables are for fun. If my kid wants to play on a pool table, he can find a bar to go play. Supporting Linux and OpenOffice is a horse of a different color.

Here's the thing: education is very expensive already without making it more expensive unnecessarily. Why should students be forced to spend hundreds of dollars on software licensing when perfectly good alternatives are free? In my mind, supporting free software and developing open source textbooks should be among the goals of any modern university. That both of these things aren't prioritized tells me that these schools are run by people who are either corrupt or clueless. Well, or maybe just apathetic and not very good.

Re:Who cares?

[randalotto]

At my school, we're required to use Exam4 software, which doesn't run on Linux, for ALL of our exams (unless we want to handwrite them.) Questions to the registrar and IT people about Linux support elicit a response, essentially, of "tough shit." So, I care. It's a pain in the ass to have to borrow a laptop or purchase Windows for the privilege of typing a final exam. I'm fine with the school not promoting Linux, but it shouldn't be actively hostile towards it.

Re:Who cares?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

I wouldn't so much respond with "Who cares?", as with "Get your ideology out of here!".

Unless you are actually studying CS or IT, then Linux versus Windows versus OS-X is irrelevant.

Regardless of your own favourite platform, an institute of higher learning has to deal with reality. Sorry to break it to you, but that means that they are not going to invest in staff time and training on the off-chance someone wants to use Hanna Montana Linux. They're going to provide the computing resources they believe you need for your time there, with the lowest level of expenditure they can get away with.

That means you're on your own for Linux support. There might be a local user group, or the odd Linux user in the IT department, but that's it.

You're wasting your time asking about Linux, particularly asking the tour guide who's doing this for brownie points with future sales or marketing employers. Ask the college IT department, and *don't* ask about Linux, ask about which standards and protocols they use. Then you can decide if your Linux laptop is compatible with the college you'd like to go to.

Re:Who cares?

[Atlantis-Rising]

At which point you get Windows and write it off as a cost of attending school, like a textbook (have you seen how much textbooks cost these days?)

Really, your operating system choice should not be so totally ingrained with your personality that you can't change to adapt to situations where you may be required to use something else.

Re:Who cares?

[elrous0]

She might have to live in the crappy freshman dorm too, and park her car off campus, and do a million other things that she'll have to bite her lip on and just deal with. Colleges don't cater to everyone's whims, you know.

Re:Who cares?

[TorKlingberg]

What is it with Slashdot these days? I'd never demand to use Linux at work, but I use what I want at home. The submitter asked about using Linux on your personal PC. I would be very disappointed is my university required me to use specific operating systems at home. I didn't expect them to help me configure Linux, but I did expect their systems to use open standards.

Re:Who cares?

[Mr. Slippery]

At which point you get Windows and write it off as a cost of attending school, like a textbook (have you seen how much textbooks cost these days?)

What's the cost of data insecurity, of giving up freedoms, and of supporting a criminal corporation? What form do you write those costs off on?

your operating system choice should not be so totally ingrained with your personality that you can't change to adapt to situations where you may be required to use something else.

My preference is not for a particular operating system, it is for open standards. A situation where I am forced to use proprietary standards results from either incompetence or corruption; both are things I'd like to avoid.

Re:Who cares?

[Foofoobar]

It's only ideology if you are looking at it from a 'religious' perspective when viewing that question rather than a support question as to whether they support open standards and formats. In which case, you project your own ideology onto the question.

Re:Who cares?

[Tetsujin]

At which point you get Windows and write it off as a cost of attending school, like a textbook (have you seen how much textbooks cost these days?)

What's the cost of data insecurity, of giving up freedoms, and of supporting a criminal corporation? What form do you write those costs off on?

No, no... it ain't working. Maybe if we played "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the background while you said that? Let's try that...

Re:Who cares?

