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A Year of Linux Desktop At Westcliff High School
jrepin writes "Around a year ago, a school in the southeast of England, Westcliff High School for Girls Academy (WHSG), began switching its student-facing computers to Linux, with KDE providing the desktop software. The school's Network Manager, Malcolm Moore, contacted us at the time. Now, a year on, he got in touch again to let us know how he and the students find life in a world without Windows."
And they didn't even meet much resistance: "Younger students accept it as normal. Older students can be a little less flexible. There are still a few that are of the view that I can get rid of Microsoft Word when I can pry it from them. Staff are the same (although it is surprisingly not age-related). Some are OK and some hate it. Having said that, an equal number hate Windows 7 and nobody liked Windows 8. I think the basic problem is that Windows XP is a victim of its own success. It works fairly well from a user point of view, it's been around practically forever, and people don't like change, even some students, oddly."
Nobody said this was a focus group.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you can't figure out LIbre Office you shouldn't have your job. Hating any change is just being an evolutionary inferior waste on society.
They said the same about DOS and Wordperfect when i was in highschool, where are they now?
School should teach users generally applicable concepts, ie that there are multiple applications to accomplish a given task. If you only teach specific software then users will be stuck if they encounter different software, and by the time they leave school the software will be different. Even newer versions of the same applications are often wildly different. If taught properly, people will be able to grasp any new application that's designed for performing the same general functions.
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Exactly! Because we all know that school is first and foremost a job training program designed to replicate drone workers efficiently. You wouldn't want to expose those impressionable youngsters to alternative tech, or heaven forbid, non-PC thought.
Why would you assume the normal user is rational and practical? If you've ever worked desktop support, you wouldn't. So the point of this article is that a group of students, in this case high school age females, had no trouble with the transition. There is no reason I can think of to assume they would be more likely to adapt then another sample.
s/Linux/Os X/
There's a valid point that your sarcasm hides: high school girls are often stubborn, irrational, and value popularity of a product more than the product itself. Aside from microsoft employees and apple fanatics, high school girls are the group I'd most expect to be resistant to changing OS. Yet they seem to have no problem with it.
It drives home the point that the only reason people don't switch to linux is inertia. It's not that people reject linux, even very stubborn, crazy groups of people.
(Disclaimer: I may still be a little bitter at high school girls from when they wouldn't talk to me when I was in high school.)
There's a valid point that your sarcasm hides: high school girls are often stubborn, irrational, and value popularity of a product more than the product itself.
Sounds like Slashdot.
Let me understand this: high school girls have no trouble using Linux, and high school girls like Twilight and Bieber, hence, Linux must suck? Am I understanding your logic ok here?
My take from this story is that a group of people with no general predisposition toward using an OS that is commonly seen as difficult to learn and just for geek hobbyists picked up on it without trouble.