How Linux Saved A School's Failing Windows Laptop Program (opensource.com)

OpenSource.com reports on a Minnesota school's 1:1 program -- one device per child -- where "Lots of the Windows laptops were in very poor condition and needed to be replaced." An anonymous reader writes: An Indiegogo campaign triggered extra money and donations of laptops, allowing the school's Linux club to equip much of the school with Linux laptops. "When you're using open source software you're free to use operating systems and application software without the hassle of license keys or license tracking inherent with proprietary software," says Stu Keroff, the school's technology coordinator. "This allows a school to experiment [and] gives them the freedom to make mistakes...

But there's also another benefit. "By empowering the students to be part of that process we were able to get more done, and to generate more excitement about the learning that the students were taking part in." There's now a waiting list for the school's Linux club, where they'd planned to cap membership at 35...until 62 students applied. Instead, they found themselves creating two Linux clubs, one for the sixth graders, and one for the 7th and 8th graders.
And to answer the obvious question -- they're using Ubuntu, with the Unity desktop.

Comments

Obviously...

[franzrogar]

And to answer the obvious question -- they're using Ubuntu, with the Unity desktop.

Darn, and I thought they were using LFS to actually *learn* about the OS and not just using old software versions... Hopefully, next thime the will try something inbetween, maybe ArchLinux or even Gentoo...

Re:Obviously...

[mwvdlee]

It's all systemd anyway.

To be fair; the laptops are a means to an end, not the learning goal in and off itself.
It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.

Re:Obviously...

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's all systemd anyway.

It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.

True but not germane, as there are numerous other Linux distros that work just as well out of the box.

Re:Obviously...

[Half-pint HAL]

They're fucking these kids over for life anyway. ... It's simply an act of desperation.

The alternative is not Windows, because they've basically found (like every other school without a rich patron that's tried the same thing) that replacements for obsolescence, and the loss of paid-for licenses with hardware failure makes it impossible to get to full coverage because after a certain number of units are implemented, replacing existing units takes up the entire budget.

There's a similar situation when schools try to roll out iPads. They try to stage them by year groups, and given that they don't go with the latest shiny-shiny (can't afford it), the units are only likely to be supported with iOS updates for about 3 years, so well before their 5-year rollout is finished, they're suddenly forced into implementing rolling replacements with the budget that was supposed to be for new devices. (Although at least iOS app licenses aren't tied to a specific device so can be reinstalled on the replacements.)

Pupils will have a chance to get to learn Windows in class, but this gives them something extra that they would otherwise be denied.

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because running scripts to compile stuff teaches you so much about the underlying system. Just like when you're attaching an oversized on your 10 year old Honda, you're magically becoming a car mechanic.

Re:Obviously...

[Toth]

Where I work we hire folks right out of technical school with no experience as well as 50 year old's with a significant list of certs and experience. We are primarily a Windows shop. A newbie who runs Linux at home or an old guy who maintains a local non profit's Linux network would have an edge over other applicants.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 90s called, they want their troll back.

Re:Obviously...

[lucm]

People who can fit in your Geek Squad uniforms probably have an edge too.

Re:Obviously...

[deragon]

Troll... But I'll bite and answer. You can say the same thing about schools going for tablets (Android & iPad) and Chromebooks. Also, there are some institutions, mainly gouvernemental institutions in Europe switching massively to LibreOffice and Linux... Ok, the story is about the USA, but it does show that the market could change. Beside, I expect someone to be able to adapt to a new OS and tool suite quiet easily. Even with a FOSS background, these kids will easily be able to adapt to any job requiring Windows and MS Office.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

How'd you start?

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

or when they get to the business world and management discovers how much money can be saved vs commercial software, they'll be the heroes and have job security. you do know that iis has like 12-percent market share?

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

For regular Desktop use it doesn't matter much. You don't suddenly fail clicking an Icon on Windows just because you clicked Icons on Linux before.

For actual IT work it's an advantage to have Linux experience if it ever went beyond running Firefox or Chrome.

While Windows still dominates the desktop, it utterly failed to dominate server and mobile. It's hardly present at all in supercomputing.

And the desktop is low growth, low margin nowadays.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

You CAN compile porgrams yourself on all platforms, but you don't HAVE to compile anything on Linux. For years.

I guess you looked last at Linux pre 2006 sometime? Or are you just copying other pepoles arguments you read somewhere?

Plus - being able to compile programs is an obviously good to have skill. So where exactly is the downside?

Re: Obviously...

[Type44Q]

Oversized... cardboard spoiler? Maxwell House coffeecan exhaust tip??

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know, I did fine on entry into the workforce 20 years ago. We used macs in middle, hs, and in tech school. A word processing program, spreadsheet, and a web browser is the same concept on every os. If you need more than that in the business world hopefully one would be intelligent enough to find their way around it!

Re:Obviously...

[Ol Olsoc]

It's all systemd anyway.

This anti-systemd stuff ain't going away until the actuarial tables work their magic.

To be fair; the laptops are a means to an end, not the learning goal in and off itself.

Indeed. As well, time moves on. I kinda enjoy doing installs manually. But one of the best things modern day Linux has going for it is the networked install/repo model is simply the best thing around. What is really cool is that if any of the kids are inclined, they can make the leap from consumer to Power user easily.

This is the sort of thing that will get young folk interested in computing STEM fields, not browbeating. Many of us geeks got started years ago with our Commodores, and just took off from there. Use the computer for the schoolwork, then for the curious, a bash script or two, and some will become hooked. Just like we were in days of yore.

What the heck is yore anyhow?

Re:Obviously...

[Ol Olsoc]

They're fucking these kids over for life anyway. Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world

We're not talking about Android here.

Re:Obviously...

[Ol Olsoc]

Also, there are some institutions, mainly gouvernemental institutions in Europe switching massively to LibreOffice and Linux... Ok, the story is about the USA, but it does show that the market could change. Beside, I expect someone to be able to adapt to a new OS and tool suite quiet easily. Even with a FOSS background, these kids will easily be able to adapt to any job requiring Windows and MS Office.

The market is changing. And people with Linux can easily adapt to Windows - they are already adapted to OSX.

One of the nice things about Linux is that it is stable enough that you can actually learn stuff on it. The last few years of working with Windows has been trying to fix stuff that has broken.

Re:Obviously...

[SQLGuru]

the loss of paid-for licenses with hardware failure

Any sufficiently large organization (such as a school district) should have better management of their licenses such that they aren't tied directly to a single piece of hardware. I know from experience (my wife was a teacher for many years) that the school districts don't usually have a good technology program, but that's because they don't pay well and the knowledgeable will likely be working in the private sector. But a hardware failure should NEVER be the reason you lose a license.

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Darn, and I thought they were using LFS to actually *learn* about the OS and not just using old software versions...

Hopefully, next thime the will try something inbetween, maybe ArchLinux or even Gentoo...

And I hope this was meant to be funny...otherwise the absurdity is anything but. Getting sound, video and wifi to work and stay working on a myriad of laptops running LFS, ArchLinux or Gentoo would be a nightmare. The faculty and kids would hate it, and by association hate Linux as that computer for poor people who can't afford a real one. Incidentally, what exactly will the kids learn by spending days (weeks? months?) cookbooking an OS such as LFS onto a laptop?

Re:Obviously...

[ChrisMaple]

replacing existing units takes up the entire budget

The average school budget in the US is between $10000 and $20000 per student-year. An adequate computer shouldn't cost over $500 and most of the software needed is available in "close-enough" form as freeware. Your claim is off by a factor of 20 to 40.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the IT budget though.

Re:Obviously...

[geoskd]

The average school budget in the US is between $10000 and $20000 per student-year. An adequate computer shouldn't cost over $500 and most of the software needed is available in "close-enough" form as freeware. Your claim is off by a factor of 20 to 40.

Adding an extra $500 per student is kiss of death to these kinds of things. Your lack of understanding as to where that money goes is disheartening. Education is resource intensive like no other industry because of several factors. First, unlike retail, wholesale, and services, your budget per customer has to accoodate their prolonged daily use of the product of every single customer. This means your infrastructure costs are going to be massively higher than any other industry. Add on top of that, your labor costs are far more complicated, in that it takes far more labor resources to provide teaching than most people realize. Its not just the lone teacher at the front of the class, but the small army of maintenance, janotorial and other staff that are needed to make a school run.

Now on top of all that, lets go to middle America. A place where the median household income is around $40k. You want the typical 2 child family to shell out how much per year for education? $10k per student? thats a $20k per year burden, or half of that families income. Or lets say you want to spread that cost to the entire community, but that includes asking the childless and elderly to pay a very large portion of their income for a service they will never get any direct benefit from. The problem you will quickly run into is that those folks vote too, and you have to tread a fine line with your school budget or they will vote your budget down in a hurry.

All of that adds up to a very precarious balance in the school budget that often has a hard time coming up with the $150 per student to buy used text books, can barely pay their teachers a wage that will keep them from having to have 2 jobs just to eat and still has a hard time getting passed when the town / village gets to vote on it. Thats the budget you want to add $500 to? I'm afraid you hadn't thought that through very clearly.

As an exercise, I would recommend picking any middle class neighborhood in the country and go door to door campaigning for a $45 per month increase in their taxes per child in their household to pay for those laptops and see how long you can keep your limbs attached to your body.

Re:Obviously...

[mwvdlee]

We had Commodore C64's when I was in grade school.
You won't believe the things I have to go through in order to browse Slashdot on my C64, simply because I cannot switch to Windows.

Re:Obviously...

[MightyYar]

Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world

You are right! Those MS-DOS skills I learned in high school sure do come in handy!

Re:Obviously...

