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Indiana Schools May Purchase 300K Linux Computers 299
GuitarNeophyte writes "According to an article at PC Magazine, Indiana School systems may soon be purchasing around 300,000 Linpire desktop computers. Linspire, via its Education Program has a straight $500-per-school (not per-seat) cost, providing an incredibly-alluring price incentive for this to happen." From the article: "Many schools across the state have already had the chance to try out desktop Linux, and everyone seems excited to get this program going...This groundbreaking initiative makes it possible for schools to afford computers for every student, something that makes a huge impact on their overall educations."
300K? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:300K? (Score:2)
$0 and instructions on how to come up with a semi-original joke.
And this means... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And this means... (Score:2)
What does that mean in English?
Re:And this means... (Score:2)
Yes, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, wait...
Re:Yes, but... (Score:2)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:2)
It worked for autodesk (Score:4, Insightful)
A whole crop of sudents entered the workforce at a time when the move to CAD was in it's infancy, all familiar with, and able to use AutoCad. They were put in charge of the move to automation, and they all purchased AutoCad when they entered industry.
A very effective marketing strategy for a company looking beyond the next quarter.
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like Apple's been using to get Macs into classrooms and get kids hooked on using them instead of PCs?
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:3, Insightful)
Timmy: Daddy, I want an Mac.
Daddy: Single button mice? When I was a kid we didn't even have mice. We didn't even have lower case. You're getting a C-64 and you'll LOAD "*"
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:3)
That's exactly my point. Apple has, over the years, made a big deal about giving computers to schools, but it hasn't gotten them much except for some publicity.
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:2)
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:2)
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:2)
Also, Linspire doesn't have a version for PowerPC AFAICT.
Apple was HUGE in education (Score:2)
About the beginning computer classes teaching MS Office... what those classes are really teaching is basic computer skills. "This is a mouse, this is a pointer, this is a drop-down menu," etc., etc. The bea
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:2)
Re:It worked for autodesk (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to have worked fantastically for Apple, but that might not be a fair comparison.
On the other hand, the earlier we start teaching kids about what the Lesser GPL is, why they need libxml2 instead of libxml1, and why all of their productivity apps are at version 0.99.91, the more comfortable they will be with these otherwise-daunting concepts.
Kidding, but only half so.
Let me know when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let me know when... (Score:2)
Good man, this is an example of Good PR, then.
School directors, teachers and students will simply see a lot of positive response from various news sources, including slashdot, and that will help them to make a Good decision.
Why linspire?... (Score:3, Insightful)
Services (Score:2)
Re:Why linspire?... (Score:2)
They're buying the Linspire licences and the hardware it's running on. The summary title is literal. They are buying 300,000 computers for $500 per school.
Re:Why linspire?... (Score:2)
Never trust a Slashdot title.
TFA says:
Wintergreen Systems is selling them the hardware.
Re:Why linspire?... (Score:2)
The Indiana Access Program is designed to provide affordable classroom computers for every secondary student. This program makes these systems available with the partnership of Indiana-based companies, benefiting the local Indiana economy. Wintergreen Systems,
Re:Why linspire?... (Score:3, Insightful)
Way to go (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope this works for them (Score:2, Informative)
Tomorrow's post -- Indiana buys MS (big discounts) (Score:3, Insightful)
MS already $5 at universities (Score:2)
Re:MS already $5 at universities (Score:2)
Re:MS already $5 at universities (Score:5, Informative)
My school has this sweet deal too. Just a few niggling details:
If you follow the money trail, my school takes somewhere between USD30 and USD70 (or maybe more) from my fees (not tuition; the campus usage fees) per semester for the campus student licenses. So we're actually paying somewhere between USD240 and USD560 before the up-front costs (USD5 for Windows XP upgrade; USD6 or 10 for Office full version). The campus tour guides never seem to mention this point when they're talking about the program, and all the students and parents I've talked to about it had no idea these funds were being taken and sent straight to Microsoft for the software.
Additionally, your Windows is an upgrade copy of Windows only. That means that you must already have a Windows license (though it doesn't seme to check for this in any way; nice if MSFT is gonna come back and audit you to push you to License 7.0). This makes the Windows side of the license practically useless--the version of Windows you have likely works just fine for what you use it, and chances are pretty good you already have XP home, if not pro! Luckily, the MS Office and VStudio, tmk, are full versions, so it's not as useless. But whatever you got with your computer is probably just fine and works for you (nice for Microsoft if you have a competitor of theirs!) Finally, the academic prices are already dirt-cheap (relatively speaking). I don't think the MS site license is really very useful in terms of cheapening software acquisition costs!
Finally, you cannot keep the license if you don't graduate. That's right; if you quit for a while or if you're kicked out, you lose your license. Not nearly as sweet a deal as the academic price, now is it?
