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Ask Slashdot: Best Choice of Linux Laptops For Elementary School?
An anonymous reader writes "I work in the tech department of an elementary school and I am trying to show the tech director the world of Linux. I will be installing edubuntu but I am not sure which laptop to get. I know there are companies like System76 that sell laptops with Linux already installed but I wanted to ask you for your thoughts. We want something small and light weight for the kids. We do not need much horsepower as the main use will be internet/email/word processing and whatever other apps come with edubuntu. Basically, what we really want is something MacBook Air-like but not nearly as expensive. Thoughts?"
The Lenovo laptops always work well with Linux. The S110 (mini) may be good for elementary school. I am using one daily running Fedora 16.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I think it depends on the point. If he's got Mavis Beacon and Math Blaster for linux, sure, go for it. If the point is just to give the kids a computer to dick around in, it would probably be better on an OS that will provide them better educational opportunities later on in their careers.
I have found http://www.linux-laptop.net/ useful in the past. Good on you for introducing them to linux at a young age. Wish I would have found linux before 14...
Why not? I have always been thankful for the breadth of hardware I was exposed to in school (I was very lucky in this respect). I have told parents countless times that the reason I was able to succeed in compsci was through identifying the commonalities between the various platforms and recognizing those commonalities as rooted in computer science theory.
They'll be exposed to Windows every day of their lives elsewhere. Let them learn something new.
Do elementary-school students really need laptops?
You don't want an Air. That's basically taking the parts from a full power, full featured laptop and using heavy integration to cram it into an extra thin case.
Doing that for cheaper is basically the definition of "Ultrabook".
But you're looking for less powerful and less expensive. That's square on what Netbooks were created for. Pick your favorite 12" model.
If you want something with more midrange performance, look at the Thinkpad X130 series. It's not a real Thinkpad, but more of a premium-grade netbook.
What "educational opportunites"?
Computing is about gettting stuff done. It's not about using particular branded products. Even if you do choose to fixate on a particular brand, it's rather likely that the brand won't be recognizable by "later in their careers".
Schools should be teaching concepts not products.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Thinking outside the box, what about something like the Asus Transformer Pad TF300? It's lightweight and cheap but should be fine for email etc and comes in a version with a nifty detachable keyboard. I haven't seen this particular version, but the previous gen. Transformer Prime seemed sturdy enough to cope with kids detaching the keyboard.
A quick search turned up a couple of guides for dual booking the transformer prime, plus some articles about the bootloader being unlockable via asus, so perhaps this new one will be easier to install another OS on.
I have an Acer laptop with an 11.6" screen and I am very fond of it. The size and weight are great.
The model I have is no longer made, but the Acer Aspire One series is still made.
Most of those seem to have an Atom chip. I also have an Acer with an Atom and I pretty much hate the Atom... very slow. It's possible that newer Atom chips suck less.
I haven't tested the AMD "E" chips yet, but here is an Acer Aspire One with a dual-core "E" chip.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215340
The only thing is that for kids, it might be better to have an SSD rather than a spinning-metal hard disk, but that model has a 320 GB spinning-metal hard disk.
Oh, on at least my Acer laptop, modern Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint just work. All hardware detected correctly, WiFi works out of the box, etc. As I said, I haven't tried the newest one so I can't promise anything for sure.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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I think that an Android tablet might be a good way to go: very compact and lightweight, durable (no moving parts such as a hard disk or cooling fan), and very long battery life. Less expensive than a laptop, and you could buy accessories and software with the left-over money: get some sort of keyboard and Android software for word processing and such.
Asus and Google are going to announce a low-cost Android tablet. The rumored specs are: 7" screen, Tegra 3 processor at 1.3 GHz (that's 4 general-purpose cores), probably 1 GB of RAM and probably 8 GB of flash storage. Expected price will be $250 or $200.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/257296/googles_sub250_nexus_7_tablet_coming_late_june_report_says.html
I have a Nook Color that I rooted, and installed "PhireMod 7.2" (a particular build of CyanogenMod 7). I am very pleased with my 7" tablet. It's big enough to be useful and small enough to carry around, and I love the battery life.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Lets see, when i was in primary school, there was Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Nothing at all changed in the meanwhile, no interface changes whatsoever.