[unixisc]

LFS - great idea!!! I thought they'd learn lisp scripting, programming emacs, perl/python and everything else needed to make those dilapidated laptops state of the art. That way, they can all write GPL3 code, and in the true socialist spirit of Western campii, work only on copyleft software. The communituh will flourish!!! Hail, RMS (preferably w/ tons of soapy water)

Re:Obviously...

[unixisc]

It's all systemd anyway.

It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.

True but not germane, as there are numerous other Linux distros that work just as well out of the box.

Maybe, but within the Ubuntu editions, there is also 'Edubuntu', which could be perfect for this role

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

We had our units go EOL a month ago. The funny thing is that some of those iPads are less that 18 months old from the date we bought them from Apple. We are now planning to transition everyone to Android tablets. Not only are they cheaper, but many are supported longer, so we get more bang for the buck.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried working through LFS in a Virtualbox, and I got to a point where some script/configuration/compile detail failed.

The documentation was useless because it only described how to do things, not how and why they worked.

I had to abandon it and delete the VM, it's on the back burner until I have time to learn more about gcc & make.

Re: Obviously...

[Wokan]

That's like telling teenagers they have to build a car before they're allowed to drive. The computers are a tool, not the ultimate goal in and of themselves.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's hardly present at all in supercomputing.

Indeed, out of the TOP500, none is Windows. None at all.

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's hilarious about this comment is that you think that end users actually fucking learn anything about their OS like basic file management.

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

they can make the leap from consumer to Power user easily.

Eww liek some boy with no life??? omg

Re:Obviously...

[uncqual]

Indeed. I was so crippled by the fact that when I was in school I didn't learn the OS and environment that was most prevalent in enterprise ("glass house") at that time and instead learned "alternative" computers, operating systems, and languages. I had no exposure to JCL or MVS or IMS or COBOL and hardly any to FORTRAN. I was horribly handicapped by that dreadful state of affairs.

Oh wait, later when I was developing system software/hardware that was displacing some of that cruft, I learned a bit of JCL as some of our supported clients were IBM systems. That was horribly difficult [NOT].

I'm hope the little snowflakes can get over the trauma having learned an additional environment. There is some hope as most of them probably learned both multiplication and addition which must have been horribly confusing.

Re:Obviously...

[Ol Olsoc]

they can make the leap from consumer to Power user easily.

Eww liek some boy with no life??? omg

Some among us think that the consumer is the one with not much of a life. Although I suspect that programmer/computer whiz folks think a little different than normal folk, the stereotype of the dude living in his mom's basement is just that. A stereotype. I'm one who plays Ice Hockey, does 4 wheeling and lots of non-geeky stuff, and is fully socialized.

Re:Obviously...

[thegarbz]

Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world

WTF since when does using Windows require skills.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. It's $6700 in Cupertino, in the middle of silicon valley, the highest taxed and highest valued property around.

What do my kids get for that!??!

Re: Obviously...

[KenHansen]

The average school budget in the US is between $10000 and $20000 per student-year. An adequate computer shouldn't cost over $500 and most of the software needed is available in "close-enough" form as freeware.

Wow, who knew solving education problems could be so easy? Ok, play this out in your head - your neighborhood elementary school with 600 students evenly distributed in grades K-5 get $500 laptops. Let's for the sake of argument say that we only give laptops starting in 1st grade. Great, your local school goes out and finds a quarter million dollars and buys 500 $500 laptops. Who integrates them into the curricullum? Who researches and finds the 'almost as good as' freeware to use in class? Who trains the teacher to use the freeware? Where does the classroom time come from to teach children how to use the freeware? Who rolls out a wi-fi network sufficient to handle 500 student laptops at a time? Who funds the internet connection to allow all 500 laptops to stream YouTube videos at the same time because it's the day before winter break and the teachers don't feel Ike teaching? Who maintains the laptops when there's a problem? Who buys and finds loaner laptops when a child has a problem with their laptop? What happens in three years when the laptops become too physically damaged? I guess in your mind the parents (most of which can't be bothered to meet their child's teachers on back to school night) will just all collectively take up the slack, wire the WiFi access points, and take up whatever task is needed to make this work. The price of the actual hardware is not the biggest expense, it is the on-going, day-to-day expenses that cost real money. BTW, if you hand a 3rd grader a $500 laptop, have them use it every day for school, how long do you think it will last? Every three years the district will be replacing those $500 laptops, unless the kids get clumsy and start dropping them.

Re:Obviously...

[Trogre]

Interestingly, a local middle school here had mandated Chromebooks for technology classes. Options were to either buy one or wait in line for one of the few classroom units to become available for a few minutes each.

After querying the teachers about what they used the Chromebooks for, it transpired they were using Google Docs, YouTube, Scratch and Blender. Long story short, a donation of a few otherwise useless Windows XP-era laptops with $50 SSDs, Fedora Linux and XFCE and the classes have never run more smoothly.

Another school down the road (a high school) had mandated every kid must buy their own Microsoft Surface. The entire first semester was wasted trying to get them to talk correctly with Microsoft's cloud services.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you consider a reasonable salary for a principal? They are effectively a CEO for a moderate size business. If you want someone who understands teaching, can plan a budget, manage personnel, and evaluate the various infrastructure projects involved in a school, that's a $150k position at minimum given the cost of living in most cities and competition from industry looking for similar skills.

Re:Obviously...

[kenh]

Any sufficiently large organization (such as a school district) should have better management of their licenses such that they aren't tied directly to a single piece of hardware.

Schools typically license MS products under the "Education Advantage", where by districts pay about $35/year per user for access to all the latest MS desktop products (mainly, but not exclusively Windows and Office).

Re:Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a well payed Linux and Windows programmer. My school invested in Apple II's. I started with Apple ROM Basic.

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried working through LFS in a Virtualbox, and I got to a point where some script/configuration/compile detail failed.

The documentation was useless because it only described how to do things, not how and why they worked.

I had to abandon it and delete the VM, it's on the back burner until I have time to learn more about gcc & make.

I scripted the entire LFS download, compile, and install process by implementing a build framework using bash scripts. URL: https://github.com/gdhorne/absf
The package specific scripts have to be adjusted if you want to use the latest LFS because the example uses LFS v6.3.

Re:Obviously...

[WallyL]

What part of the country are you hiring in?

Re:Obviously...

[rickb928]

You haven't seen Common Core 8th grade math, have you?

Vertice Edge Graphs

Slope of a function

I'm a little amazed that they are trying to teach what I suffered through in Algebra II. my junior high school year.

And more surprised that they refuse to teach multiplication tables, 'traditional' long division, 'traditional' multiplication.

Schools should be teaching 2nd graders to play cribbage to learn addition. I shocked every teacher that tried to teach me addition of columns of numbers by treating many 2 digits as a single item (6+9=15, 8+7=15, 5+5+5=15) and explaining that they were 'fifteens'. I taught a few teachers to play cribbage.

Subtraction comes from addition for teachers that can express it. Many think it is different, of course.

Math is a terribly badly taught subject. Most believe it is a talent, but it is best understood as a language. Like music.

Re: Obviously...

[rickb928]

They are more like the store manager of a company-owned McDonald's. Implement policy, meet targets, get paid a salary without profit-sharing. Every strategic decision is made at Corporate. Every tactical decision is examined and graded against results.

It's a miserable existence, made tolerable only by above average pay and opportunities for advancement. Ha.

Re:Obviously...

[rickb928]

And if you buy right, you can root them and find new ROMs or roll your own.

You may have access to a community college teaching Android development, willing to roll a ROM for you. And you can at least get Kahn Academy to run on them and keep going.

Battery life is perhaps a blessing - as the batteries start to suffer, students learn to use their tablets just for school work or get dinged for late submissions. Less Facebook, more Kahn, win.

Re:Obviously...

[barrygrommit]

You want the typical 2 child family to shell out how much per year for education? $10k per student? thats a $20k per year burden, or half of that families income.

No. The 2-student family does not pay 2x per-student cost. Schools are funded by a combination of commercial and residential property taxes. Some states add a state income tax to the formula. A $20,000/year property tax bill is certainly possible, on a home + land assessed around $900,000-plus.

Or lets say you want to spread that cost to the entire community, but that includes asking the childless and elderly to pay a very large portion of their income for a service they will never get any direct benefit from.

That is exactly what happens. ALL property owners pay for the schools.

Also, that cost-per-student covers ALL school expenses: teachers, administration, benefits, insurance, building (heat, light, debt service), bussing, that spiffy football field, textbooks, microscopes, LAN cables, etc,

Re: Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

And when were yore's days? The early Clinton (Bill) administration?

Re: Obviously...

[Ol Olsoc]

And when were yore's days? The early Clinton (Bill) administration?

I first entered the workforce in the Nixon Administration. Wow, that's old.

But I lack the olde geezer gene, and if systemd gets one's knickers in a knot, well, they might just have it in spades. I've seen a few where it kicks in in their 30's.

Re:Obviously...

[beastofburdon]

That's still a complete ripoff.

Re:Obviously...

[stoatwblr]

"should have better management of their licenses such that they aren't tied directly to a single piece of hardware"

You clearly haven't been keeping up with MS's licensing programs - which have been nailing it down tighter and tighter to exactly that, even for MS Select customers (my employer has MS Select).

Re:Obviously...

[stoatwblr]

It also only gives upgrade access. You can't install windows on a system without an OS, etc.

With the latest licensing conditions meaning that transferring ownership invalidates the license on a system, moving them to a licsensing-free OS is logical.

MS don't particularly care about windows. It's not a big earner for them.

If schools and businesses move en-masse to Libreoffice it would be a very different story as MS Officeis their bread and butter. That's why they've put so much effort into Office365 and "Office in the cloud" to head that threat off at the pass.

Re:Obviously...

[stoatwblr]

"The problem you will quickly run into is that those folks vote too"

And the USA's "me me me" mentality does the rest. "All for me and sod everyone else" has increasingly been the order of the day since California fell under Ronnie Raygun's spell in the late 1960s.