[gtbritishskull]

He didn't say he was picking a school based upon whether it supported linux or not. He asked whether it has been easy or hard to run linux on a college campus. I don't know about you, but when I went to college I bought my computer BEFORE I got there. It was only AFTER I got there that I was able to judge how well linux was supported. Maybe he is trying to figure out if he should go ahead and spend the $$$ to put windows on her computer, or if it is unnecessary.

Re:Who cares?

[node 3]

At which point you get Windows and write it off as a cost of attending school, like a textbook (have you seen how much textbooks cost these days?)

Really, your operating system choice should not be so totally ingrained with your personality that you can't change to adapt to situations where you may be required to use something else.

It's one thing when you're talking about using other's computers (like at the office, or at school), but when it's your own computer, there's definitely grounds to be concerned about it.

Sure, reality is rarely ideal, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't wish otherwise, or look into alternatives. You're acting like people shouldn't have personal preferences, and should always accede to the whims of others.

Put yourself in the reverse situation. What if your school/workplace required you to run Linux at home, when you're currently using Windows? (and your home situation is dorm-like in that having multiple computers is not a terribly straightforward option). You'd have to switch your iTunes or WinAmp or whatever over to Linux. No photoshop, different camera software, OpenOffice instead of Word, no games, etc., etc.

I'm not saying that schools should fully support Linux. I think that's an unreasonable expectation (although the amount of Windows-only requirements should be fairly limited, as most things are naturally multi-platform, like WiFi, and shouldn't be locked in to Windows at all), and the poster's daughter is likely going to need to either dual-boot or run Windows in a VM.

Even so, there's nothing wrong with asking. Treating him like his preference in OS's is some sort of character flaw ("Really, your operating system choice should not be so totally ingrained with your personality that you can't change to adapt to situations where you may be required to use something else.") is uncalled for.

Re:Who cares?

[node 3]

I don't give up any freedoms.

Yes, you do. Got a bug in Windows? Can you fix it in the source, and recompile? Can you give a copy of Windows to a friend? Can you reinstall Windows on a second PC? If MS's WGA decides your license is invalid, even though it is valid, can you get MS to restore your license?

No? What freedoms did you have in mind when you wrote that?

I am fully of the opinion that once you've been convicted and served your time, you're free to go and no stigma should accrue to you. I don't blame Microsoft for having been convicted regarding their business practices any more than I would refuse to associate with someone who, in the past, had been convicted of shoplifting.

MS was convicted of a felony, and have not shown any sense of remorse or rehabilitation. If someone was a repeat shoplifter, and continued to engage in shoplifting after conviction, I wouldn't necessarily "refuse to associate" with them, but if I were a shop owner, I'd definitely keep my eye on them if not ban them from my store outright.

Probably the form that requires me not to be an insane zealot.

Insanity is often cited as holding a world-view that is inconsistent with reality. While "zealot" may apply to the OP, I don't think insanity is terribly apt. Your views, on the other hand, do seem to contradict reality rather squarely...

Re:Who cares?

[bzipitidoo]

You have no right to give a copy of a digital work to a friend.

Ok, I'll bite on this bait. Yes we do have that right. It is a natural right. Anyone can legally give a digital copy of the Bible or any other work that's out of copyright to anyone else. We can also give out copies legally with permission from the rights holder.

And, most important of all, anyone can give out copies of digital works without knowing or caring about the legality. No matter how badly certain industries want to make it legally or technically impossible, they can't stop us from copying.

Re:Who cares?

[Yfrwlf]

There's no excuse for not using standards that are cross-platform. Doing so is dumb/fail/stupid. Why do you think there is so much development for "cloud computing" and java stuff? College IT departments, along with those in ALL educational surroundings, need to remember they are taking on the responsibility of teachers and are directly influencing the lives of students. They need to remember they are targets for corruption from software companies wanting to convince them to make their students buy the company's products. They directly help determine how expensive it will be for students to attend college. With all this in mind, using open source software and cross-platform software to give the students freedom and help lower college costs. Students should indeed be concerned about it and try to attend colleges which care about their wallets, freedom, and flexibility.

