Linux in High School Labs 427
lexbaby writes "The Salt Lake Tribune has a story about how Logan High School (Logan, Utah) is using Linux in their student programming lab. The main use is for robotics. There is the old discussion about if Linux is truly cheaper to operate in the long run. Is Linux a legitimate solution to school districts facing a financial crunch?" I hope some of the students involved post pictures of the robots they're building in class.
Quote from the article: (Score:5, Funny)
Its about time (Score:5, Insightful)
It also warms my heart to see fewer tax payer dollars going into Microsoft's pocket.
Re:Its about time (Score:2)
Linux will have a much better corporate future if tomorrows business execs actually learn how to use it.
Nonsense. That was Apple's plan with having Apple ][s and Macs in all the schools. The plan didn't work too well.
Re:Its about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its about time (Score:3, Insightful)
So Apple had the right idea. They just aimed it at the wrong audience. I'm not convinced that the lower education market is that useful. The margins are low and you are dealing with a market that doesn't count that much. At best you might get some kids to convince their parents to buy the trendy computer.
Now if Apple can get OSX into more departments in colleges, then I'd start to think they are accomplishing something. With effectively doing everything Linux can do and more, that is very doable. The problem is the hardware. So, as with everyone else, we're all crossing fingers for the 970.
Re:Its about time (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. They just barely know how to use windows, and please don't tell me that Linux is as easy to use as windows (for someone that doesn't have a background in CS at least).
The factor that makes executives buy or deploy a certain OS is certainly not its usability! I can tell you they don't care about that *at all*.
Hasn't it been proven? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hasn't it been proven? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hasn't it been proven? (Score:3, Insightful)
> their word is absolutely correct, but when Microsoft speaks for Microsoft,
> nothing can be trusted?
you got it... When the defendent admits a crime the jury almost certainly will believe it, if he denies it this is not the case.
Re:Notice high user ID #... (Score:3)
2322... 4 digit ID, and nobody pays me to do it. I just got tired of all the FUD spread by the Linux zealots.
Re:Hasn't it been proven? (Score:3, Informative)
It mostly comes down to who ordered the research. =)
But one of the reasons for Linux to have a high TCO even though it is free is that the avarage person knows *a lot* less about Linux/Unix than Windows.
If you start using Linux at schools, you'll have a whole generation of people who suddenly have a lot of experiance in Linux.
That's why most smart corporations give free or dirt cheap licences to universities and colleges.
If all new engineers are already trained at a certain developing tool, it makes sense to buy a licence of that when hireing new engineers.
Same thing will apply here. If lots of people are used to using Linux as a platform, they will probably *use* Linux as a platform when starting a new project.
from what I have seen in the past. (Score:2)
We had a single person that took care of ALL the computers at all the schools. He was a Mac person and most of the computers were Macs (except the libraries which had IBMs and in my senior year I believe they replaced all the Mac Classics w/IBMs)
So if a single person is going to be administering these systems anyway, I don't see how it could be more expensive in the long run (considering that there has to be at least one administrator/staff member that knows Linux).
It's going to be cheaper to share Mac/Windows files, it's going to be cheaper for hardware, and software costs are going to go down (as far as Windows is concerned).
Apple made a big footprint in schools, why not Linux?
Re:from what I have seen in the past. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:from what I have seen in the past. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remote administration via SSH and VNC/remote X is a snap, and most problems are solved interactively with the teacher in the school, reducing downtime. Updates are a matter of scripted SSH sessions afterhours.
The only downside is that it is all done using Linux. But, that's a personal bias, as I find Linux to be horribly disorganised, disfunctional, and a royal pain to work with compared to FreeBSD. That's a discussion for another time, though.
The students all love the system, the administration loves the system, the software techs like the system more and more as they use it, and the teachers love it as well. And it does save money in the long run: $10-20,000 in Novell licenses, $10-20,000 in MS Licenses, per year. And the time savings are enormous.
Re:from what I have seen in the past. (Score:2, Informative)
if i recall correctly, apple made massive donations to educational institutions in the mid-late 80's as a buisness strategy. the idea was to get the elementary school kids used to the apple machines so they would buy them when they were older.
since linux is an os and not an architecture, 'linux' can not be given to schools in the same way. linux is a free os (assuming no professional support), but the machines to run it on are not free. and even if an oem donated machines to a school, chances are they would be shipped with windows.
Re:from what I have seen in the past. (Score:3, Insightful)
This does, however, give them the chance to recycle some of their older boxes, since Linux generally requires less hardware to do similar tasks. The machines that were on win95 which is no longer supported (pentium 75-266) will run just fine with linux, especially if mainly terminals, and now you have another small unix lab worth of computers. Or you can buy a few less new computers with windows. Or you can buy more new computers with linux, since you just saved a wad on licensing.
Now, just imagine a Beowulf of high schools...
(sorry, just couldn't pass that up)
Re:from what I have seen in the past. (Score:2, Interesting)
There are lots of those old machines around, but it's not an idea that I have seen take hold.