This is WHY the USA is spiralling the shitter. If you won't collectively invest in your future then you shouldn't be surprised when countries who do keep pulling ahead.

Unity desktop

[s1d3track3D]

they're using Ubuntu, with the Unity desktop

I thought you said, "How Linux Saved A School's..."

Re:Unity desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG.. Unity.. you can't even drag'n'drop programs on the unitybar. I had to edit fookin XML to add something to it. So assbackwards...

Re:Unity desktop

[Zontar The Mindless]

I edit fookin' XML all fookin' day, every fookin' day, been fookin' doing it for fookin' years, and it pays pretty fookin' well, too. Want to make something of it, matey?

Re: Unity desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you can drag and drop there, wtf are you talking about?

Re: Unity desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Fookin XML mate!

Unity?

[rossz]

I seriously hate the Unity desktop with a passion. I don't know anyone who likes it. If Unity was the only desktop available for Linux, I'd use Windows.

Re:Unity?

[hcs_$reboot]

It took some time, but now I like it (and you can customize it with compiz-settings / Unity plugin)

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops. They outnumber Windows in my workplace. When we went to upgrade from 10.04 to 14.04 we did a bunch of comparison testing with various Linux distros and DEs. Ubuntu/Unity won and users are generally very satisfied with it. I use it as a daily driver with 2x 32" monitors and it's brilliant. Not for everyone obviously, but I certainly don't understand all the hate.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I seriously hate the Unity desktop with a passion."

Okay.

"I don't know anyone who likes it."

Okay.

"If Unity was the only desktop available for Linux, I'd use Windows."

It's not and who cares what you use.

Re:Unity?

[greenfruitsalad]

it's like McDonald's food. nobody finds it delicious but nobody is completely repulsed by it either. if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind. it's just hard to be enthusiastic about it. (maybe this is different in the US, but here in Europe, only children look forward to going to McDonalds)

my only real gripe with unity is its file manager. i want to be able to see/edit the location line and have an UP arrow between the BACK and FORWARD ones.

Re:Unity?

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops.

Out of curiosity, what are you using for centralized management?

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the AC you were replying to, but I too used to manage some 150 debian desktops for everybody from janitor to prof. important, we used a somewhat modified version of FAI for that.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

"a big mac will eventually cross your mind"
No. Doesn't fit in my definition of a food group. When seeing the people who walk out of such establishments the added "I don't want to look like them" factor helps cement my position. They really don't look very well.

Re:Unity?

[Calydor]

What about a big alienware, then?

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in Spain, There is always better fast food available than Mc Donalds.

Re:Unity?

[jmcvetta]

I love the Unity desktop. It's the biggest reason I continue to use Ubuntu on my laptops.

Re:Unity?

[nukenerd]

if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind.

How do you know what comes into my mind? WTF is a big mac anyway?

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

File: That's Gnome - not Unity.
But just Press Ctrl-l and voila toggles between buttonized and editable path.

For a more full-featured File Manager install Nemo. It's in the repo and closer to the Gnome 2 Version of Nautilus (aka Files)

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

> nobody is completely repulsed by it either

What? I certainly am. I can't even enter McDonalds because of the smell.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares what you use.

The attitude of Unity developers in a nutshell.

This is why Microsoft can literally fuck the pooch and its mother to death while jumping every shark in the Pacific, Apple can coast for years without significant progress outside of the mobile space, and still Linux sits at under 1% of the laptop/desktop market.

It's also why Firefox has gone from being THE major browser to a minor also-ran that's already reached the point where many developers don't even bother testing with it.

You are welcome to write software for yourself - or you can find out how to write software that people want to use. No matter how many toys you throw out of the pram, unless you do the latter, your software will fail, and all the evidence will confirm that it is failing.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how many toys you throw out of the pram, unless you do the latter, your software will fail, and all the evidence will confirm that it is failing.

Linux isn't failing on the desktop because of the nature of desktop environments like Unity. It's failing because it doesn't offer a superior experience compared to Windows or OS X. The potential advantages it brings (less viruses, more control, etc) do not offset the losses (very little commercial software support, reduced driver support, more uncertainty in terms of whether that new laptop you want to buy will even run Linux, that one Windows-only niche app that everyone uses and can't give up, and so on). It just doesn't make sense to make life harder for yourself by trying to cater to a geek niche for no reason other than some losers on the Internet keep trying to push it over and over again into an area it has no strength with.

Re:Unity?

[thegarbz]

but nobody is completely repulsed by it either.

*puts my hand up* Point of information. Yes there are definitely some people grossed out by it :-)

Re:Unity?

[greenfruitsalad]

i made a parable majority of readers here (americans) could relate to. you just came here to tell us you're a special snowflake. news at eleven.

Re:Unity?

[fph il quozientatore]

"I don't know anyone who likes it."

I do like Unity. I am not interesting in getting to know a person who writes rants like your one, though.

Re: Unity?

[Xicor]

The location line can be turned on using the dconf editor.

Re:Unity?

[lucm]

I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops.

Out of curiosity, what are you using for centralized management?

SystemD?

Re:Unity?

[PopeRatzo]

it's like McDonald's food.

I'm not sure I understand. Could you re-frame that simile as a car metaphor?

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, so someone put out one of the system shortcuts! Now, where did you find it? Like the other oses, help didn't show that, or took you to a book, that like, outside of win and fruit, a geek had to read and study. It's, not as easy a a page of shortcuts by the majors. Actually, my complaint, is, more in the of, why should all grandma's have to learn a command line to be safe, most illogical. Along with, that, free and open source doesn't imply secure, which they should. But the hackers of grandma's,do not want the security open and easy to find. That's a shame, or simple ways for grandma's to set their security. Also a shame, but then, you people, grammar Nazis, arguing over obscure comments in programs, not available to the commen folk, that bad, or worse. Security thru obstruction.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like you replied to the wrong person. It was GP who wrote the rant that you're complaining about.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it gluten-free?

Re:Unity?

[nomadic]

Yep. I've been using Linux off and on for 20 years and these days I hardly even touch it, not just for the points you manage but also because the one thing Linux distros had over Windows was performance, and that's evaporated. Even the allegedly small footprint distributions are slower on every computer I've tried them on than Windows 10.

Re:Unity?

[nomadic]

That's the story in the U.S. Actually, McDonald's seems to be more popular in other countries than here, where it is the worst of the fast food options.

Re:Unity?

[hey!]

While I agree with you 100% (well, maybe 90%; I've never seen a dock or dock analog that I liked), it kind of makes us dinosaurs to even have much of an opinion. Even an old fart like me switches between Windows, MacOS, Mint and Xfce and I hardly even notice. The differences between them may look stark, but it's like arguing about how much chrome trim you can slap on your car's tailfins before it gets tacky.

I used to be a KDE user, and I try every new version that comes out and I come to the same conclusion: gee that's impressive, but I don't need it; what I really want out of a desktop environment is to stay out of my way. In a way desktop environments have become like the command line shell -- which as a developer I still use quite a bit. You still need them, but the center of mass of user experience has shifted out to the cloud and to mobile devices. Stuff like widgets are a total waste of time because people do that stuff on their phone, or in browser extensions. A good file manager is nice, but these days most of my work data is in the cloud or in git. Most of the native desktop apps I use are cross platform, except one does occasionally need to fire up MS Office to communicate with the primitives.

If it weren't for MS Office there'd be no reason at all to ever use Windows. I may be a little ahead of the curve for my ancient cohort, but my college age kids have no attachment to Windows or MacOS at all; they use whatever is provided. What matters to them is the phone and the browser.

The main differences these days are how much screen real estate your desktop environment takes up (less is more), how user notifications are handled (getting better in most cases), and how nice the fonts are (still rocky in some Linux distros).

Re:Unity?

[jmccue]

It is a school after all, what better way for young minds to start learning about Linux that giving them a horrid desktop and stating "With a bit of reading you can swap to something better".

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

[Different AC again]

Interesting. Thanks.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they don't know how, and don't see enough of a difference to care to learn.
Not everyone wants to fuck with that stuff on their own time.

Re:Unity?

[Ol Olsoc]

Not for everyone obviously, but I certainly don't understand all the hate.

Fear. They are in fear.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or their experience leads them to believe it's a straightjacket where they can customize little, and the 'admin' they are exposed to is a tightassed martinet, so they want nothing to do with it.

Re:Unity?

[Anne Thwacks]

it's like McDonald's food.

I'm not sure I understand. Could you re-frame that simile as a car metaphor?

Car analogy: McDonalds food is like what you find at the bottom of the sump.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, whwn I think of MacDonalds when I am hungre, a McDouble and a small fries fits the bill. The Big Mac is a gloppy mess, with a complex 'sauce' and a sigificantly higher price. A McDouble and small fries is well under $3 and mostly simpler elements: a patty of meat, slice of 'cheese' a bun and some fried potatos.

The Mac, like all the rotating 'theme' sandwiches, is sold to the suckers who subsidize the low price of my choice.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or lactose-free, for that matter. This is concerning.

Re: Unity?

[SQLGuru]

outside of win and fruit, a geek had to read and study

My second biggest gripe about Linux. I can't just install some flavor or another on my Mom's computer and give her an easy book. If I install it, I'll get tons of calls when she wants to accomplish something and I'll have to tell there ---- well, there are about 20 different ways to do it, but none of them are "mom-friendly".

My biggest gripe is that the world of Linux is so fractured because of all of the different opinions on the "right" way. Choosing between 20 different distros and 5 different window managers and 3 different package managers can make it really hard to pick the "best" option.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Mint 17! Seriously, I replaced Ubuntu with Mint and my Dell XPS 13 really sings! And no cell phone interface either. Works and looks like Win 7 without the cruft and without Microsoft. I totally agree btw that Unity is hopeless.

