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Ask Slashdot: Switching To a GNU/Linux Distribution For a Webdesign School
spadadot writes: I manage a rapidly growing webdesign school in France with 90 computers for our students, dispatched across several locations. By the end on the year it will amount to 200. Currently, they all run Windows 8 but we would love to switch to a GNU/Linux distribution (free software, easier to deploy/maintain and less licensing costs). The only thing preventing us is Adobe Photoshop which is only needed for a small amount of work. The curriculum is highly focused on coding skills (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP/MySQL) but we still need to teach our students how to extract images from a PSD template. The industry format for graphic designs is PSD so The Gimp (XCF) is not really an option. Running a Windows VM on every workstation would be hard to setup (we redeploy all our PCs every 3 months) and just as costly as the current setup. Every classroom has at least 20Mbit/s — 1Mbit/s ADSL connection so maybe setting up a centralized virtualization server would work? How many Windows/Photoshop licenses would we need then? Anything else Slashdot would recommend?
Get mostly linux machines for the mainstream work, and get a few windows systems for the jobs that really need windows. People will have to learn the nuts and bolts of data transfer between the systems, but that is actually a pretty useful professional skill.
Why exactly would running Windows VMs be so difficult? In actuality it would be quite a bit easier, if all of the workstations are running the same configuration. You setup the Windows VM as needed and then deploy it out to each machine. Or heck, you get the students to do the work for you. I've found knowing how to find your way around Virtual Box to be a very useful skill as a developer and this is something the students should really learn about. It's so easy to do work on a variety of different projects with vastly different system requirements by using VMs. I do work on VMs ranging from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2012 and almost everything between at work with very little difficulty in setting up the VMs (both with VirtualBox and RDC in Windows to a cloud based VM). A lot of it boils down to knowing how to manage and deploy your VMs, or hiring a company to help if this is not your expertise.
Are you sure it's easier to deploy and maintain linux? Do you have someone who can maintain a linux installation of that size? Not a hobbyist.... for God's sake, don't trust this to a hobbyist. Do you have an actual professional? They might be a bit scarcer than Windows IT guys... and that's the first thing I would check: that you have someone who can reliably maintain this....someone certified, not certifiable. Also, ask legitimate IT guys in your area about your specifics. It may or may not be the way to go, but it's better to spend a little money up front on a consultant, than a lot of money trying to get someone to fix what you messed up later.
If your design school only teaches psd there's a fundamental issue there
You really don't need it. In fact as webdesign work a huge amount of production should be done in Inkscape. Even if you need to create/edit a raster image GIMP is fine. Students don't need Photoshop. Hell you can do most work in mspaint.
Slicing PSDs is crude, antiquated (even though most shops still do it), and reinforces the fallacy that web design begins in Photoshop.
Modernize your curriculum to teach progressive enhancement of wireframe layouts in the browser. At some point you teach about creating the individual image assets for what they are (backgrounds, icons, etc) rather than treating a PSD as a giant slab of source material. For this, you can use GIMP, Inkscape, or anything else Free.
You are perpetuating Adobe's dominance by furthering a bad workflow that benefits them. Your course isn't about Photoshop, that shouldn't be the keystone of it.
Slicing PSDs is the equivalent of beginning a construction project from a child's crayon drawing of the not-yet-existing building.