Re:Who cares?

[Zordak]

Exam4 is great. It's a clean, no-frills Windows application that doesn't rely on any funny DLLs or external files. It's perfect for running in WINE. The problem is Exam4 checks to make sure it's not running in a VM or emulator (or not-an-emulator). This is to make sure you can't get around the feature of locking you out of the rest of your computer so you can't cheat (like surfing the internet or looking at your notes). Now, there may be a way to spoof real hardware and make it think it's running natively to get around this. But if you do that, you run the very real risk of the administration deciding that you are cheating and tossing out your test or even expelling you from school (and not unreasonably---it would give you access to notes, internet, etc). It's just not worth it to have to risk your entire academic career on an OS preference. For the exam, you either dual boot (which is what I did), or you borrow a computer with Windows on it. But I would never try anything cute with the exam software. There's just too much at stake.

Re:Who cares?

[RobBebop]

You're acting like people shouldn't have personal preferences, and should always accede to the whims of others.

I'm reminded of the quote, "A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment while an unreasonable man adapts the environment to him. Progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Re:Who cares?

[Zordak]

The proctor.

Spyware not available

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the college's "mandatory" spyware only runs on Windows and Mac, you're out of luck.

Re:Spyware not available

[AndrewNeo]

I visited a friend at college who had that same system (a lot of college use this same network, I can't remember what it was called, though.)
All it did was check the browser's User-Agent, so if you spoofed yourself as Linux you could just use a standard login instead of having the security suite installed.

You asked a guide?

[0100010001010011]

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.

support or allow?

[qwertphobia]

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.

Re:support or allow?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

They don't realize the nightmare it will be when some kid can't get their work done because they bought this fashion accessory that can't DO anything and they don't know how to use it.

I suggest you pick up a mac made after 1999 and see what it can actually do. Seriously - fashion accessory?

Our scientists have Linux boxen (the plural of linux box is linux boxen) and they know how to use their own stuff. They don't need support from my team. That is how it should be in most schools.

That's great until you find out that the school requires your PC run some windows shiteware before your mac addy is allowed on the network. Much better to find out ahead of time if it will factor in your decision process.

The connection between academia and Apple is annoying. Apple provides cheap stuff, school likes cheap(er) stuff, students use it, go into real world... and find a Dell at their cube

The idea is to build support for macs in corpland. not that the current state of mac works well on a large network, but first things first.

University of Central Florida

[jojoguy]

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.

University of brussels does

[PissedNumlock]

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.

University of Cincinnati

[kungfuj35u5]

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/

how about...

[buddyglass]

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.

Re:how about...

[srealm]

Even that's wrong. Quite a number of fortune 500 companies rely on Linux heavily. Almost every investment bank certainly, but I'd wager a number of others too. Maybe not on the desktops of the employees, but still, Linux is certainly a viable and well-used platform in fortune 500s.

Re:how about...

[MightyMartian]

Yeah, no one has Samba servers or firewalls running variants of Linux. No one out there runs Apache.

Any IT department that doesn't at least have some familiarity with Linux is rather like having a garage that doesn't know how to fix Jeeps.

Blank Stare

[Sethus]

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).

Spotty support

[Devil's BSD]

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...

Re:I can not imagine a CS dept not supporting Linu

[JSBiff]

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.

NC State University

[toppavak]

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).

Re:NC State University

[toppavak]

After re-reading your post, I should probably also clarify that the University's IT infrastructure and services provided to students is one of the best I've ever seen, from personal experience its light-years ahead of UNC Chapel Hill and a lot more user-friendly and headache-free than GaTech's. I've heard similar stories from many friends that have gone on to grad school. With regards to Wi-Fi access, they use a fairly platform-agnostic web-based authentication portal supplemented by the ability to register your mac address (also a web-based tool) so you don't have to keep logging in. All VPN access either goes through Kerberos/AFS, SSH/SCP or, if you're checking out a virtual machine through the Virtual Computing Lab, RDP or a remote X-session. Remote printing is also a web-based interface and while some courses may require windows-only apps many, if not all, of these are available remotely (Solidworks and AutoCAD are the only two big ones that come to mind) and in computer labs.