Re:Unity?

[ChrisMaple]

I don't understand what you mean by "how much screen real estate your desktop environment takes up". KDE can be configured to have an empty screen. Are you counting window decorations?

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL Even Opensuse, which isn't known as a speed demon, with XFCE absolutely wipes the floor with Windows 8 wrt performance, unless you're specifically talking about various userspace optimization issues which only relate to "Linux" as far as their developers claiming their software runs on it.

Even better, the performance gap will continue to grow as time goes on and Microsoft increases the performance degradation of the older systems in order do "encourage" users to "upgrade" to Windows Spy-ware Edition. And when it's getting old, it's literally a free upgrade, without strings and spy-ware attached.

If you want to find rational arguments for staying with Windows, you've got try harder; how about actually being honest? Try "I have always at heart been a Windows user, I've never really wanted anything else - and I like being assraped dammit." The latter being the only valid reason for using Windows 10.

Re:Unity?

[hey!]

I was thinking in terms of Windows, and to a lesser degree MacOS. Yes, stuff can get hidden, which is generally the first thing I do (hit F11 in Windows for example). Which just proves my point: you may be proud of that stuff but it's just clutter to me.

Re:Unity?

[No Longer an AC]

You are not alone in that.

Re:Unity?

[unixisc]

it's like McDonald's food. nobody finds it delicious but nobody is completely repulsed by it either. if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind. it's just hard to be enthusiastic about it. (maybe this is different in the US, but here in Europe, only children look forward to going to McDonalds)

my only real gripe with unity is its file manager. i want to be able to see/edit the location line and have an UP arrow between the BACK and FORWARD ones.

Pretty often, I'm just bored and out of ideas on what to eat. If I decide I just want something fast and cheap, I find myself going to Burger King, Wendy's or Roy Rogers (previously, Hardees in Atlanta). I tried McD's just once in the last 3 months, and the fact that the cokes were mixed from the drink dispenser, giving me cranberry flavored coke when I selected the plain ole coke, made me avoid that place again.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alt + Up navigates to parent directory. Ctrl + L opens an editable location bar.

Re:Unity?

[fluffernutter]

I've been sounding like a poster boy for Elementary OS lately but I must recommend this one as well. I have tried Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, etc etc. It is the only one that I can run VMs in the background and still have the GUI work crisply. Something to do with the way that they did memory management.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison testing was having around 10 different distorted distros and DEs running on test machines the lab, as well as a few pilot machines set up. We were really against the idea of unity having come from the Ubuntu gnome 2 desktop on 10.04.

We assumed users would hate Unity, and hence the test. We didn't think much of it at a glance either. After a few weeks of testing those pilot uses voted it highest, as did we doing the admin work. It was a suprise, but that was two years ago and folks are mostly really happy with it. No OS or DE is perfect, but we were genuinely surprised at the outcome.

I guess that's what happens when you test rather than simply making assumptions about what people do and don't like.

FWIW we are using Puppet and custom (I.e. in house) Deb packages to manage these.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I should add that the machines have gnome flashback installed too which is selectable as an option when logging in. Nobody has bothered to use it (technical or non technical) even after having us go through it with them to see what they think. So the choice is there but Unity really isn't an issue.

Most folks use Mac's at home, others use windows or Ubuntu with Unity. A few report trying mint but I haven't heard much more about it.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're the type to utilize a tagged window manager, the differences between OSes becomes painful when you're suddenly stuck with one desktop. Focused mouse scrolling is also a huge pain in the ass.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, distorted was a typo. Thanks phone.

Re:Unity?

[Master Moose]

Even the allegedly small footprint distributions are slower on every computer I've tried them on than Windows 10.

Yes, I used to enjoy "revitalising" old Windows machines for family who had given up on them only to return them with a fresh flavour of lightweight (or even full scale) linux.

But it appears that the small footprint days are gone.

Re:Unity?

[penguinoid]

maybe this is different in the US, but here in Europe, only children look forward to going to McDonalds

When I was a kid, I did like the Happy Meal. But what I really liked the free cheap plastic toy in the Happy Meal, and their oversized gerbil castle.

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are so impressive, you don't know what a Big Mac is! Or understand how Google works!

I bet you're the guy who tells everybody you don't own a TV within five minutes of meeting them.

Re: Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

mighty big rock you crawled out of, seeing as you don't know of an iconic sandwich that's been around since the 60s

Re:Unity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all in the DE's, same with Windows even though it's not a separate piece of software, all that bling weighs it down, one of the biggest advantages of using any OSS is you get to pick something lighter without all the blingy shit that makes everything slow. hint: i3wm, but there are many other ways if you don't want to be that lean.

Re:Unity?

[Anomalyst]

Its a two patty cheeseburger stack with "thousand-island" dressing as the primary condiment instead of conventional ketchup/mustard, the recipe was "borrowed" from the "Big Boy" franchise restaurant chain where it was called a "Big Boy" .

Re:Unity?

[fph il quozientatore]

Oh - your are right. Sorry, I didn't mean to call a "rant" comment #53177877.

Re:Unity?

[tehcyder]

it's like McDonald's food.

I'm not sure I understand. Could you re-frame that simile as a car metaphor?

Car analogy: McDonalds food is like what you find at the bottom of the sump.

More like what you have to hose off your tires if you cross a field full of cows with diarrhoea in your 4 x 4.

Re:Unity?

[lsatenstein]

I switched to Korora Fedora Remix for my laptop. I have absolutely zero (no) issues with Korora on the laptop.

Re:Unity?

[dddux]

I am completely repulsed by McDonald's and every other fast crap maker.

Re:Unity?

[erapert]

Ubuntu + Unity uses Nautilus as its file manager by default. Press Ctrl + L to get an editable file path.

Re:Unity?

[erapert]

what I really want out of a desktop environment is to stay out of my way.

Here, have you tried using Awesome?
Ubuntu: "sudo apt-get install awesome"
Fedora: "sudo yum install awesome"
Arch: "sudo pacman -S awesome"

Re:Unity?

[nomadic]

I was using Linux Mint; it was just so sluggish.

Been to a few schools..

[drewsup]

Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS to keep things ticking along. They were happy with the results, and the kids got Linux exposure from an early age.

Re:Been to a few schools..

[nukenerd]

Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS

I am using Mepis now. It is/was brilliant. However it is now defunct - has not been updated since 2011 (although the underlying Debian has of course). As its desktop is KDE, it can hardly be called lightweight either. I'm preparing to change to Devuan with Xfce.

Re:Been to a few schools..

[unixisc]

Ain't that good - not systemd infected, may even be way back as KDE3

Re:Been to a few schools..

[Anonymous Coward]

Try AntiX.

"To answer the obvious question"

[hcs_$reboot]

they're using Ubuntu

Not an "obvious" question. As long as they're using Linux, I'm happy!

Re: "To answer the obvious question"

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, in that case, they're using Android Honeycomb. Still Linux, still happy?

The year of the Linux Laptop?

[thsths]

Somehow I doubt it. I have tried Linux on laptops many times, and it was always painful. Laptops are much more complex and specialised machines than desktops built from standard components, and as a result you get difficulties with suspend, with WiFi, with the display, with the camera... it is just too much to try to fix unless you really enjoy that kind of work.

Now I have a Chromebook, and that is the first "Linux" laptop that really works. You can even run Ubuntu on it, although it does struggle with the HiDPI display.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[buchanmilne]

I have used linux on an IBM Thinkpad, a Dell Inspiron, and 4 HP laptops of various lines, and this is the full list of hardware that didn't work:
- One TV tuner
- The fingerprint reader on at least 1 laptops (one other laptop with fingerprint reader worked). I haven't checked if there is a solution for the newer fingerprint readers.

All have suspended/resumed adequately compared to their behaviour under Windows. WiFi worked out-the-box except for one that required extraction of the firmware from the Windows driver (didn't require any command line though).

My current laptop has a Windows partition that gets almost no use, my usual linux distro, and an installation of RHEL7.2. The installation of my normal distro suspends fine, but the RHEL7.2 installation won't suspend. So, there may be differences such as this between distros depending on their focus.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personnally, as a Linux sysadmin, I've never had any problem running Linux on a laptop since 2008 ;-) Sadly, since UEFIs came out, the average user is usually repelled at the installation stage : either their Ubuntu install media isn't detected (even though it is UEFI-compatible), so they have to install it in Legacy mode, which clobbers their Windows boot, or they stumble upon this great Windows "feature" which, even if the install happened, makes it seem as if it didn't as soon as you reboot Windows. Or it can be a one-time Windows update which clobbers their Linux partition instead. What fun after a first install !

IMHO, Windows is toxic, and should be removed from any computer that should work reliably. Thanks to Microsoft's lobbies, installing and using Linux on laptops has become much more difficult than it used to be, and now my Linux-curious users are afraid to do it themselves (as well they should be). Once their system is up and running, I've yet to receive a complaint about Unity or hardware handling, though. Everything pretty much works out of the box (although my users don't have brand-new laptops with the latest hardware, which helps).