ThinkPenguin is one of only a few OEMs that sell hardware that is fully supported by free (as in freedom) drivers (so the hardware will continue to work even after the manufacturer stops supporting it). If you visit libre.thinkpenguin.com then the Trisquel distro (a fully free distro based on Ubuntu without any proprietary software) gets a share of the profits.
Have you considered iPads?
From a form factor perspective is it imperative that the kids have laptops and not tablets?
If budget is a real world concern then iPads either cost as much or are, more typically, cheaper than a decent laptop/netbook. Any potential software to be purchased can be purchased with Apple's education discounts. Tablets are easier for IT to manage (reducing TCO) and have a more portable form factor which the kids will probably prefer. In addition, kids will probably prefer tablets as they are more fun to use and the accommodate a kid's work habits (away from the table and perched upside down from the furniture).
Bottom line, I think you are asking yourself the wrong question. Instead of asking yourself what Linux laptop you can afford, you should be asking yourself what serves your customers - the kids - best given your budget?
Children want to understand the world. They want to shake something and have a sound coming out of it. They want to press the button of a typewriter for a letter to appear on the paper. They want to learn about cause and effect in order to understand the world around them. That is their basic instinct.
The older they are, the more complex those systems can be. However it is always important that the system behaves in a deterministic way, so the child can learn from it.
Unixoid operating systems provide that consistent behavior. They provide you with a command line and every time you type in those magic words, they will do the same. You can also combine them... just like Lego or other types of building blocks.
While you can do the same on Windows, theoretically, the learning curve is much higher. People will need to learn complex non-interactive programming languages to do the same unixoid people simply do on a console.
If you put a child in front of a Windows Box, you are robbing them of the experience that computers are reliable deterministic tools used extend their minds. It's like giving them a box of crayons which for some invisible reason work differently every time.
Any school requiring my kids to purchase anything from a particular vendor, ESPECIALLY Apple is going to get sued by me, in addition to my pulling my kids out and sending them to a better school. (There must be a better school, since any school making such requirements is obviously inferior.)
iFad's are not necessary for education, in fact they're a distraction from it, (unless the education is on how to play mini-games). Any public or private primary or secondary school that insists on electronic babysitting of students rather than actually teaching them is part of the reason we are falling farther and farther behind other nations in education.
Why not take the money squandered on devices for playing games, and spend it instead on paying teachers? Maybe even buying them supplies like chalk, etc., so they don't have to pay for that stuff out of their own pockets, like mine did.
Apple must be loving that though... I wonder how much money Apple kicks back to the people running the schools every time one agrees to go along with that kind of harebrained idea to waste a bundle on technical toys from Apple... Plus, each time this happens, it helps entrench their "experience" (over functionality) in the minds of impressionable children, and reinforces the value of standoffish, jealous, closed-mindedness, versus the openness of the community that Apple has stolen so much from, (OS-X borrowed very heavily from a variant of BSD) and given so little back.
What can a child do with an iPad at that age?
If it's just "reading books" and "playing games", then you should consider cheaper alternatives since obviously your child could also use books and games. The even more pressing issue is of course that tablets don't give tactile feedback. Playing with bricks, for example, gives that feedback. They need to learn how strongly they need to grip such a block and they practice that since they want to learn how to use the blocks. That's an experience a tablet cannot give them.
Don't confuse the latest fad rich people have with something which will benefit your child.
Samsung has a nice one, total cost of ownership is a lot lower, replacement is trivial, and the web gives you all the apps you need. What's not to like?
First, my recommendations:
Acer - I have seen minimal compatibility issues. Build quality ranges from pretty good to ok. Modifiable. Aesthetically respectable.
Asus - Generally of pretty good build quality. Aesthetically above average. Usually quite compatible. Modifiable from my experience. Has made some unfriendly decisions regarding Linux lately. I am partial to Asus, at least until they push too far with Linux hostilities. They also make motherboards, which is a good skill to have in a manufacturer.
MSI - Pretty good.
Gateway - Pretty good from a few years back, though I am not sure now.