Re:do tell :1 semester of "Linux" required course

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter; you need to pass high school level English to get in no matter where it is.

"Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide...

[DogDude]

"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?

You will want Virtual Box with XP installed.

[hellop2]

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.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[A12m0v]

Same where I went to college. The OS course was all done on Linux for obvious reasons and that what got me to switch to Linux at home.

USM is linux friendly.

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Nope.

[jhfry]

Actually my experience is quite different. Most universities and Colleges I have attended or worked with/for (I used to work in higher education) are heavily dependent upon FOSS for infrastructure and servers. Though I will admit I spent much more time with smaller private universities where they were more likely to use homegrown FOSS solutions than expensive commercial products just to save money.

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Does your car run on shit?

[drummerboybac]

I tried linux in my gas tank and dog shit on my computer, with mixed results

Oregon State

[phoenix0783]

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.

Yes at Carnegie Mellon

[pythonax]

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.

Re:Yes at Carnegie Mellon

[SteveAstro]

...... in the process of finishing a new Gates building, in which all the labs will be linux..

Oh the irony.

UIUC is Penguin friendly

[Seto89]

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...

University of Western Ontario

[Dakiraun]

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).

Re:Desktop Linux is a hobby

[dhilvert]

The difference would probably be that Linux is not uncommon for either research or study, and that a university that cannot provide support to the point of supporting a sizeable minority of students using Linux-based systems probably also has inferior programs in areas where Linux would normally be used (CS, EE, etc.).

That alone doesn't mean your laptop will work.

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[Neil Hodges]

"Obvious reasons"? The OS course at the University of Washington I took used the Windows Research Kernel.

Granted, I've been using Linux for many years before then, and would've preferred the course to be Linux-based, it was still a great learning experience.

Re:Desktop Linux is a hobby

[nbates]

Why do you say it is a hobbyist alternative? The institute where I studied (the best reputed place to study physics and engineering on my country) not only does support Linux, it is the only operative system available on the computer lab. There are a few windows computers available for some very specific programs, but most of the desktop computers (and servers, of course)

The reason for this is because it is the best solution for our needs, the most affordable one (best for the needs of the institution) and easier to maintain.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[yo_tuco]

"The OS course at the University of Washington I took used the Windows Research Kernel."

The UW? If they didn't, I doubt they would ever see another "donation" from Microsoft.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[A12m0v]

I always thought the reason they went for Linux for the OS lab, when everything else was Windows, is the fact that Linux is open source and we can get to see the code and play with it, to a degree. It sure seemed that way to me, even the book we used for the lectures had some exercises on compiling and tweaking Linux a bit.

Evidently the person posting cares

[thtrgremlin]

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)

Re:I can not imagine a CS dept not supporting Linu

[Darinbob]

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?

Re:"Does Your College Or University Support Linux?

[outZider]

Like Mac OS X, Linux anti-virus is primarily there to intercept crap on their way to a Windows machine.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[Natetheinfamous]

when was that? I took their OS course in 2003 and the coding assignments was almost entirely linux based.

Some yes, some not so much

[Jim Hall]

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.

It doesn't matter..

[0x25]

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.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[cbhacking]

For those who don't know, the WRK is a mostly-complete source code distribution of the Windows 2000 kernel (NT 5.0). It's made available for academic and research uses. While the source isn't included for every single component, there's more then enough there to understand how the kernel works, how its components communicate, and to write your own extensions or modifications (system calls, changes to the scheduler, doing things at different points during initialization, modifying included drivers and so forth).