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Alioth]

It depends on the laptops and how well the manufacturer supports Linux. I find Hewlett-Packard laptops work just fine with Linux, I have a couple at work, both run Debian and there's no problems with the display, wifi, suspend/resume etc.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. Bought an HP 17t last January. Works find with Ubuntu Mint; no problems with wifi, audio or anything else.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that the 'many times' were mostly in the previous century. Where I work, we have many laptops that run various Linux distributions and they all outperform the Windoze versions.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[dbIII]

and that is the first "Linux" laptop that really works

Sadly (by stating that you've only had it working when someone else did it for you) you've just revealed you've done this far too few times to know much about it. It would be more convincing to hear from people with dozens of successes who are then able to blame the tools instead of their workmanship in the cases when they failed.
Me? I piggybacked on the success of others by choosing models that were reported as working so I don't have much to add either and my zero failure rate with about twenty of the things is really due to the work of others.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[drinkypoo]

I have used Linux on way more machines than you have, and a way higher percentage of it has had problems. Suspend-Resume has worked properly on less than a third of the systems I've tried it on, for example. Graphics don't work at all on one system in spite of it having very old ATI graphics. No, wait, because it has ATI graphics. R690m, fuck you ATI, fool me once. I don't think my next CPU will even be from AMD and they mostly have been for years now but that's another rant — but it is a rant on Linux compatibility, where AMD falls straight on their face. Even AMD power saving doesn't work right on Linux in most cases, and I don't mean sleep either.

I also have several minipci wifi cards not supported by Linux. That's not Linux's fault, but it's still a PITA

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the laptops and how well the manufacturer supports Linux....

I second this so much.

Nobody would buy a Lenovo PC and then complain that OSX doesn't work on it. If you know that Lenovo doesn't give full Linux support why would you buy one of their laptops in the first place? Even if you are forced to use Windows today, eventually you know that either increasing system requirements will make the machine obsolete or the next Microsoft spyware add on will be one step too far.

There are plenty of manufacturers doing decent hardware guarantees, ranging from Purism who will ensure all drivers are free through System76 a wide range of solid, reasonably cheap laptops and a good hardware support reputation through to Dell who will do modern hardware with full onsite corporate support (I've had pretty good experiences here, as long as you make that the local technician uses the Linux certified firmware/hardware combinations) and supply from other countries than the USA.

A few years ago it might have been reasonable to complain that your hardware didn't support Linux properly. Not now.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have run Linux on Laptops for a decade and it was rarely painful (mostly a decade ago when WIfi and Sound were regular PITAs). In recent years it's mostly put-in-USB-stick-install-30-minutes-and-done.

That encompasss everything from Netbook to Asus RoG Gaming Laptop.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go tell all the countless people on Linux forums and IRC channels that they're liars. Linux hardware support on consumer devices is terrible.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[loonycyborg]

Average users shouldn't install OS themselves. There's already plenty of laptops with linux pre-installed for sale. Custom OS installs are only good for enthusiast early-adopters and skilled people with particular requirements.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Zontar The Mindless]

I have never run anything *but* Linux on any of the laptops I've ever owned (mostly Acers and one HP).

I've had one or two cases where I had to extract the Windows wifi driver or to build a 64-bit version of a wifi driver from source. And I've not even bothered to worry about onboard wifi since smartphones and tethering became a thing. I have a 12-year-old Acer still running an ancient distro that for some reason doesn't support the built-in card reader, and I already had a couple of USB card readers on hand when I bought it so I never bothered to figure out why.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Mr D from 63]

Average users shouldn't install OS themselves. There's already plenty of laptops with linux pre-installed for sale. Custom OS installs are only good for enthusiast early-adopters and skilled people with particular requirements.

The short list of people who would heed that advice are average users who would agree they are average users and who care what you think.

OTOH, if they try they may actually learn something and become above average users.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Linux hardware support is great. Your argument is flawed as you could easily check for yourself by looking at all the channels where Windows users also have trouble with hardware and drivers.

There are 0 platforms with 100% perfect hardware/driver support. Sometimes the driver is shoddy to begin with, sometimes it worked fine on XP but wasn't updated for W7. Sometimes it works fine until you plugin another piece of hardware and suddenly there is a weird conflict.

When I configure a friends office network printers they are always recognized on my Linux Netbook - but then I have to hunt for some special HP (et al) network driver setup.exe before his Windows machines can work with it.

Anecdotes prove nothing.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[cjjjer]

Nobody would buy a Lenovo PC and then complain that OSX doesn't work on it.

Sorry, I just have to remind you that you're on /.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[gweihir]

You need to check out the respective entries on http://www.linux-on-laptops.co... before you buy. The problem are mostly with the vendors, not with Linux, hence you need to avoid bad vendors. With this approach, I have zero problems so far, except for one fingerprint-reader, which I do not care about anyways (they are far to easily tricked to qualify as security-mechanism).

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[hairyfeet]

Are you STILL bitching about a driver that takes all of seven steps to install in Linux and doesn't even need Bash? Give me a fricking break.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a linux fan and maintain several servers for various purposes, CLI only (mostly debian). However this right here is the exact problem with linux. And while yes the manufactures could do more to make it simpler it really isn't on them. But your average person isn't building their wifi drivers from source, if they can't connect to wifi on boot up, they'll be out looking for a new computer.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[ruir]

Hardware whitelisting, certificates mishandling, malware on the bios....friends do not let friends buy Lenovo.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[ruir]

Sometimes the hardware is shoddy to start with, like Realtek wifi chipsets.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anne Thwacks]

I have been buying Lenovos and running Linux on them since they took over Thinkpads. No problems at all. In fact I have two Thinkpads (one is a T21) that stopped running Windows, dead in its tracks. I was going to scrap it, thinking it was broken, but Linux installed first time with no issues. I have a T60 (or maybe T61) that did the same.

Most of my family claimed their Windows was broken (since 8 came out), and ask me to fix it - which I do by installing Ubuntu Mate. Some understand the nature of the "fix" and some don't. Most eventually come and ask about LibreOffice and I say "it was "Liberated" by (or from) Che Guevara" (or Frank Zappa or Al Capone, dependent on age and political views) and they are happy. No FARC suppporters in MY house - and if there were, they can go and use OpenOffice.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[loonycyborg]

But now we shouldn't consider installing linux manually to be the default way. Most people can't or don't want to manually install OS and while having linux equals installing it manually in minds of people it'll remain a niche OS on desktop. Even experienced users who installed various distros innumerable times should consider getting their new laptops/PCs with linux pre-installed. Even if they install own distro, a linux tested hardware is less likely to lead to driver issues.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anne Thwacks]

if they can't connect to wifi on boot up, they'll be out looking for a new computer.

Well they had best avoid Windows ones, since Windows requires you to download the drivers for your Wifi card from the Internet using the Wifi that does not work without the drivers.

Sometimes you have to Google for help with Linux, but it is more use than trying to phone MS support, as well as cheaper. As for 3 days trying to sort out the Windows registration - well you could spend that watching Youtube on your new Linux install instead!

I gave up registering after I found that the "Windows genuine" reported my "PC World Business" purchase was fake, but the hand made CD I got from a guy in the computer fair was legit.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[drinkypoo]

Are you STILL bitching about a driver that takes all of seven steps to install in Linux and doesn't even need Bash? Give me a fricking break.

It doesn't work. It's still glitchy AF in the best case. Not acceptable. The power saving for that era of processor is still garbage, too.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[thsths]

And I have to say the "Linux community" is not doing Linux any favour. The responses are unfortunately rather predictable: half agree with my experience, the other half calls me an idiot. I used to defend the style as "matter of fact", when actually it is sometimes just rude.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Mr D from 63]

You can 'consider' it however you like but it doesn't change anything. People haven't been choosing to buy pre-installed on any scale and have rather been choosing to self install. So that's the default.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[AthanasiusKircher]

GP: I have tried Linux on laptops many times, and it was always painful.

Parent: I have used linux on an IBM Thinkpad, a Dell Inspiron, and 4 HP laptops of various lines, and this is the full list of hardware that didn't work: [followed by very minimal list]

These sorts of arguments always degenerate into a war of anecdotes. "I installed Linux on 10 machines and nothing worked!" "No, I installed Linux on 20 machines while walking in snow uphill both ways, and it always works!" Etc.

Here's the more reasonable reality: Linux works better on both desktops and laptops than it did even a few years ago. Compare it to installing Linux on most laptops a decade ago, and the difference is night and day.

On the other hand, hardware support is hard, particularly when many vendors have little incentive to spend time supporting Linux and a lot more incentive to make sure their machines have a working Windows driver. On laptops this is an obvious bigger issue, since with a desktop you can often swap out a part for one that's guaranteed Linux compatible, but laptops generally are a "finished package" with a lot of stuff that's hard to swap out.

So, those who can say, "Linux is working better than ever!" are correct, but those who come out saying, "I've run Linux on more laptops than I can count and have never had a problem with suspend" or whatever are either (1) lucky, (2) chose their purchases to avoid these problems in the first place, or (3) are in a state of denial about how things don't quite work right. (I have to admit I'm myself guilty of the last one sometimes -- we all adjust when our machines don't quite work the way we want them to, and we forget how those problems might seem instantly weird or annoying when another person tries to use it.)

The reality is that Linux does work fine "out of the box" on a lot of common laptops these days. But everyone should look around online first for reviews from folks trying to get Linux working before assuming that's the case for any given laptop.

Frankly, though, I'm not especially bothered by the current state of affairs, nor do I think it makes Linux a "problem" for laptops. Laptops are finicky things hardware-wise to begin with, and I've encountered my share of weird hardware issues even on stock Macs and PCs with Windows pre-installed.

For the present story, though, the point is that they had a bunch of laptops donated, and Linux made it easier to make them available for student use. Shouldn't that be a good thing?!? Maybe some of them had installs that worked "out of the box," while others required some tweaking by "school's Linux club" to get working perfectly. Who cares? You had a school without enough laptops, and now they have donated laptops that they can put to use without paying huge licensing fees just to use an OS.

Is it "the year of the Linux laptop"? I don't know. I don't really care. But I'm happy these kids have working computers when they didn't before.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes you mistakenly plug in a device before installing the drivers, and Windows helpfully installs drivers that are worse than non-functional, as installing proper drivers won't quite work after. I got bored with the uninstall-tweak-reboot dance before I could figure out if 'reinstall Windows' is really the simplest way to undo Windows' helpfulness.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you perhaps wear horn-rimmed glasses and color your hair?

