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NZ School Goes Open Source Amid Microsoft Mandate
Dan Jones writes "Kiwis have built an entire school IT system out of open source software, in less than two months, despite a deal between the New Zealand government and Microsoft that effectively mandates the use of Microsoft products in the country's schools. Albany Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Auckland has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. It's using a range of applications like OpenOffice, Moodle for education content, Mahara for student portfolios, and Koha for the library catalogue. Ubuntu Linux is on the desktop and Mandriva provides the server. Interestingly, the school will move into new purpose-built premises this year, which include a dedicated server room design based on standard New Zealand school requirements, including four racks each capable of holding 48 servers for its main systems. The main infrastructure at Albany Senior High only requires four servers, suggesting an almost 50-fold saving on hardware requirements."
The contract stipulates that Microsoft gets paid regardless of whether schools actually use their software. So while the schools may not be forced through contract to use MS software, it doesn't matter to Microsoft as they still get paid for non-existent software.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
There's an easier way to create folder shortcuts on the desktop, which doesn't involve typing text paths: Right-click on the folder you want a shortcut to. Click "Make link". Drag the link to the desktop. Rename it if desired.
I'm not sure if the lack of "all users"-type functionality is a deficiency in Ubuntu, or an annoyance in Windows. For a single-user desktop, "All Users" is completely unnecessary, and on multi-user desktops I've more often seen it lead to annoyances than actually be useful. Google Chrome's Windows installer actually installs the program to the user desktop only by default, which will become more common as UAC-type enforcement on the Windows desktop becomes more common.
-- Old Man Kensey
Your argument is that because Linux is not like Windows, it will never supplant it. But, a copy of Windows will never be as good at being Windows-like than Windows itself, so attempting to mimic Windows is a losing strategy.
IMHO there are many ways in which Linux is better than Windows. I am able to work much faster under Linux than I can do under Windows and I find doing almost anything under Windows an exercise in frustration.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The idea behind Ubuntu (and desktop linux in general), is that it is a multi-user OS. Multi-user in the sense that the administrator determines what a user can do, and the user can do anything they want within these limits. There is no need for easily accessible multi-user desktop-shortcuts, because each user should be allowed to set up their own desktop the way they want it. You just have to shift the way you think about your desktop environment a little bit.
It's called a 'loss leader'.... the kids produced by this system will not know that there are alternatives and be on the hook for full priced retail software for life... so yes, it's a very good deal... for MS.
If they can't work out how to use MS Word in five minutes when they are used to openoffice then they really won't be trying.
Most of this stuff is so similar that it doesn't matter. When you get down to mail merges or other stuff just about every company does it differently on the same platform so they'll have to learn it anyway.
True, if they are setting up computer systems they'll be at a disadvantage - you have to know the Microsoft platform to understand that you choose "local printer" when you want to connect directly to a printer on the network (and a thousand other quirks).
By the way, I've heard EXACTLY this argument before about why schools should be full of Apple computers. It really has very little merit. If you are talking about a single semester technical college course it has merit, but for general situations it doesn't.
In a ten year time scale we went from MSDOS to XP in business desktop computing. There is no point at all in directly targeting a specific business desktop environment in the early and middle years of school and not much in the late years.
Yay! By that logic most people would fail in the real world of business.
You know when I went to school, we had a real world business system from Microsoft. We had Microsoft Works for Xenix and Microsoft Works for DOS. State of the art systems as Microsoft surely called them back then.
It's no use teaching children about feature 5432 of version 54.22.154.12.b of some software product as it will disappear or be made obsolete by some other function in the next version, often by the time the teacher actually gets ot teach what he has learnt.
What does matter is teaching what those programs are about. What is a word processor? What are the typical features of such a piece of software? It doesn't matter if you teach that with Microsoft Word 95 or Open Office, in fact Open Office has the advantage of being available to the children.
No matter what software product you will use as an example, by the time the children start working, it will be long obsolete.
There is one _big_ minefield with Windows, and that is software distribution. How on earth can a non-geek ever find out if a software package he downloads is legit or a piece of malware? This is probably the single biggest worry about amateurs using windows systems. (to some extend the problem is the same with the Mac)
Most Linux distributions solve that by having a package manager. I can safely tell a person to search for software in there and be assured that the chance they download malware is very slim.
As long as Microsoft refuses to address this problem and make all files downloaded instantly executable, I just cannot recommend Windows to the average user.
Perpetuating the use of MS products is better for MS than switching to alternatives. Pirating a few copies of Windows/Office is a papercut to the beast. Your use of Linux (and related software) is the only hope of slaying the beast.
which leaves those administrators who decided to use open source software vulnerable to claims of wasting valuable resources implementing other solutions when "Industry Standard" microsoft software has already been paid for
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Moodle, Mahara, Koha, Ubuntu, Mandriva
Is the weirdology in software naming caused by the lack of available domain names or something? Just asking...
Trademark law.
Try finding a name that is available in 150 countries. The first one that you don't hate is the one to go with.
Work bio at MMWD
This is a new school, one that was not previously locked in to any proprietary setup... They were able to start with a clean slate and do things properly.
Incidentally, how big or inefficient is the average school in new zealand if they require 48 servers? Just what exactly would all those servers do?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
According to TFA, they saved money despite paying for the unused MS licenses.
"The brilliance of Microsoft's business model is they get the same amount of money regardless of who uses it," Osborne said. However, the school has saved significantly in other areas,
I also like the fact that the whole system was planned and implemented in less than two months. Sort of gives the lie to the whole "Linux is difficult" thing.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You write that as if it was normal, to assume that schools exist to teach children knowledge and make them intelligent.
School is a direct advancement from what Otto von Bismarck wanted:
Something like military service, but for children. To form them into what were the ideas back then:
To obey, to sit still and listen, to train things over and over again, to learn them by heart, etc.
Not to come up with free thoughts, ideas, and creativity. Because those would have created people who would want to lead themselves, not to blindly follow.
This was always the goal. And the idea that it could be something else, is a relatively new concept, that some dreamed about, but that still is very far from becoming real.
School is simply not what you should look at, if you want to educate your children to become creatives and leaders.
Even 4chan is better at free thought and creativity, than any school.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.