Build Your Own - There are websites out there that will allow you to build your own laptop to your desired specs. More expensive, but you get what you truly desire.
Now for the crap:
HP - Sometimes they look great, they usually perform very well in Windows and Linux, of generally acceptable build quality. But they do something that really, REALLY pisses me off; they poison the BIOS to prevent hardware modification. I once tried to change my Broadcom wifi chip to an Atheros, both identical half-mini PCI, and the computer would refuse to boot, providing only an error message of "Unsupported Hardware Detected". I despise HP. I could go on too.
Sony - (insert profanity here)
Lenovo - Often pretty to look at, good performance on Win/Lin, but like HP they are hostile to customer hardware modifications and often poison the BIOS. You might also note that flashing the BIOS does not correct the problem easily. They sure aren't IBM anymore. But I think IBM may have also shared this authoritarianism.
Mac - Beautiful little bastards. But I'll leave it at that.
You know what would educate kids better than some flavor of laptop?
Teachers.
Work Safe Porn
Submitter said he wanted to run edubuntu.
Edubuntu doesn't run on windows...
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Balsa wood, glue, done.
When I was at school the only computer I ever saw was a HP calculator. I wrote a program to find prime numbers in its 50-step memory.
Call Dell, Call IBM
Calling IBM won't help. Unless you want an IBM BladeCenter . . . every kid gets his own blade. Or why not virtualize and consolidate everything to one 24/7 zSeries. The server will have a better attendance record than the school kids.
IBM doesn't sell PCs. But they will sell you a cloud of them, so that would be easier for the school kids to carry, because clouds are lightweight. Hey, no need to worry about theft! How do you steal a kid's cloud like his lunch money? And since the cloud is nowhere and everywhere, the kids can use it at school and at home.
Of course, the ultimate solution would be to buy an IBM Watson system. It is so smart, that you can get rid of those damn kids in your school altogether.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Over 20 years ago each classroom at my Primary School (Australian for Elementary School) had an Apple II and by the time I went into High school, they had an Mac in each room.
20 years later, my 7 year old nephew is proficient at working his way around his little Netbook running Debian with lxde, typing emails to me after school and putting together his Primary School grade projects using LibreOffice Draw and he can do it with his eyes closed. He's a smart kid but he's not alone. Many kids these days can muster this without batting an eyelid. Don't underestimate the kids!
For those of you who think that it is unreasonable to have someone at that young age to own a laptop, you need to get out more and get with the times. I think it's a great thing if the school has the opportunity to enable every kid to have his or her own laptop. This kind of thing (along with proper parenting and supervision) is what will make the kids of today absolute geniuses compared to us old farts of yesterday.
Most kids wouldn't care much about what OS is installed, either. The person who has to provide technical support to the devices, does.
Besides one shouldn't teach a child "windows" or "word", one should teach concepts such as: files and folders, types of storage media, text input (including touch typing - I've never had proper courses myself unfortunately, computers were considered so simply that you don't need to learn to type), basic text layout, serif vs sans-serif font, input methods (an issue for Chinese input), basics of a spreadsheet: what it is, what it can be used for. Maybe even basics of databases. Don't go deep: most people don't need that in daily life, and if they do need it they have the foundation to build upon.
By the time your current primary school kid reaches the workforce, our current computers and software will be obsolete, yet the concept of files and folders goes back many decades already and is likely to stay with us for a very long time. Fonts also stay with us, as do layout principles.
And to learn those concepts, it really doesn't matter which OS is installed. They all use the same concepts, even when it looks a bit different. Seeing the same concepts in a different environment can even be a boon for learning as it shows more of the idea of the concept being universal, and independent of the exact presentation.
When I was in school all we had was an apple....... and that was on a tree and I was told not to eat it, but my girlfriend dared me, so I did, and then the whole world went to shit.
That's true. Linux teaches students valuable concepts like configuring device drivers and doing free QA for distro companies, so they will be better prepared for the IT monkey jobs which will have been completely eliminated by the time they graduate. Yay! (sounds about as useful as my high school's classes in drafting and carburetor tuning)
Furthermore, students won't be distracted by vendor-specific products, such as how to unclip proprietary patented bra strap designs. Yay x2!