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using KDE Neon on two laptops. I'm not having any problems with the one that had integrated graphics. The one that has a Nvidia 960m in it though - that one is. I can't see my laptop screen unless I'm hooked up to an external monitor. But it seems they are getting closer to fixing that. Everything about Neon I like especially the KDE Connect feature that pops up my phone notifications in the bottom right so I can keep on working.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[tepples]

Since when does it not work to download WNIC drivers on a different PC or using wired Ethernet?

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[tepples]

Then why do laptops with pre-installed GNU/Linux, from companies such as System76, cost twice as much as major brand entry level Windows laptops? And which 10.1-inch or 11.5-inch laptop models with pre-installed GNU/Linux are recommended nowadays?

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[thsths]

Neither. But I have learned that how you say it can be more important than what you say.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[swillden]

These sorts of arguments always degenerate into a war of anecdotes. "I installed Linux on 10 machines and nothing worked!" "No, I installed Linux on 20 machines while walking in snow uphill both ways, and it always works!" Etc.

I'll add one more anecdote on the other side:

I just bought an HP laptop for use on a certain project that requires Windows. Specifically, it requires Windows 7, but I didn't know that when I bought the machine, and it came with Win10 on it. So, I bought a Win7 DVD and installed it.

Holy hell was it painful.

Oh, the basic install was okay. I had a USB DVD drive lying around which just worked, plug-n-play. But once Windows got up and running almost nothing worked. I knew it would look awful because it would be using default VGA video drivers (of course, any decent Linux distro would do better), and I knew there was a good chance it wouldn't have any Wifi drivers. What I didn't expect was that neither the Ethernet card nor the USB controller would freaking work! How the hell was I supposed to get the drivers onto the damned thing with no network and no USB?

I ended up booting it from a Linux LiveCD, repartitioning the drive and putting the Ethernet and USB controller drivers on a separate (FAT32, though I could have done NTFS) partition. Then I reinstalled Win7 on the rest of the drive and after it booted it was able to see the FAT32 partition and I was able to install network & USB.

After that I spent two hours repeatedly downloading various drivers for devices that weren't working, installing, and rebooting. Over and over. At the end the device manager still tells me there's one unknown device. I've installed everything HP has listed for this model, and I have no idea what that one device is. I could have dug in and found the PCI device ID and looked it up, but everything seemed to be working well enough so decided to ignore it.

I didn't spend a lot of time with Linux on this machine, but everything seemed to work perfectly off the LiveCD... video, audio, wifi, Ethernet. I didn't try suspend/resume and I wouldn't be shocked if that didn't work without some tweaking. But it was one hell of a lot smoother and more pleasant than Windows 7.

I realize that the core of the problem was that I was installing an old OS on new hardware. But I'd bet money that if I downloaded a 2009 Linux distro and put it on this box, it would work better than Win7 did. I'm sure there would be plenty of problems, but I'll bet it would be able to use generic ethernet and USB drivers to get basic functionality.

After I whined about this experience on /., another poster one-upped me (of course) by describing a machine he'd tried to install Windows on. Windows wasn't able to use the SATA controller out of the box, so the installation couldn't even succeed. As soon as it got far enough that it tried to use Window drivers rather than going through the interfaces provided by UEFI, everything stopped. He had to figure out how to slipstream the necessary driver into the Windows installer.

I'm really glad I don't have to deal with Windows more than once or twice per decade.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have installed Xubuntu Linux on two notebook computers (Acer AspireOne 13 and Hewlett Packard Spectre 13) both having UEFI without difficulty. In the case of the HP Spectre 13 it did require using the USB-C power adapter port rather than one of the other two USB-C ports.I am returning to college in January so I kept a resized Microsoft Windows 10 partition along with the recovery partition after making a full recovery image, and then installed Xubuntu Linux. I will likely upgrade the 256 GB SSD to a 512 GB SSD or 1TB SSD at some point allocating 256 GB to Microsoft Windows 10 and the remainder to Xubuntu Linux.

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

CentOS is primarily geared towards servers and enterprise setups on servers, so things like suspend/hibernate aren't priority as most servers don't suspend resume, so it's not really surprising that you have trouble with it, although googling around or checking Stack Exchange may provide a solution to your problem.

Re:The year of the Linux Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am using various 11-12 yrs old Pentium 4 (32 bit)desktop and laptop/notebook PCs running Lubuntu14.04 and 16.04 ,very nicely with 1GB RAM or slightly more (for some machines supplementary RAM bought for peanuts via eBay)
Lubuntu is Ubuntu with the light LXDE desktop Even the latest Libre Office suite runs well on these machines

From the original message re that school's Windows PCs ,it doesn't say whether they were no longer working well hardware wise or that it was a "Windows clogging problem" If the latter, those probably "post 2005" Windows PCs could have been re-used well by installing Lubuntu , by first erasing the hard drive(s)

Frank in northern Scotland

Re: The year of the Linux Laptop?

[hairyfeet]

Sorry about the lateness, I was on vacation...well no shit its buggy, its fucking Linux, what do you expect? damned near EVERY driver in Linux is buggy, they have buggy wifi, buggy sound, buggy networking, that is why you should buy a laptop specifically made for Linux if you want to run Linux because anything else? Is hit or miss.

The moral of the story? If you buy a Windows laptop then RUN WINDOWS ON IT which I have zero doubt Windows 7 will run just fine on that laptop, which by the time its EOL in 2020 that laptop will be too damned old to do shit with anyway, or even better just get one of those $199 Windows 10 2-in-1 laptops which will curbstomp a system that old by a country mile, hell I pick up $50 laptops off of CL that beat the snot out of that thing, let it go already and get something this century.

How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kids, today we learn about how to search on the internet. First, connect to www.google.com and then enter "linux bluetooth keyboard doesn't work". Your assignment for tonight is to read all the forums and write a 2-page report due tomorrow on how to fix the linux bluetooth driver. Good luck, dismissed!"

Re:How it went

[behrooz0az]

I share a bluetooth keyboard and a wired mouse between 3 laptops with 2 displays(5 total), I have yet to write a single command to 'fix' or 'connect' anything.

Re: How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Linux on a MSI gaming laptop. Keyboard backlight, Bigfoot wi-fi and audio don't work.

Re:How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotes are like assholes; everyone has one.

Re:How it went

[Calydor]

"But ms. Teacher, my bluetooth keyboard doesn't work! How do I write the search string?"

Re: How it went

[behrooz0az]

Well, that used to be true about five years ago.
One of the laptops is a sony vaio; sdcard, bluetooth, keyboard backlight, nvidia card , screen backlight(yes, it was black), hdmi and audio jack didn't work or needed days of figuring out.
With linux > 3.4 they all work out of the box now.

Re: How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

2011 called - it want's its relevant remarks back

Re: How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Linux on a MSI gaming laptop. Keyboard backlight, Bigfoot wi-fi and audio don't work.

Interestingly, I have an Asus laptop, and Fedora Mate 24 fully supports the keyboard backlight (it even draws a cute graphic on the screen showing the current brightness when I use the keyboard shortcut), but Win10 doesn't support changing the backlight at all (neither from a command nor the keyboard shortcut).

It appears to me that it's Windows that's not ready for primetime.

Re: How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

(parent poster again)

Just to be complete, the "Bluetooth", wi-fi and audio all work flawlessly out of the box.

Re:How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

on screen keyboard.

Re:How it went

[tepples]

A USB keyboard from a garage sale should still work.

Re:How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

Joke's on you. Not only were they able to get the bluetooth keyboard working, they were able to browse the internet over said bluetooth connection while investigating a fix for their bluetooth keyboard.

Re:How it went

[Anonymous Coward]

All I got is this old PPC iBook and my Yellow Dog Linux ate the assignment.

This allows a school to experiment [and] gives th

[h33t l4x0r]

em the freedom to make mistakes... Like adopting systemd.

Re:"a long-time Linux enthusiast"

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course someone who is enthousiastic about something can't be just that: enthousiastic. No, impossible, there must be other motives.

Good move

[Anonymous Coward]

For their budget of course. In a little while they'll get a great offer from Microsoft and Apple, free computers, devices and software, all top-of-the-line, a good photo-op and some headlines, and all those linux machines will end up in a landfill. Linux is a great move when you people to give you free stuff.

Re:Good move

[nukenerd]

In a little while they'll get a great offer from Microsoft and Apple, free computers, devices and software

I'm still waiting for my offer.

Re: Good move

[n0creativity]

MS already basically gives their products away to schools. Im the IT Director for a non-profit based school and we pay under $10k annually for ALL of our MS licensing. This includes Office365, desktop licensing, Datacenter server licenses, etc etc. Honestly, as a school, if MS licensing is the hurdle in your budget, I think you may be doing it wrong.

Re: Good move

[Anne Thwacks]

Im the IT Director for a non-profit based school and we pay under $10k annually for ALL of our MS licensing. T

You give me $5k, stick the other $5k in your pocket, and the kids can use Ubuntu. Sounds fair to me!

Re: Good move

[Joe_Dragon]

Can you run your windows servers in a VM under esxi / libvirt / etc? or do they want you to use hyper-v?

Re: Good move

[n0creativity]

Haha, that's great for you, but last time I checked the 'enterprise management' tools for Linux are no where near what MS provides. Managing OS updates, software installs/updates, group policy, etc etc are fairly straightforward with my MS domain. I'd at through that $5k real quick in my time managing all of that on Linux desktops. Not to mention the end user training budget for teachers would balloon...

Re: Good move

[n0creativity]

Yes. When I took over here we had ESXi licensing, so I have continued that. Our VMware licensing and support is almost as much as our MS licensing! Our DC licenses allow for unlimited VMs on our hosts.

