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A Year of Linux Desktop At Westcliff High School

Posted by Unknown on from the freedom-for-all dept.

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."

15 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Why not more than a clone of Windows and Office? by WillAdams · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd really like to see a desktop suite of alternatives which do away w/ the shackles of backwards compatibility and instead try to do things right:

      - LyX for documents
      - Flexisheet for spreadsheets

    Wish there was something other than Asymptote or METAPOST to suggest for vector graphics (I'd like to see a successor to Altsys Virtuoso and Aldus IntelliDraw and FutureWave SmartSketch).

    Other alternatives which aren't ``just'' clones?

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  2. Are high school girls not normal users? by crashcy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is there any reason to think this user base would be any more or less likely to adapt to Linux than a "normal user base"?

    1. Re:Are high school girls not normal users? by crashcy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Are high school girls not normal users? by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.)

    3. Re:Are high school girls not normal users? by crashcy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Are high school girls not normal users? by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Funny

      They still don't talk to me. 40 years has merely changed it from "nerdy" to "creepy". You just can't win.

  3. Exactly! by sootman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > [Windows XP] works fairly well from a user point of view, it's
    > been around practically forever, and people don't like change.

    Yes, yes, and yes. Too bad MS didn't realize that -- they could have just spent the last few years refining XP and keeping people happy.

    Apple actually has a pretty good thing going on with OS X -- like them or not, "small changes every year or two" beats "monumental fuckups twice a decade."

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  4. Windows is cheaper than Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the reasons we see so much Windows in education is that its cheaper than Linux. Microsoft gives out free software and hardware deals to schools as "donations". At my University, our CSE department had clearly been supplied with a lot of Windows stuff (I got 3 free Windows licences, and lots of other stuff as a student, I suspect the Labs got similar offers). The ratio of Windows to Linux machines was higher than most of the students wanted (It was often hard to find open Linux machines).

    My High-school got all its computers replaced through some deal with Microsoft while I was there, and they were all Windows.

    Microsoft makes large investments in getting its products into education so people get used to them. The people who resist change will then be stuck with them and but it in the future.

    I assume this kind of thing is not the case everywhere, but their efforts seems to be keeping Windows as the standard OS in education. I'm really happy to see people working (and succeeding) at escaping this.

  5. Re:I understand, it is Very hard to leave Windows by KernelMuncher · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have to wonder about the Microsoft corporate strategy to keep changing the interfaces to their OS with each release.

    Imagine if all changes were on the back end (security, improved networking, etc) and only a handful of changes were made with the front end. Windows would have millions of content and loyal users. And nobody would ever want to change.

  6. Parents Protesting Over Lack Of MS Office by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The author mentioned that some parents protested because they felt learning Microsoft Office is crucial to their children's success. However we now live in an era where Microsoft is beginning to lose that stronghold. With Open/Libre Office always improving and solutions such as Google Apps gaining traction, I fail to see how this is really a factor anymore. By 2024 MS may not even be the major player anymore in the office space. This is like the prior generation telling us we must be proficient at using a typewriter or hand writing in cursive to land a job.

  7. Re:Think of the children by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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  8. Re:Think of the children by bryanandaimee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Think of the children by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    I used a typewriter in high school.

    on the side, a teacher and some of us students formed a computer club and bought a TRS-80 so we could do Z80 assembly.

    Since then I've used various document creating softwares on CDC Cyber, Vax, Unix, OS/2, Novell, Windows, Linux,

    so the answer to your question is "hell no, what's the point"

  10. Re:Linux needs some help from Microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    s/Linux/Os X/

  11. Re:People hate change by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you can't figure out LIbre Office you shouldn't have your job.

    LibreOffice just isn't very good. I've used StarOffice, then OpenOffice, then LibreOffice. I haven't used Microsoft Word since Word 97. And I still think LibreOffice sucks. It's usable, but amateurish.

    Open source just can't get user interfaces right. LibreOffice has subtle problems, such as spelling correction that insists on making a change even after you've undone the change. Microsoft Word will yield to the user in that situation. The command-line crowd will never get fine details like that. I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu machines side by side on my desk, but the Ubuntu machine is used only for robotics software development.

    I've watched Linux blow it on the desktop for fifteen years. There was an opportunity when XP was late. Linux blew it. There was an opportunity when everybody hated Vista. Linux blew it. There's an opportunity now when nobody wants to go to Windows 8. Linux is blowing it.

    For a good laugh, look at what it takes to create a shortcut to a program in Ubuntu.