My uncle-in-law is pastor at a church that has an associated K-12 school, and I am thinking of proposing to set them up with a Linux or BSD computer lab. There's a auction site (a 'real world' auction site with real people bidding, etc.) that I go to weekly, and not long ago there were pallet lots of Dell machines, about 50 per pallet, and they went for $120 per pallet. I scarfed up the two good machines out of the bunch (a dual PPRO-200 box and an IBM RS/6000 workstation) for $40 for the pair. I am not sure what the salvage guy buying the rest of them had in mind, but they sure went cheap.
How long before the MS audit? (Score:2)
Forrealthough, I applaud this effort. Linux is excellent for learning. Anything which can be torn down completely and put together by its pieces is good to show how such a complex thing can be constructed. Sometimes the whole picture is too bid to grasp, but understanding just 1 module is not.
goodlookinout.
Re:How long before the MS audit? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's already happened:
"Microsoft had us do an audit last year that took two weeks out of my schedule," Rugg said. "That's two week's work of taxpayers' money to satisfy Microsoft."
I wonder how long they've been using Linux. The timing of the audit is suspicious, unless it was the audit that got him to switch. (But knowing how long it takes to get grants, I doubt it.)
Linux in schools (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linux in schools (Score:3, Interesting)
Too bad that those making the decisions on equipment are usually school board members who only know what their IT managers give them at work and what they have at home.
So you end up with the School Board deciding that Windows 98 is the current industry standard, and end up with a bunch of impossible to manage and totally insecure windows machines that studets will hack, install games, and generally make unusable and unstable.
Oh, and did I mention that anyone working IT at a public school is likely underpaid, or has training that warrents that salery anyway?
Re:Linux in schools (Score:2, Interesting)
There are also school district in Oregan which are moving Linux into secondary school labs.
Sure, these aren't super-huge districts in super-huge cities, but the movement has begun.
Now, if only we could convince them all to drop Linux in favour of FreeBSD. Then we'd see the administration costs drop even further as sysadmins no longer have to fight dependency-hell, illogical filesystem, incompatibilities amongst distros, and all the other "niceties" that come with Linux.
Re:Linux in schools (Score:3, Insightful)
This is coming a bit late to the discussion, but it would be great if someone were to tailor a distro or even provide tools to make a distro specifically towards repeatable installs in a lab environment. Something like that would greatly lower the barriers to entry for school labs. Especially if it were easy enough to update/reinstall machines when one of the students inevitablly roots or screws one of them up. After all most computer lab machines have duplicate setups and simply allow users to log in with a drive mapped, and maybe an open temporary directory. If setting this up could be made simple, I'm sure lots of schools would love to switch, especially when you consider the lower specs needed to run a basic linux machine.
Knoppix / Kiosk mode combined with thin clients (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.knoppix.net/d
Cheers
Lucky people (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lucky people (Score:2, Insightful)
If this says so much, why don't you give us an example of what it "says"
Furthermore, as others have noted, a 5 minute logon time has nothing to do with Win2k and is all about a poorly maintained system, which will ruin any OS.
Re:Lucky people (Score:4, Insightful)
I belive what you ment to say was due to the incompatance of the network administrator or the crappy hardware you are using.
More experiments before going with Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft had us do an audit last year that took two weeks out of my schedule," Rugg said. "That's two week's work of taxpayers' money to satisfy Microsoft."
Then:
Weeks said more experiments will have to be done before Linux could be considered for schoolwide use.
Too bad they didn't do such rigorous "experiments" before they decided to go with Microsoft. If they had, then the Microsoft audit wouldn't have been such a surprise.
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:More experiments before going with Linux... (Score:2)
Why does it take people so long to figure these things out?
Yes yes yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is always yes. It's a viable alternative for database servers, for number crunching, for scanning the skies for aliens, to calculating water flow, and yes for high school programming labs. IN fact definatelly for high school programming labs. I think anyone who start programming on any *nix machine, will have a better understanding of how to prgram on windoze if they need to anyway.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if someone learns the correct style in order to write things will be better off in the long run. Even if/especially if they are a windoze programmer (God keep their souls).
Windows is by nature very sloppy, uses some funkdified junk. Look at any SMTP server log to see the munged helo/ehlo traffic a M$ client sends. Think if someone with a unix background, who actually reads RFC's and understands how the traffic is _supposed_ to look would have gotten that right...yet it's remained broken for years.
just an example of many many things that are a bit off-kilter over there.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:2)
My experience merely dictates, that unix programmers pay more attention to the flow of things, and pay closer attention to make sure that what they write conforms with what it's supposed to look like. My comparisons are also, to Microsoft, whom in my experience, does not pay much attention beyond getting it to work more often than not.
Certainly I wouldn't accuse John Carmack of making shoddy programs, nor your friends for I don't even know them or their products, however I do have experience in shoddy microsoft works.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:5, Insightful)
And you'd be right.