Re: Good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Managing a large set of Linux machines for OS and software updates is far easier on Linux as the two major package management systems (apt/yum) blow away anything MS offers. It's honestly trivial to do at scale. As for Group Policy, there is no direct replacement. But there are plenty of tools that offer similar functionality (eg. Puppet, Ansible, etc), it's just a slightly different way of doing things. I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops and it's honestly child's play compared to the 40 or so Windows desktops we have. On servers it's no different.

It's cheaper from a licensing perspective (i.e. none), plus managing those licenses (no time required to manage nothing) plus the overall setup takes less time to manage. I'm an ex. Windows sysadmin too (ten years experience in past life) and since actually trying this stuff I've never looked back. Give it a go some time - it's amazing what's out there.

Re: Good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, that's great for you, but last time I checked the 'enterprise management' tools for Linux are no where near what MS provides.
Managing OS updates, software installs/updates, group policy, etc etc are fairly straightforward with my MS domain.
I'd at through that $5k real quick in my time managing all of that on Linux desktops. Not to mention the end user training budget for teachers would balloon...

A bash script can automate the software update process. It really is not difficult. Plus virtualisation software such a Oracle VirtualBox or lighter-weight Docker containers can simplify standardization on particular software applications while making rolling out updated images trivial.

Re:Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[Calydor]

So which one is better for the school's needs: Win 7, Win 8, Win 8.1 or Win 10? You get ONE CHANCE because of the cost of trying any of them.

Unity

[John Allsup]

One thing that can be said for Unity is that it once someone is past the novice stage, it can be a great incentive to learn how to change you choice of desktop environment.

Re: Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity is Ok. The one thing that really bothered me was the stupid global menu - and that was always fixable and has been only one settings click away for a while now.

Re:Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[mvdwege]

So tell me, how do you run Free Software on a proprietary operating system (by which I assume you mean WIndows) without the hassle of license tracking?

Idiot.

Just like Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Apps are free. Apps are not free. That is not a question.

That one chooses to use free apps and nothing else will get one to the same place as the other. There are FAR MORE free apps on Windows. And FAR BETTER.

Re:Just like Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is for luddites!

Re: Just like Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in beer vs free as in freedom.

And a lot of the "free" apps on Windows are free as in bundled with adware or free as in infected.

Re:"a long-time Linux enthusiast"

[nukenerd]

The move to Linux or any other FOSS is a political/ideological issue.

As opposed to moves to Microsoft products being a financial incentive/bribery issue.

microsoft-pays-nfl-to-use-surface

microsoft-back-to-trying-to-bribe-people-to-use-bing

Re:Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[Zontar The Mindless]

Keroff did not say "When you're using open source applications...". He said "When you're using open source software...".

Since you don't seem to understand what an "operating system" is, let me provide you a helpful definition:

An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs.

Now... you were saying something about someone being a "dimwit"...?

News: Water is WET

[Anonymous Coward]

A set of young individuals who want to learn more about computing are given the tools and freedom to do so. It should seem obvious to anyone, anywhere than ramming some Microsoft software down their throats and saying "this is all that exists" isn't going to work well - even ignoring the cost. It's like having religious education where only a single faith is taught.

Re:News: Water is WET

[nomadic]

It's not 1995; most people are perfectly aware of the existence of OSX and Android and use them both frequently.

Re:This allows a school to experiment [and] gives

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the grand success here one can only conclude that systemd saved the school's club.

the real question

[wendyo]

vi or emacs?

Re: the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

Nano or pico :)

Re:the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

Vi. It's a system utility which works everywhere and probably never will be replaced. EMACS is a relic with most of its future behind it and a shrinking user base since people these days insist on these newfangled IDEs.

Re:the real question

[unixisc]

.rpm or .deb?

a heart warming story

[Anonymous Coward]

just in time for the holidays.

More schools should be doing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't blame them. Why pay thousands for Windows when you can do the same thing with Linux for free?

Unity is fine. It's got bugs, yes, but it's pretty comprehensive to figure out. Tilde to open the Dash, search for 'browser', 'music', or whatever, then drag-'n'-drop to the panel. Literally the same thing you can do in Windows. Kids don't care what the apps are called, they recognize icon shapes and colors.

Considering how quick technology evolves even on a weekly basis, most people - especially schools - cannot keep up. Why should they toss out perfectly good machines just to get new ones for Microsoft's latest tragedy?

Re:More schools should be doing this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay thousands for Windows when you can do the same thing with Linux for free?

Kids cannae use Linux, lad. Too much fookin XML.

Re: Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run all those versions of Windows for free for at least 90 days.

So, trash then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, they got rid of Windows in favor of complete trash that isn't even remotely designed for education, much less mainstream usage.

Re:So, trash then?

[ruir]

Because windows Is not trash?

Re:So, trash then?

[Anne Thwacks]

Because windows Is not trash?

No - because Edubuntu is not designed for Education!

Ubuntu sucks for me

[cyber-vandal]

I've had enough of the stupid flaws, bad desktop environment and shit built in software.

The Software Center is a lesson in how not to build an application. I went on to it yesterday and it told me I had 11 updates. There were Install buttons next to each one and an Install button at the top right (should really say Install All to be clear what it does, but never mind).

I click this button, get the spinning circle and then get returned to the update screen a minute later telling me I've got 14 updates. No error message, no suggestion of what went wrong, nothing only now the Install All button has disappeared. Great design, great testing. I'm sure if I wasted half an hour fucking about with the command line it would work but then what's the point of having this application?

Linux is supposed to be better than Windows. This is not better. This is really poor. I'm going to try Mint and see if that's any better because I want to be able to use Linux over Windows, I really do but my experiences always seem to suck, especially on laptops.

Re:Ubuntu sucks for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC because I've already moderated.

I've had enough of the stupid flaws, bad desktop environment and shit built in software.

I can't speak about the "stupid flaws" because you weren't specific. As for "bad desktop environment", in Linux you have your choice of several. I use XFCE - originally on Debian, and now on Ubuntu. At leas here you have a choice - try that under Windows and see how far you get.

The Software Center is a lesson in how not to build an application.

So don't use it - I don't. In fact, I uninstalled it. I use Synaptic Package Manager, and occasionally I use 'apt-get' from the command line. Again, you have choices in Linux - if you don't like one approach, try another.

I click this button, get the spinning circle and then get returned to the update screen a minute later telling me I've got 14 updates. No error message, no suggestion of what went wrong, nothing only now the Install All button has disappeared.

I'm not sure what's gone wrong, and I feel your pain, as I have occasionally experienced similar stuff, although not in the past 3 or 4 years. I find the automatic update process in Xubuntu to be reliable, sensible and polite. And to be fair, I used to have weird problems in Windows as well - Linux desktops are FAR from being alone in that wonky kind of frustrating behaviour.

Linux is supposed to be better than Windows. This is not better. This is really poor. I'm going to try Mint and see if that's any better because I want to be able to use Linux over Windows, I really do but my experiences always seem to suck, especially on laptops.

Linux is better than Windows in some ways, and worse in others. For me, on the whole it's much better than Windows, and was better even when XP was still current. YMMV. But I encourage you to continue trying a few different distros, and I especially encourage you to try some of the different desktop environments and package-management options available within those distros. As for your laptop experience, it's unfortunately a common one, but getting less so. Yes, it sucks to have to do stuff TO your computer when you're totally over such baby-geek pursuits and are more interested in what you can do WITH your computer. Only you can decide whether having to mess around to get Linux working the way you want it to work is better or worse than the festering dungheap that is Windows 10.

This is cool!

[nathar]

Come on this is great! A Linux club, with a waiting list? Any way you look at it if you are a Linux enthusiast you had to have smiled a bit, even if it was on the inside, when you read that.

Android isn't as good for homework

[raymorris]

> "Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world"

Though Android is the most prevalent OS in the world, Ubuntu is more appropriate for doing schoolwork.

Re: Android isn't as good for homework

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, if he means the desktop then every workplace I've seen are using almost entirely Macs now all the way up to the CEO. Windows is seen as an anachronism.

Re: Android isn't as good for homework

[murdocj]

Is that you Steve?

Re: Android isn't as good for homework

[Ol Olsoc]

Of course, if he means the desktop then every workplace I've seen are using almost entirely Macs now all the way up to the CEO. Windows is seen as an anachronism.

That's because we don't find it amusing to have half the updates break something, and then a smug fanboi comes in and makes like its our fault.

Re: Android isn't as good for homework

[SQLGuru]

If that were true, Apple would have much higher shipped unit numbers. I'm starting to see mixed use --- certain people have Macs and certain people have PCs.

Re: Android isn't as good for homework

[Insanity Defense]

Windows 10 update problems at work. Update stopped all use of my computer and my bosses for the first 2 hours one day. Another wouldn't let my keyboard work for more than a few seconds at a time, had to unplug it and plug it back in to get those few seconds. Third, the window I was working on would become "invisible", you could see where it was but not what was in it and couldn't do anything while it was randomly in that state till it randomly returned.

Hyperbole much?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject.

And the best part is

[Kludge]

The best part of all those free apps is all the crap-ware which gets installed with them. I swear every time I get a free app for M$ windows, it tries to hi-jack my browser with some POS add-on.
Everytime some friend/relative asks me to help him with his MS windows computer I feel like poking myself in the eye. I feel so dirty.

My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[Hasaf]

I am a computer teacher at a middle school and I requested some of the surplus computers for my students to learn something other than Microsoft and Google office tools on. Quite literally, the school dumpstered the old computers instead. I am explicitly forbidden from teaching about the computer (yes, the topics I am not to discuss are in the state curriculum, I am just not to teach those sections).

I am not to teach scripts or programming outside of the robotics class, in that class I am to only use the Lego EV3 programming environment. I am not to introduce things like the Arduino, or any other single board, microcontroller.