Let's face it, the only concepts kids are going to learn from these shitty chinese Linux laptops is that the ipad product they already own is much nicer. Horse is out of the barn, freetards.
I gave my two little sisters (third and first grade of elementary school) my old Lenovo laptop with Edubuntu installed. Most of the time, they play various flash games on the internet, watch Youtube, or play TuxKart or Neverball. As they're learning to write, they use LibreOffice as well.
I really don't think they're missing out on anything. I wouldn't give them shooting games anyway.
And to the original question, my vote goes for Lenovo as well.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
If you want a laptop, pick one or two of these:
- Compact
- Powerful
- Cheap
Your requirements are invalid, if you try all three.
Interesting. I'm sure that training the OP refers to is no worse than switching to a new Windows version.
Over the years I've helped many computer illiterate friends and relatives install Linux on their home computers and things couldn't be better. It actually began as an experiment on my part to reduce support calls when these people want help with their computers.
I've been very careful to explain the differences between Windows and Linux and what to expect from either (good and bad), and that it's entirely their choice. Many people (but not al) choose Linux, at least to try out.
With most hardware it's much faster to install than Windows because all the software you need comes with the distro rather than having to reach for a mountain of CDs or trawl the internet for all the downloaders.
End result? I've not had one person want to migrate back to Windows after using Linux, in fact they said that it would be hard because their new OS is 'more logical'. So there you have it, everyday people that use Linux because they want to. None of them have ever touched a command line or ever had to and I get far fewer complaints from them than with Windows, so yes it's easier to support too.
Bear in mind that most of these people don't have money to throw around on new computers, however if they do I normally recommend a Mac if they can afford it.
Conclusion? Different strokes for different folks really. Don't trash talk others preferred platforms for the sake of it; they all have very strong merits (and weaknesses) these days.
As long as it runs Angry Birds, the kids will be fine.
Why not use Android tablets? I delibertately didn't suggest iPads, since they'd probably be more expensive, even w/ Apple's educational discounts. But take Android based tablets, and have Ubuntu's tablet software loaded on top of that - including Edubuntu, and go w/ that. Parents will have a choice of what to buy, be it Motorola, HTC, or whatever. The kids can take it around, use it for homework, games and so on. A lot easier to use as well.
When are you guys going to accept that Linux on desktop/laptop is dead?
Tell that to my 40 Linux desktop users.
Admittedly some of the office staff who use gnome think they are using windows. ( no joke! )
Jesus.
The educational market doesn't focus on Linux, hell, they barely focus on Macs (disturbingly, although not surprisingly, they are all over the iOS band wagon; which is why I'll have four thousand of iPads by fall).
We have all kinds of state mandates as to what is taught and how dollars are spent (i.e. state approved vendors). Tech in education is NOT what many of us grew up with. The day of a mismashed C64/A2 lab held together with duct tape by a volunteer group of kids playing D&D every afternoon are over. Because kids cutting their teeth learning to write a program that accesses a flat text file, draw a moire pattern on the screen and other activities that teach basic concepts are over.
Primary tech is all about Lexia, Compass, First in Math and the like. It's a bunch of crap, substandard, third party software thrown onto a SMART board. It's got zero to do with life prep, it has everything to do with reinforcing the drill and test mentality while building brand loyalty.
I love Linux. I'm at my most comfortable with a fresh Debian netinstall and moving on from there. But this is education we're talking about. If it isn't "media rich", "Web 2.0 ready!", "Cloud enabled for a dynamic user experience!" or whatever bullshit catch phrase that is being spewed this week, it doesn't go anywhere.
Maybe my district is just too big. Perhaps this kind of idealism really is still possible in a small district (in which case, I need to find a new fucking job). But in my experience thus far, K-12 has turned into prestage for Corporate America. If it's not being used in the cubicle farm, it's got slim chance in the primary educational market.
It's all about numbers. Just trade profit margin for graduation percentages -- and if your numbers aren't high enough, prepare to have your funding cut.
Sigh.
#SickNotWeak