Learning a second language is very hard. Learning a third or fourth language is MUCH easier. If you've already learned Japanese, you'll be able to pick up French relatively easily.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:5, Interesting)
My first langauge is spanish, then english, then tagalog, and now I'm learning Japanese. Japanese is the first language that I'm learning in the classroom and it's amazing how much harder it is to learn this way. I'm used to just being thrown into the culture and "sink or swim" were the only options. Now, I can decide to not do my Japanese hw and it doesn't hurt me in any way.
So what's my point? That the style of learning is more important than the depth or number of languages learned. I think the same could be said for programming languages, unless you have a reason to start learning them, you will not be a truly effective learner.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:3, Interesting)
I say this because, since learning Japanese, I have found non-germanic, non-romance languages much easier to pick up, and languages that I was doing poorly in have since improved. I believe this is due to the grammatical structure being reversed and the nearly complete inability to guess at the meaning of most words based on previous language experience (loan words not withstanding). In some ways, learning two very different languages requires the brain to reorganize in such a way that language learning becomes more generalized, more efficient, whereas with languages that are similar, you are merely constructing and adapting to the exceptions and differences.
Who knows?
-Hope
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:2)
Yeah.. I think that anyone who has learned Japanese will have a better understanding of how to speak French, anyway. ;)
This isn't a very good metaphor, because neither the French nor the Japanese dictionaries are locked up in Redmond.
Don't you think it likely that programmers-in-training who have access to all the guts of an operating system are going to be more knowledgeable about programming than specialists who only get a peek at the guts on a need-to-know basis? And remember, we're talking about high school students here, who are notoriously hostile to authority, especially when authority says NO.
Here's another metaphor for you. Who's more likely to learn, the student who gets access to all the books in the library, or the one who only gets access to a shelf of dumbed-down Nancy Drew mysteries?
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:2)
So who learns more in our school system? A student who knows they want to be a programmer from 8 years old or a student with absolutely no clue what they want to do in life? The programmer is going to end up in the US tech sector, barely able to find a job, while the other student will probably end up a manager and get paid well enough to not need a job after a few years.
Learn how to manage money, widgets and people and you can go far. Learn anything else and you'll just have a worthless clue.
History has shown that it is business management that runs the show. We treat employees as slave, always have. They work because they have to, or they can't afford to eat. And we know that. Which is why we have unions, etc. From my perspective anyway, but now I'm getting OT.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a good example:
The latin word for Book is "biblio"
from that we have bibliography
library is based on that as well, which translates into other languages:
french as bibliothèque
spanish as biblioteca
german as Bibliothek
Italian as biblioteca
So one who was familiar with the roots of everything will have a much easier time understanding why things are the way they are.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:3, Funny)
Well.. I didn't find your post overly interesting, but I would have modded it "+1 Babelfish Skills" if there were such an option.
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:2)
Re:Yes yes yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, you have grammar/structure versus syntax. There is quite a bit that you can learn from Latin in this regard to apply to German or even English. In US schools, any foriegn language instruction is quite often the first exposure that one gets to certain grammatical concepts.
Although, all modern operating systems in common use today are essentially "romance languages". They are all more similar than dissimilar. (C, C++, Java, VB, perl)
YES!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:YES!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:YES!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
-Jonathan Hughes
Linux in labs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linux in labs (Score:2)
Also, later on in the course, they do some work with boot sectors and such, so it's nice to have a fast debian mirror on an ftp server, so when you screw your workstation up, just drop a floppy in the drive, come back in about 20 minutes, and it's good to go (yes, I know ghost would be easier but we lost our copy of that somewhere).
Linux is cheaper, but could always be better (Score:4, Insightful)
It will probably take a specialized, targeted distro to really break the Microsoft monopoly in schools.
The way you used to be able to set up a simple AppleTalk network should be the goal for a modern classroom OS.
When I was in school... (Score:4, Funny)
Some command-line adventures would be good for kids these days.
You had computers? (Score:2)
Well, when I was in school, we didn't even have computers. Either way, even without snow. I had a VIC-20 at home, which impressed the chess club and not much of anybody else.
When I went to college, I took with me an Amstrad 8088. w00t. I once wrote a term paper using 'copy con lpt1'. My Hercules monochrome monitor broke.
Some command-line adventures would be good for kids these days.
Agreed. The hot summers in Phoenix plus a new cassette drive for the VIC-20 gave me the wherewithal to write an asteroids-ish game in BASIC at age 14. Many months of hunched over typey typey made me what I am today: a 75 WPM hunt-and-peck typist with strange notions about programming. Kids these days should be so lucky.
-B
Re:When I was in school... (Score:4, Funny)
"yes, i was planning on sitting here listening to emo and crying all day, thank you very much"
Finally!! The guy with the dumbest sig *ever* admits what i've suspected all along, he's a teenager.