UW also offers OS courses based on the Linux kernel; which you take is a matter of preference as they satisfy the same prerequisites and are treated as equal in terms of degree progress.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[cbhacking]

Baseless accusations, much? For the TL;DR folks: UW uses Linux extensively, and it is required for many of our CSE clesses.

The UW offers OS courses on both the NT and Linux kernels - Neil chose to take the NT one, but in terms of degree progress the Linux version of the OS course is exactly equivalent. The CSE undergraduate labs are a mix of Windows and Linux boxes. The department offers a few Windows servers for student use, but the majority of the servers, including the file server, mail server, and cycle server are all Linux-based.

As for the required courses, one of the earliest courses in the curriculum teaches basic Linux knowledge, ranging from shell familiarity and manpages to scripting and regular expressions, plus gcc, make (and writing makefiles), and so forth. Later classes include security (one of the programming projects specificaly requires Linux and GDB knowledge), embedded systems (the latter half of the class uses an ARM chip running Linux, and we are required to modify a kernel driver and use the ALSA API), Networking (this one varies, but usually involves developing for a device like a router or N800, running Linux).

Re:High School

[symbolset]

Good for you! My high school was pretty high-tech too. We had an IBM PC in 1979 (OK, technically it was an IBM 5150. They didn't start calling it a PC until later), and a computer science teacher, Alan Schulz who was one of the "boys from Boca" that invented the damned thing. He got us a computer lab (with Apple ]['s of course) and a variety of other machines (does anybody really remember the Timex Sinclair or TI99/4a?). They made him teach math most of the time because computer sciences weren't some serious business endeavor back then. He owned the local Apple store.

He taught me a lot about basic science. Don't accept anything as a "magic black box". Start with an understanding of the transistor and how they build into gates and logic. Proceed to an understanding of machine language -- especially comparison and branch operations. When you know how such things are done on an electrical level it does amazing things for the persistence of your understanding of the rest of it and your ability to detect bullshit. Having struggled through a course where we had to write useful applications that worked in 8 bit opcodes written in pencil on paper in binary I learned some things I'm unlikely to forget. Doing so as the only member of a four-person team to produce anything useful I learned other facts that still give daily service. A few years ago I went back and some of the apps I wrote are still in daily use, though heavily modified of course.

As a historical note, the student computer society (BUHSCCIOBBDT) had fundraisers and bought some stock - IBM, Microsoft and Apple among others. It did quite well.

Logic diagrams, Venn diagrams, and other primitives are still as useful as they ever were. APL is still a write-only language. BASIC is still good for quick mock-ups of what a program will be when you've written it in a real language. Tape still sucks for bandwidth. ADA is still easy to sell and gruesome to program in. Game programming is still about balance between challenge and reward. GOTO is still flamebait. Programmers still play D&D (or some modern equivalent) in high school. Applications are still data structures + algorithms. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I learned then and in years following is now worthless (SNOBOL anyone?) but I'm doing better than some because my excursions from Assembler, C, and C++ have been recreational at most. I've collected scores of languages the way some people collect Happy Meal toys and discovered the same thing such collectors have: 90% of stuff that's manufactured is junk to stuff a landfill with.

I was also fortunate to be in school with folks like Robert Toth and Vince Sherart, who were great minds well ahead of their time. From your post I'm guessing that you're also surrounded by folks who will persist and do well.

Let me put this another way. In every field there's a ton of fakers who subsist by getting in with buzzword proficiency or an MCSE cert and rise to middle management through meeting management. These people serve the purpose of preventing excess productivity, which believe it or not is a socially useful goal. You don't have to be one of those. You can get ahead by knowing how to do stuff. If you proceed in your education from understanding the first causes to the prime forces, then when you have to deal with one of these jerks you can cut him off at the knees by pointing out the things he doesn't know, and in the process make your work environment more fun to be in. As a bonus it's fun to watch them wilt.

Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course

[jeremyp]

I find it a bit disturbing that an operating system course at a University would cover only one kernel, or even only two.