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...

[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...

[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...

[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]

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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]

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...

[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?

[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?

[Calydor]

What about a big alienware, then?

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]

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?

[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?

[Ol Olsoc]

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

Fear. They are in fear.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

"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!

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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

[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

[tepples]

A USB keyboard from a garage sale should still work.

This allows a school to experiment [and] gives th

[h33t l4x0r]

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

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: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.

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: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: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"...?

the real question

[wendyo]

vi or emacs?

Re:the real question

[unixisc]

.rpm or .deb?

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

[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:So, trash then?

[ruir]

Because windows Is not trash?

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: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?

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: 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:So, trash then?

[Anne Thwacks]

Because windows Is not trash?

No - because Edubuntu is not designed for Education!

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: 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: 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!

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...

Storm trooper hits head .....

[ancientmyth]

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