Absolutely (Score:2, Insightful)
Then there are the benefits of training tomorrow's tech workers in an open software environment...
why dont schools go to linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now obviously there are some compatability issues(microsoft office, etc). But in my area.. a grand total of zero schools go to the alternative route of using linux..
Re:why dont schools go to linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is unfortunate, but all too common. Mind you, there are side-effects that are "beneficial". I was once asked to hack into an administrative box because someone had forgotten their password, and it was the weekend, yadda, yadda. Took me 3 guesses, no password cracking program ... full access to all accounts, downloads, lesson plans, mail, etc.
Yep, their password system was as clueless as they were :-) That's why they don't change - most of them simply aren't capable of investing the time in learning something new, when they can "get by" with what they know.
Before I get modded down as flaming, this is the same sort of situation as last week, when people were posting about that "we're going to get a bunch of developers together to code a game, and if it sells, we'll all make money" crap. It's happened (more often than I would like) that people have approached me with their "great idea that will make us a lot of money - it just needs to be coded".
When I offer to teach them how to code for free rather than waste my time developing their wet-dream financial fantasy , most go "what the ..." They don't want to invest the time required, either.
In summary, schools won't switch to Linux because too many people in the school system are just putting in their time, w/o any real zeal for what they do. This is a real shame.
Good Start (Score:5, Informative)
License Costs (Score:4, Informative)
Duh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
So the sysadmin that they don't have should be doing all this work (for free?)
Since when did TCO stop including the cost of deployment and support?
Barely Handle Windows (Score:2)
Yes of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes of course it is. Some people says students should be tought to use the software being used in the "real life". Why? If the students learn to acomplish the same task with cheaper software, how could that be bad?
But much rather than sticking with one choice of software, I'd see students trying a few different systems, so they can learn what are the differences and similarities between them, and they can learn how to learn using a new system, and they can make up their own minds about what they like and dislike. Because you cannot teach them how to use the software they are going to find themselves with in a few years, but you can theach them how to learn.
So let them try Linux, Unix, Windows, BSD, OSX, and let them find the best for each task.
Re:Yes of course (Score:2)
Kind of off topic, I know, but still; My high school IT book described the functions of an os and went on saying "Examples of operating system are Windows 95, Windows 2000 and Windows NT".
I never could decide if that was ignorance, sensorship or propaganda. Or all of the above.
Re:Yes of course (Score:2)
I wonder who people who say such things think are tending all the Apache servers running on Linux?
One of the so called reasons for Windows having a lower TCO is because of the *shortage* of trained personel, who can thus demand higher wages.
It looks to me as if MS is arguing that schools should be staying up all night training students in the use of Linux, or they are doing them a public disservice by training them for lower paying jobs in a glutted market.
But maybe that's just me.
KFG
Becoming quite common.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Becoming quite common.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux is more than cost savings. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux is more than cost savings. (Score:3, Insightful)
Since this is the case there will always be people willing to make a good living by selling it to them.
The failure is in the perception of the people, not the $20 spade.
Cost *is* a valid feature to consider. People educated in the idea of *value* can inherently make better choices for themselves and for whomever they are responsible for/to.
Where do we educate people?
AHA!
KFG
Re:Linux is more than cost savings. (Score:2)
True. The amazing thing is that the person who bought the $500 spade will find a way to justify the cost, even though it and the $20 spade shovel the same shit the same way.
Soko
Is Linux Cost Effective ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont know about schools in US. In India, an entire undergraduate programming intro lab (where we were taught Unix, C, C++, Shell Scripting and Perl) were 30-40 386 boxen used as dumb terminals for a behemoth running Linux. Contrary to what you would believe the machine was fast enough to support 35 students programming (in text mode) vi, emacs and running gcc.
The lab was cheap, the 386 boxen had a new lease of life we ended up being great C, C++ programmers. More importantly, learned to love Unix. Was Linux cheap for introducing C, C++, Perl and Unix ? Surely !
Re:Is Linux Cost Effective ? (Score:2)
[note: general statement meant to be generally insightful as *MOST, NOT ALL* American public schools follow this general statement, just as I am sure some Indian schools waste money and time on overpowered machines teaching word]
I live near dallas and .. (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh Well ... (Score:2)
SLC schools are pretty good, but more often than not I would say the real problem is the nature of public schools in general. The problem is that what looks politically popular is not necissarly the most intellectual or in the kids best interest. More often than not, no matter how incompetent, irresponsible, stupid, and foolish public schools are - you can't keep them from getting your tax money anyhow, unless you go through monumental god like efforts. The best solution is to do what you can to send your kids to non-public schools whenever possible.
critical point (Score:2)
Let the students do the work (Score:4, Funny)
I would have gladly managed a Linux network at my high school just to get out of class every now and then, and I even had the skills to do so.
Then again, I wouldn't have gotten out of as many classes as I did fixing the computers running windows...
I can only speak from my own experience, but (Score:5, Interesting)
From 1998 when I switched entirely to Linux our total software cost has been $0 ( I was given a copy of Linux For Dummies with Red Hat 5.2 as a gift).