As far as things like a Linux club, the students have asked for that. However, the restrictions the district created are too much. The district will not support it in any way (no surplus computers; remember, they go to the dumpster). Further, the linux computers may not be connected to the network, or used to form an independent network, in the school. They must not, through any means access any other network or the internet (that clause was to address the idea of a high gain antenna to my home wifi, as I only live a block from the school and have a clear, rooftop, line of sight). That means standalone computers only.

Frankly, until the schools support computer education, beyond office apps, middle school is not a place that will turn kids onto computers.

Re:My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess... idiotic rules, absence of free will and initiative, blind adherence to rules, complicated mindset. India?

Re:My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[hey!]

I've worked many years in and with non-profits and government agencies, and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. You get bad and ugly when there's too little or too much money.

Too little money is pretty straightforward; as a department is starved for resources and expertise it adopts a defensive posture. More time is spent trying to avoid work it can't do than doing work. The theme of the under-resourced department is stop the world from changing so we can catch up.

Too much money is just a more costly way of having not enough money. Where money is too abundant, expectations tend to be poorly defined and there's never enough money to do all the things you might want to do. The theme of the over-resourced department is sky's the limit, but stuff just doesn't get done.

You know you have the right amount of money when the work that's laid out for you looks difficult to do with the resources you have, but achievable.

Your story sounds like an under-resourced operation, which nonetheless may look very expensive to people who have no idea how much things cost. Policies that make user go away are the best case for them.

Re:My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[Hasaf]

Nope, USA. Before coming to the school district I am at I worked in China for eight years. At the school in China, the concern was money. At this school it is about silos of control.

Re:My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[guruevi]

Doesn't sound too surprising here is the logic:
- Computers are purchased on a grant and/or lease. When the lease/grant is over, the computers have zero value. They should thus be destroyed since any usage after that would be considered value and is not permitted by the grant and/or taxable and/or give money to the bank.

- You get big grants (or discounts) from Microsoft/Google/Lego to teach "their" stuff. It doesn't really add up to a discount since Lego Education is roughly 5x more expensive than regular Lego's ($300 for a small 100 piece Duplo kit). There is most likely a no competition clause in your contract with them. Same for office supplies, computers etc. we have a contract with Dell, Apple, Staples, a local furniture company etc. Apple is the only company that actually gives a discount, all the others crank their prices up.

You think that Microsoft/Gates/Facebook is actually interested in getting people interested in computers? No, they just want to teach kids how "their" ecosystem works, so they become productive line workers.

Re:My district dumpstered the surplus computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you are a problem teacher who tries pushing his private pet projects on students rather than stick to a generally approved curriculum. They can't get rid of you because nobody else wants your job, but you have to be managed by administration who can't trust you to do your job right.

Sure, for a particularly talented student who finds the curriculum unchallenging, get him started on Linux and scripts may be a good idea. For a general class using computers, it is a waste of limited classtime and is costing the taxpayers money.

I'm a High School English teacher, I would love to talk about James Joyce, or translation from another language, or technical writing. However, I don't because I trust the system - that pushing your own hobbies on students isn't as useful as generally sticking to the curriculum that the expert teachers have arrived upon.

But what about the software

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife a 4th grade teacher has moved a bit beyond Windows PC's in her classroom. But not completely as many testing and curriculum is still Windows only software. As is some of the other tools and management software schools use. To say you can just install a Linux based OS and make old PC's usable is just lying. But otherwise relating to the poor state technology is in with many schools is spot on.

CUB Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the same with old Acer mini laptops. CUB has 32bit Ubuntu distro.

SQL on Mac? Squirrel?

[raymorris]

I noticed your user name; do you have a favorite SQL tool on Mac? Squirrel is fine, but not awesome.

Re:SQL on Mac? Squirrel?

[swimboy]

I like Sequel Pro: http://www.sequelpro.com/

Re: Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the OS that came bundled on each machine. Image it immediately before use. Archive each image to push back onto the individual machine as needed.

Keep a claw hammer in your desk to kill any fucker who comes in babbling about licenses. The machine was sold with a licensed OS and you're just maintaining a pristine image for each individual machine.

My .02

[DaMattster]

The problem here is not one of technology, it's a lack of resources, planning, and project management. While I'm very pro open source, the operating system is a minute detail in all of this. Linux won't magically be a saving grace because it too will have problems. I like making open source a choice versus forcing it down everyone's throat like some religious dogma. The laptop program failed due to incredibly poor planning and resource management. As much as I hate saying this, teaching kids Linux won't prepare them for the Windows dominated world. Instead open source should be taught alongside Windows. That will make kids more well rounded.

Re: Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[mvdwege]

So you have to go to all that trouble to save licensed images and keep track of which machine they belong to. And you say that's no hassle?

Re:"a long-time Linux enthusiast"

[thegarbz]

The second one may be on point, but the first link is nothing more than marketing. They couldn't care less what OS the NFL uses providing their Surface tablets are front and centre showing the windows symbol towards the camera.

I guarantee you no one in the back office away from cameras is using Surfaces as part of this deal.

GNU/Linux

[twistedcubic]

No, they were save by GNU/Linux. A majority of the code in Ubuntu is Debian GNU/Linux.

OMG

[KenHansen]

From the linked-to article:

What was the genesis of the Asian Penguins?

In 2011 the Community School of Excellence launched its 1:1 program, which supplied each student with their own with Windows 7 laptop. Inadequate staff development and logistical problems hampered the initiative. Stu said, "We encountered a lot of problems with students breaking their laptops, losing their laptops or just not taking care of them properly. This became a major issue when trying to use technology in the classroom when 25% of the students were missing their laptops. At that point I began to wonder what I could do change the dynamic." Stu applied for a grant from FreeGeek Twin Cities, and received four desktop PCs for his classroom. [Emphasis added]

Ok, from the top:

In 2011 the Community School of Excellence launched its 1:1 program

The laptops are 6 years old, being used daily by elementary and middle school aged children. Based on my personal experience in public school K-12 education, the laptops shouldn't be expected to last six years...

"We encountered a lot of problems with students breaking their laptops, losing their laptops or just not taking care of them properly."

And how, exactly, did changing the OS installed on them correct the broken, left at home, or mis-treated laptops?

trying to use technology in the classroom when 25% of the students were missing their laptops.

Obviously, once they installed Linux on them everyone made sure they were working properly and remembered to bring them to class... There wasn't anything mentioned that can be attributed to running Windows 7 on the laptops.

Re: Uh, open source runs on Windows ...

[KenHansen]

So which one is better for the school's needs: Win 7, Win 8, Win 8.1 or Win 10? You get ONE CHANCE because of the cost of trying any of them.

Said the IT expert that never priced educational software for schools... Through educational assurance, every desktop/laptop can be outfitted with any currently supported version of Windows OS and Microsoft office, along with a raft of other included software and client licenses for less than $35/yr. Schools do not run 'home' version of Windows (as they can't be managed centrally by a Windows Server via group policies), and they do not buy $100+ OS installs or $250 Office licenses for their computers. They pay less than $3/month and get immediate access to the latest software.

Sir, I tried to fuck the manual before reading it

[bingoUV]

But I got paper cuts. Was I supposed to fuck the manual, or the manual was supposed to fuck me?

Printer was hard enough to setup so that I could print the manual for this activity.

Re:Sir, I tried to fuck the manual before reading

[Cro Magnon]

You must have gotten the wrong acronym. It's RTFM, not FTRM!

Quit spreading BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt it. I have tried Linux on laptops many times, and it was always painful. Laptops are much more complex and specialised machines than desktops built from standard components, and as a result you get difficulties with suspend, with WiFi, with the display, with the camera... it is just too much to try to fix unless you really enjoy that kind of work.

Why is it that every time Linux is brought up somebody like you writes BS like this. Strange I've loaded Linux on many a laptop and everything works just fine. Hell my laptop even finds and installs network printers without asking.

Let's talk about Windows. With Linux you get a working machine with applications installed ready to do REAL work. With Windows you get an OS. That's it. No applications except a crappy web browser. You don't even get network drivers so the browser doesn't work. You talk about things not working well what about Windows. Last time I installed Windows NOTHING!! worked hell the thing wouldn't even see a thumb drive yes a thumb drive. So after going to the HP site to find drivers because the network card didn't work, the wifi didn't work, the camera didn't work, and like I said it wouldn't see the thumb drive to copy the drivers. Also when going to the site there were 6 NIC drivers 4 wifi drivers for the same model. Which one??? Well download all of them and play the guess game. My fix for this was load Ubuntu. When I did EVERYTHING just worked. Then there is no applications on Windows so again you spend the day searching for applications and loading them.

Yes I can get a laptop running in under 45 mins on Linux and actually be doing real work where Windows I'll spend all day just to get something running to do work on.

And so the smart man ops for running the crappyist version of Linux Chromebook. How do you like the spyware? so you let Larry look into you windows at night.

So please stop the Linux trolling with bullshit stories or if you are really having that much problems maybe your just too stupid to use a computer and need to just buy a chalk board and work with that.

Re:Obviously...what is to 'learn' about Windows?

[Bitbeisser]

What would you need to 'learn' Windows in the first place? I can set up a Linux laptop and make it look so much like a Windows desktop that a lot of people won't even know the difference. And it is amazing to see how many long time Windows user know even the most basic Windows shortcuts and key/mouse combinations. Doesn't seem to be much of learning involved...

More Fanboy drivel

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't the Linux Fanboys/Windows haters learned that believing their own bullshit is bad ?????

Storm trooper hits head .....

[ancientmyth]

I feel like Finn when it comes to this age old debate.

Mepis is

[Anonymous Coward]

Now MX15,
https://forum.mxlinux.org
https://mxlinux.org/
great community, excellent documentation, debian stable like Mepis, still some Mepis derived tools (the installer will look very familiar)
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx