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Free Software For All Russian Schools In Jeopardy

Posted by kdawson on from the borg-not-taking-it-lying-down dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Last year, we discussed here a Russian plan to install free software in all its schools. Seems things aren't going so well. Funds for the project have been cut back, some of the free software discs already sent out were faulty, and — inevitably — Microsoft has agreed to a 'special price' for Windows XP used in Russian schools."

10 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. In Soviet Russia by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

    Free software costs too much? Really?

    Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.

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    1. Re:In Soviet Russia by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It depends though. If you look at a lot of (American) schools technology is crap. About 2 years ago I was in an elementary school computer lab with computers still running Windows 98(!) on hardware made for Windows 95. And legacy software wasn't the issue the school just didn't have the funds or the motivation to switch. After all a kid can learn just as well on a Pentium II that takes 4 minutes to respond to mouse input as a Core 2 duo that responds instantly right? Even the small expense of some noiseless thin clients and a powerful server might be too much because until the HDDs are dead, the memory is bad, the CD drives are stuck and the monitor has exploded, they have no desire to upgrade.

      Retraining is also hard. Schools (at least in America) generally have a large amount of dead weight. Teachers long past their prime who teach boring classes who are apathetic towards students but who have been tenured and can't be fired without having to fight through the unions. These teachers have no desire to get a new keyboard, let alone an entirely new OS or new ways of doing things. In fact I'm sure a lot of them would rather have paper grades and typewriters. So when the price is $20,000 to switch to Linux $50,000 to upgrade Windows or just $0 to do absolutely nothing, many schools choose the free option especially in lower grades.

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    2. Re:In Soviet Russia by symbolset · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Free software doesn't mean no costs. It just means cheaper, and usually only in long term. You have installation, training, support, cost of porting existing applications and data, etc.

      TCO for Windows involves the risk of 17 years in a siberian prison.

      TCO for Linux involves asking some people to work an hour late one day a week for a few months.

      Plugging that into my ROI calculator gives a time to recover investment of... 1.2 milliseconds.

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    3. Re:In Soviet Russia by symbolset · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru?

      I'm feeling my years. My grandmother has quite a few of them on me. It took me an hour to install her Linux over a year ago, and it still works fine. Nothing bad happened. I showed her how to install software and now she's got quite a lot of it. One of these days she's going to ask me to debug her wget scripts. Grandma never did learn to drive but she can MySpace like nobody's business.

      Where I'm at Linux geeks are more common than the other kind so they're not expensive. Your mileage may vary.

      Windows admins are cheap

      Not always, but sometimes, you do get what you pay for. The problem with Windows admins is that you also need a LOT of them. Just techs to clean malware and fix twitchy software is >1% of headcount for some large organizations. IMHO most Windows admins see the internal workings of the machine as a "black box" and they are neither able to nor interested in understanding the lower level of activity that drives the magic blinky lights. Linux geeks are a different breed indeed.

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    4. Re:In Soviet Russia by symbolset · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual. Also, most Russians are quite adaptable and resourceful - by necessity as they've been more challenged than we have in the west. Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs, and they had to do manual labor to get the tools to work the logs. I'm not kidding. After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch. In short these are not typically your inner-city career button pushers. The ability of Russians to endure travails without complaint that would wreck our average American polar explorer is legendary - they're almost British in this way.

      Localization is trivial. I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used. It's just Cryllic alphabet, keywords and fonts anyway. It's not like it's got some fancy top-to-bottom or right-to-left glyph sequence or anything. Lots of Russians use Linux by choice and I'm sure lots of them have figured this out. This isn't Windows: localization has been part of the standard GNU project template for many years.

      If they're complaining that they can't do it then it's because they've been paid handsomely to make such a complaint. Otherwise they wouldn't be Russian. Now, who would pay them to do that? And why is anybody listening?

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    5. Re:In Soviet Russia by Captian+Spazzz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Right Click the network manager icon in the top tool bar.
      Select EDIT Connections
      Select DSL (assuming that's the type of connection your using PPPOE for, but it should work regardless)
      Click Add
      Enter username and password and any other settings required.
      Connect
      ???
      Profit!

      Seriously dude I just bridged my DSL Modem and connected using the native PPPOE client in Ubuntu. No command line needed.

  2. Free by p0rnographer · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, free costs money!

  3. Donations? by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It almost smells like sabotage. I imagine MS wouldn't directly do it, but instead pay people to "keep an eye on the project" with a lot of wink-wink. I wonder if there's not a way to donate to the cause?

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  4. Re:Where can I send disks? by mk_is_here · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're trying to offer DDOS (Disk Delivery Overseas Service) to Russia?

  5. Free Windows SW is cheap marketing. by FrankHS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft gives the schools free software and Russian students learn to use it. They get the Microsoft propaganda (Lower TCO, innovative, how easy is is to do ... etc). In a few years these students are the experts and will be working in government, industry and where ever. When they are asked how to solve a problem they will usually recommend Microsoft because that is what they know. Now had they been trained on OSS they would recommend that. This is a quite a bargain for Microsoft, even if they give the schools free software forever. If it works for them a large part of Russia will be using and paying for Microsoft software, just like here.