No additional expenditures have been needed because of making the switch,
Nor has, at any time, any "privation" of functionality ever been felt.
Indeed I've been able to greatly expand functionality because software previously out of my reach on a cost/benifit basis is now readily available, at will.
Others may debate TCO all they want. I know Linux is free.
And freeing, because now all license issues have been slaughtered on a wholesale basis. Compliance is part of the TCO.
I'll make this offer to any school. I will come in for a few days and show you how you can do what I have done, and I'll do it at *half* the rate you're paying your MS person. I'll even train the poor sod if you'd like.
KFG
picutre (Score:2)
With the power of linux, one of those kids is going to end up with this project [terminator3.com].
Why Linux is not as well-spread- (Score:2)
Well, I can't help but think back to my own high-school experiences. The guy who was 'the network admin' for the school was also 1. a teacher (one of the lower-level science classes and two computer classes), and 2. coach of one of the school's many athletic teams.
Point being, how many schools even have a full-time, dedicated admin? Granted, I graduated in '97 so I hope things have improved, but in terms of cost, many schools seem to look for 'jack/jill-of-many-trades' teachers. These might know enough to restart the computer as common M$ 'fail-recovery protocol,' but lack of experience, knowledge, and general DESIRE to be 'in the know' like us hobbyists, tend keep them away from Linux...
Re:Why Linux is not as well-spread- (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a sad little story. A few years ago, when my daughter was in grade school, she decided to run for student council president. She asked me to help with her campaign. I noticed that her opponents, while usually well-financed, had failed to come up with any campaign issues. So I suggested that if she won, I would come to her school and give lessons on HTML, so the various classes could have their own web pages.
She incorporated this into her campaign posters, and won, to my surprise and horror. So, in order not to make my daughter a liar, I was forced to go to the school and meet with the principle and the "media person," a woman who knew almost nothing about computers, but who was fiercely protective of her turf. After much reluctance, I persuaded the principle to allow me to teach a class on simple web-building. Two students from each classroom would be allowed to attend a class lasting 20 minutes, once a week, for the remainder of the semester. As you might imagine, this was not enough time to teach anything of any significance to 5th and 4th graders.
It was a depressing and frustrating experience, which I stuck out only for my daughter's sake. Everything had to be approved through several layers of bureaucracy, even the installation of simple freeware HTML editors on a few of the school's machines. And we never got so far as getting approval to host the class pages on the school district's servers.
So, at least at this otherwise fairly good school, even free instruction wasn't cost-effective enough for the administration to accept. I expect this sort of proud ignorance is widespread in American schools, which now seem obsessively consumed by the desire to do well in comparative testing. Actually teaching kids stuff they can use is of secondary importance.
"One Linux operator can manage 45 computers while (Score:4, Interesting)
FUD ALERT! That's just plain malarky.
I started off managing windows systems, and later moved on to linux. Mello is just plain wrong here.
Now as far as flexability is concerned, yes you can do all sorts of neat tricks with linux, but for day to day admin operations, MS has very polished tools that save a MS admin tons of time in implementation.
Let's compare services...
Web Server.
Windows, go to add/remove software, add IIS. Run the microsoft management console, and tweak it to your delight, if you get stuck the help file is right there, or burn a call on the credit card to MS support.
Linux, go to apache.org, download the source, make install, go out and have a cig, come back and see if the compile is finished, go out to lunch, come back. Ok now you have to edit your rc.d scripts to run apache on start, do a little configuring in
It took me a good 4 years of tinkering with linux before I became proficient enough to run a server, compile my kernel (which is m00t these days because of modules) and basically make it do the same things my windows boxes do. Most of this time was spent wading through useless irrelevent documention, trial and error, ect.
I charge for my research time, don't know about you other IT guys out there, but everytime I read a howto, or browse support.microsoft.com i'm earning.
As far as desktop management is concerned, group policies, netlogon scripts, and active directory makes it easy enough for a child to manage a MS domain.
I'm not trying to bag on linux here, it's awesome to have a system that never crashes even on shitty hardware. If linux had gui based management tools that were on par with their MS counterparts, I would agree with the above quote. I've tried everything from linuxconf, to webmin and all tcl/tk tools in between, and yes they are quite good, but not nearly as good as what i've seen come out of redmond. None of these tools have anything even closeley resembling the functionality of creating a software group policy object that will install across 1000's of computers in an organization.
From a personal standpoint though, I would pick any *nix or BSD for running my mission critical applications any day of the week over a MS box. For managing a buttload of user desktops and apps, MS wins hands down.
Re:"One Linux operator can manage 45 computers whi (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with what your saying, you have paid your due's and now your probably being compensated well for it. After four years of trial and error, your probably quite proficient with your craft.
