Ask Slashdot: Linux Support In Universities?

An anonymous reader writes "I study Computer Science at a university in Melbourne, Australia. I recently went to a 'Directions of IT' seminar run by our central IT department, where students were invited to discuss issues with the senior management of IT. During discussion about proposed changes to our campus-wide wireless network, I asked if the new system would support Macs, Linux and other Operating Systems. Several of the managers laughed at this question, and one exclaimed 'Linux!' as if it was the punchline to a joke. The head of IT at least treated my question seriously, but I didn't get a concrete answer. So, I would like to ask Slashdot: Does your university/college provide support for Linux/BSD/etc users to connect to the on-campus wireless? How does IT support Linux users generally? Have IT staff ever ridiculed you for asking questions about Linux?"

Comments

Re:Shouldn't that be platform neutral?

[LWATCDR]

The question that I have is what was meant by support. WiFi is usually platform independent so it should work for most devices. Do mean can you call them up and ask for help connecting? Probably not. Heck that is a support headache now for Windows. You have to deal with XP, Vista, and Windows7 plus manufactures often seem to want to add their own Wifi utility that you may have never seen before. On OS/X it just seems to work. Frankly on Linux if you have a good distro with on a system with a supported wifi chipset it also just seems to work.
But if you say you support every platform at a University you will get some pain in the rear that will be running Contiki on an old 386 notebook trying to log on to the network asking for help.