Seems that getting things setup and working is only 20% of the task tho, and keeping things running is the other 80%
I wouldn't be surprised if someone who has 4 years experience in Linux really 'knows' the underworking of the OS and the critical components much better than someone who has been admining a NT server for four years. I wouldn't be surprised if that same person has ability to easier manage more servers because of the profound skill and knowledge he has of the environment than a shallow understanding of how high-level gui's work.
I am sure that as distributions get more and more advanced, not as many Linux users will know how to write their own custom init scripts, watchdog monitors, runlevel options, boot into single user mode, etc.
I can't believe that just because Windows is easy to use that these same tricks of the trade are any easier. If anything, in my experience, getting things going in windows is quite easy, but when something goes wrong, really wrong, is when I seem to get quite frustrated. Now, the only experience I have had managing windows software was a small NT server at a company I was at that used it for exchange and file serving. I admit, I am a programmer and not an admin, but small companies.. you do what you have to do
I have spent about 4-5 years myself working on linux.. VERY long nights of hacking and playing, twiddling and recompiling.. endless greps through uesless mailing lists, etc. But in the end it has paid off BIG time, I am landing more a year than any windows admin I know and am using a tool set that I control and understand.
Your much better off having taken the harder path my friend, I am sure when something goes wrong you understand the problem, and not just the symptom. You will be much more effective in solving problems when shit really hits the fan. I dont think you keep 1 NT admin per 10 servers for when things are going good... or getting setup, but going bad and having problems. Maybe thats why you don't need so many people to manage linux boxes.. not for deployment, but for post deployment trauma.
Enjoyed your post tho.. I agree that Linux does need a standard base for configuration. But don't worry, we will get there
Cheers
Re:"One Linux operator can manage 45 computers whi (Score:2, Insightful)
Standardize on a *proper* free OS for corporate desktop use and no that's probably not Gentoo or Slack.
Yes you will spend time setting up the groundwork. However once you have the apps you need all neatly packaged up in your own
Then there's NFS and such things as mounting things like
Your Apache vs. IIS example isn't a very strong one either. Many good tools are available to configure Apache, check the recent RedHat ISO's. And even if you were to compile it from source because of some funky module requirement, you could package the resulting binary for re-use on every other box you need to serve pages. For IIS the funky functionality would most likely simply not even be available.. Besides, how often do you set up a real webserver anyway?
Final example: FreeBSD actually does let me set up a DNS/DHCP/LDAP server the way *I* want it.. Win2K is easy until you want something out of the ordinary or something goes south and it's not in the knowledge base yet. I'm in love with my
Ok, so far for my ranting. A constructive suggestion: just give SuSE 8.1 or Redhat 8.0 a whirl. Your post sounds like you've been away from Linux for quite some time. It's come a long way, and the configurability has gotten much easier. I popped in a RH 8.0 CD a few weeks ago, clicked a few simple buttons, and was up and running with a system that'd be right at home in any small office environment. I had a full office suite, could use my fairly exotic scanner, printer works, ADSL works, could burn CD's.. if it werent for the butt-ugly BlueCurve theme I'd say I was on an Apple
audit difficulty (Score:5, Funny)
I like that wording. Not 'impossible' to produce licenses for pirated software. Just 'more difficult' than if you are legal. This is exactly the kind of "can-do" attitude that the youth of America needs as an example. Don't let that 5GB of pr0n your girlfriend found drag you down! It's simply 'harder' to explain than if it weren't there.
been thinking about this for a while (Score:2, Interesting)
Woohoo!! (Score:4, Informative)
Is Linux a viable alternative to Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes, Linux is being considered. But it's a slow road. For example, I'm working with the district to set up Linux servers for use as internal web servers in the high school computer labs. An incredible amount of emphasis is focused on security, since all grading is now on-line as well. As you can imagine, high schools have their fair share of script kiddies just wetting their pants over the opportunity to hack a new box on the network. We will be monitoring all hits on the boxes to try and profile what kind of attacks occur so we can keep the boxes as secure as possible. Whether or not the district decides to pursue Linux on the desktop depends upon how secure we can keep the lowly intranet servers.
My suggestion to anyone who is thinking about trying to convince school administrators to go open-source is to start small. Don't propose retrofitting the entire district in a summer--this simply doesn't fly, and makes you look like a zealot with an agenda. Offer to set up and administer a few Linux boxes, and go along with the security program. If they don't want qmail or sendmail running, fine -- there's time later to broach the subject.
As it is, news has quickly spread through our district's 7 high schools that we are getting our own server. Now they want one too. So I've been given the mandate to start setting them up for all the high schools. All because I pitched the idea of one lowly server for a computer science class I'm teaching.
Where's the cost of Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
If students are not the admins, why not?
A Viable Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it is: it's free. The only "real" cost that a school district incurs by using Linux is either 1) hiring a Linux educated instructor or 2) training a current instructor. Both options are much less expensive than the Microsoft alternative.
In addition, students are able to install Linux at home at no cost. And with most school districts cutting costs by closing campuses immediately after the final bell, a student with Linux at home is still able to complete projects and even do "outside" projects/exploring.
Maybe a better question is whether or not Linux offers high school students a viable introduction in the world of computer software/science?
While not as "popular" in the business industry as Windows, Linux is still a powerful alternative to Windows. In addition, the source code is OPEN and hence, can be customized, changed, etc... There exists a plethora of educational possibilities in Linux, all of which are controlled by the school, teacher, and student and not a corporation in Redmond.
Re:A Viable Solution (Score:2)
For workstation use it's a similar story. Students will need word processing, spreadsheets, scientific and math applications, maybe some programming tools for some classes. All of these are *standard* with any major Linux distribution. In other words, pay once for the CD (or even once for every seat) and you not only get the OS, but applications such as GNUPlot, maxima, SciLAB, MuPAD, OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric, etc..
The number of mathematics applications alone is worth buying a copy for every seat. Of course, a school wouldn't need to do so. But even if they did, the cost of the software alone would be a fraction of the Microsoft academic pricing with comparable software loaded.
Already used at my school (Score:3, Interesting)
How many of you are like me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is time spent on audits figured into TCO? (Score:3, Interesting)
With no MS software, who knows, maybe MS would audit anyway. But all you'd have to do is say, "take a look--no MS software", and the audit would be over.
As an LHS alumni, it's exciting to see that my alma matter has made Slashdot, especially since they did something GOOD to earn the honor.
And this is news...how? (Score:3, Informative)
And we're not talking 'a few' computers, all computers in the CS department (at least all the systems that students can use) have both Linux and Windows. Has been like this for over 6 years, maybe even longer.
I would have assumed that a lot of uni's in the States would have the same thing? Am I wrong in assuming this? You're kidding me....
Uh (Score:2)
I would say give it a shot and see if you can make it work for you. If you can't, well, I'd probably just think you're stoopid. In which case, go pay as much as you can afford for someone else to solve your problems for you.
Schools should have no excuses when it comes to computer competence. Schools are where we go to get educated, afterall. If they don't know, they shouldn't be in the business of education.
OSS isn't cheaper than M$ in academia (Score:2, Interesting)
RedHat Network is $60/"entitlement" (retail) or something like $50/"entitlement" (bulk purchase). Plus you have to retrain the entire population of the school who have used computers at home or other places of business, then you have to find state-approved curriculum that is generic enough to work well with Linux (it's much more difficult to teach a business applications course when all your textbooks cover Access and Excel and you only have mySQL and Gnumeric).
If school districts are honest up front about paying for their licenses, it is indeed cheaper to go the Microsoft route - hands down. When we Open-Sourcers start volunteering our services at our local schools, then their might be a competition.
Cost/benefit analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is perfect for a local school district.. Schools have the benefit of free student labor, and they don't have to worry about deadlines or downtime. Linux on cheap hardware is perfect for this kind of environment.
Education vs. Training (Score:2)
Case in point: I switched over to Linux in November, and have a four box LAN at home. I'm trying to set up the ability to access different printers over the network. Is it taking me a lot longer than it would under Windows? Yes. Is it frustrating? Extremely. But that's the point! As a physics prof of mine put it, "the learning is in the struggle." I already understand many points of networking/printing better than when I started, and when I finally (with the help of others) get this blasted setup working, I'll be educated further. And that will make it easier the next time I see this problem or a variant thereof, because I will understand what's going on beneath the pretty interface.
By the way, another way of paraphrasing my physics prof is: "No pain, no gain."
Whether Linux is cheap in long run doesn't matter (Score:3, Interesting)
Once it gets in the door, it's game over.
It's arguably true that having computers in classrooms doesn't add a lot to education anyway. The long term benefit of computers in the classroom may be more a result of having students set up, maintain, and program those systems than from any so-called educational software.
Frankly, I don't understand why vendors like Microsoft aren't tripping over themselves to give away software to school districts. They can't be making much money from schools anyway, they don't get good press for sticking it to school districts, and having students see that software in use is good advertising.
Whatever...
Of course, all of the above assumes that school districts start evaluating software based purely on cost instead of the "pain in the ass factor". This subtlety is pretty much the only reason Apple still gets chosen above all others in many school districts. Of course, savings on PITA factor also translates to money, but I don't see how most school districts care about that anyway since their IT departments are grossly understaffed anyway. It's not like they budget for "PITA time" anyway.
My HS has been doing stuff like this for years (Score:4, Interesting)
We now have 300-400 workstations (mostly W2K except one Slackware lab) being served by a small army of linux servers on our own campus T1. This program is an incredible and unique learning experience for us - being able to manage an entire building's network while still in High School with little to no aid from outside adults.
I like to brag that our network's stability is significantly better than the network that the rest of the school district is on.
Why Our District is Experimenting with Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a District Technology Coordinator. Last summer our small district (3300 students) in the Mid-Atlantic paid Micro$oft over $100,000 in license upgrades. The state had a number of sessions scheduled with the MS Reps who came to explain the new licensing agreement. The company was moving from Upgrade Advantage to Software Assurance pricing schedules.
We were in the process of our Win2K rollout and we were confronted with MS retiring the ability to upgrade certain licenses. Our state contracts with a "Select" vendor who we are required to purchase all MS software. The vendor had conflicting upgrade paths than what MS had explained in the meetings.
At a later meeting when I asked about this they suggested the "School Agreement" as an alternative which is an annual subscription that allows schools to use any number of licenses but you must resubscribe every year.
I explained that I did calculations on purchase upgrades and compared the numbers to this "subscription" license and discovered that it was more expensive. I surmise that conflicting purchase information and random threats of audit in the education community makes choosing the school agreement a no brainer. If this was a marketing decision it is extortion.
During the course of this licensing process I went to the CIO of the district informing him that we could save nearly $40K by using Open Office on student only machines. Even after giving him a copy, and showing the software around to key individuals, he didn't feel that he could support Technology against the inevitable backlash from staff members.
He recommended a pilot before implementation. Since there was a deadline, we bought MS Office licenses. BTW we finally got resolution on the correct upgrade paths.
Now to the Linux in school stuff.
After this experience, the fiddling I was doing with Linux became a higher priority in the investment of my Tech Learning Time.
There is lots of great stuff out there for schools. The Linux Terminal Server Project http://www.ltsp.org/ gets around the windows legacy app problem. Or perhaps Linux Educational Apps could replace windows edutainment titles. A wealth of titles can be found at http://k12os.org/.
Personally I believe that what is best for our district is to get away from managing the desktop. So many rogue initiatives bubble up from the class room.
Example:
Mrs Jones goes and buys "10,000 Handouts Galore" CD-ROM ; ) at the grocery store and then expects technicians to not only install this buggy code from heaven knows where, but also expects poor frazzled "Fred" to divine the arcane structure of how it works, train her on it, and continually fix the pathetic workstation that crashes because the software is not totally compliant to windows standards. All this effort just so she can print a worksheet for the kids to sit and fill out.
How does this fundamentally change education? If you take the computer away can she still create a handout? I suspect that manually she could probably do it in less time with more focus on content and far less frustration.
In my opinion, district administration, curriculum leaders, principals as well as tech coordinators, network folks and programmers should work together to identify what problem really needs to be solved.
The direction we are going in is interactive web applications that provide collabortive opportunities to respond to various activities or projects.
One such Open Source package is the Authenticated User Community -- http://auc.sourceforge.net/. It is essentially groupware for education. Students can review and submit assignments, check email, post comments on a forum and store files. Teachers can track student activities retrieve assignments and initiate discussion. Mom and Pop can see what's going on from home! We are piloting this now.
Our TechTeam is using software called Tutos (http://www.tutos.org/homepage/index.html) to manage projects. This is useful software and since its on the Web it is transparent and ubiquitous.
Imagine if other useful software was converted to the web. The connection of Apache with MySQL (or other DB) could allow us to link every student activity with state standards and some sort of performance evaluation. This would give teachers the ability to make day to day teaching decisions based on DATA that will have real impact on High Stakes Testing.
We also using some network based diagnostic software packages. They are called Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math and are published by Renaissance learning (http://www.renlearn.com). These programs allow students to interactively and dynamically record their performace on-line.
Unfortunately these programs are Windows apps. They are written in ToolBook and are not even 32bit compliant. Consequently there are frequent network issues since they are being used in manner contrary to their design. I wish there was a version of this software that ran on Apache and MySQL.
If a clear vision of curricular problems drove the purchase/solution implementation decisions rather than random marketing (ed conferences and journals) and individual (rogue) initiatives, resources such as technician support and capital funds for equipment and software would not be caught up in this merry go round of assumpion, consumption, no function and blame.
Micro$oft products give users just enough ability to use computers to be hugely expensive to larger organizations. Products running on this platform are sold as solutions to users problems, but not necessarily one that needs to be solved.
Users devise their own rogue initiatives with the grand ideas sold to them, but rarely are successful without technical help. The minute a technician provides that help they become responsible for the outcome and the initiative becomes sanctified by the organization.
Linux can solve this problem. It forces decisions to be made that focus on the problem. Since every teacher, administrator and student is not familiar (or "Expert" because their nephew works at CompUSA) with this platform they are not dreaming of a panacea like solution where they take off the shrink wrap and all their problems go away with no hardwork or learning curve. District leadership has time to focus on their curricular objectives and devise a plan that has a scope and sequence of events and a series of check points to evaluate progress.
Once the problem is defined and the objectives are spelled out there is lots of stuff in the Open Source community that can be selected as potential "off the shelf" alternatives. But what is even more exciting is the notion that through collaboration with others with similar objectives solutions start to move closer and closer to the needs at hand.
Re:GPL needs win32 migration tool fo Linux (Score:2)
I believe Lindows does this to a limited extent, but yes, a free one would be nice. So, are you up for it?