There are other problems with it from the university side, including problems if they ever want to stop paying Microsoft because maybe they want to standardize on Keynote or OpenOffice or something (long, expensive audit there!), but these are most of the immediately visible student-side problems.
Re:MS already $5 at universities (Score:2)
Re:Tomorrow's post -- Indiana buys MS (big discoun (Score:2)
I'm jaded by these PR stunts. Wake me up when they actually end up buying the Linux boxen! Till then, it is just a ploy to get super-steep discounts from Microshaft.
A hard disk failure every hour, $200,000 per hour (Score:5, Insightful)
$20,000 per hour (Score:3, Informative)
500K cheap linux boxes. This is going to be a massive number of hard drive crashes and system rebuilds per day.
Why the heck dont schools use thin clients to servers. Or at least use some of those multi-headed configurations that can seat four students per box. Even the power bill makes this attractive.
500K * 200 watts = 100 Megawatts of power at 10 cents a kilowatt hour is $10,000 dollars per hour to operate. In winter time this migh
Re:$20,000 per hour (Score:3, Informative)
500K * 200 watts = 100 Megawatts of power at 10 cents a kilowatt hour is $10,000 dollars per hour to operate. In winter time this might offset the cost of heating if they can distribute the heat, but the rest of the year the cooling costs to offset this heat load will double the operating cost. (since it usually takes one watt of cooling to offset 1 watt of heat generation)
You're off on your estimates of every single number. It's 300,000 machines, not 500,000. A PC uses about 60 watts of power, and LCD mo
Re:$20,000 per hour (Score:3, Funny)
I'll keep you posted. I am working with a school that is changing out their W2k-based network for Sun thin clients -- 20 thin clients per server. The numbers look really interesting. The first phase of the installs should be done by end of September. If all things go well, the entire school (labs, computers in classrooms and administrative computers) will be thin clients within two years.
Re:$20,000 per hour (Score:2)
- I doubt Linspire is designed to work with a thin-client model anyway.
- A thin client is currently more expensive than a full PC, and uses about the same power as a low-power PC.
- The biggest benifit to the thin-client plan can be accomplished with NFS home directories.
Re:A hard disk failure every hour, $200,000 per ho (Score:3, Informative)
Will Linspire Netboot.
It is Linux, yes. See below.
If not they are going to have a lot of corrupt systems to fix every day. yikes!
As if the other OS would not? I think they are on the right track, make the PCs cheap and get an easy to load OS for when it happens recovery is cheap, simple and fast. If it is stolen, cheaper to replace.
BTW, booting Linux over the net is simple, start with a customized install CD, store a reference image on a server using cpio or tool of choice via NFS. Then with a Li
Cooling costs wrong (Score:2)
So it'll increase you cooling costs a fraction of power budget of the computer systems.
Re:nonsense (Score:2)
But that's easily possible at a household scale, and i doubt large installations are THAT different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_energy_effi
Re:A hard disk failure every hour, $200,000 per ho (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A hard disk failure every hour, $200,000 per ho (Score:2)
Standard PCs have a lot of flexibility that thin client solutions lack.
not negligbile to the teachers (Score:2)
20K/hour is a teacher's annual pay every hour and a half. Most school districts are concerned about losing even a single teacher. It's not negligble if there's a way to cut it in half or a quarter.
Re:not negligbile to the teachers (Score:2)
Teachers where you are only get paid 20k/year? WTF?
A donated computer analyser and linuxator (Score:3, Interesting)
What would be nice is a distro meant to make it as easy as possible for relatively unskilled people to turn them into a desktop linux. Linspire may have a lot of that, but here's the elements I see.
A simple program, on a floppy and/or CD, which analyses the hardware in the machine, and gives an estimate of how suitable the machine is to the task. Ie. how well supported the components (chipsets, cards etc.) are, and how much performance one can expect from it.
It could also estimate what you would have to buy to bring the performance to your specs. "This machine is great but by just adding 128MB of ram -- just $20 -- it would be super." and "The machine is good but the ethernet card is one known to have problems. Cheap solid ethernet cards include these..."
And so on. School boards, not wanting to do a lot of fussing, might insist on a certain "easy to convert" rating from this program before taking donations.
Stage 2 is a distro which does a super-simple install on machines that make the cut. It knows the hardware is approved, so it's a hassle-free install, with ideally no questions asked, or barely any.
Then you would get a lot of computers converted and ready to be linux boxes.
Re:A donated computer analyser and linuxator (Score:3, Interesting)
The way to evaluate old hardware is by booting up a CD. If it works OK, then install a full version.
Bootable distros (Score:4, Informative)
While it's true that a full GUI boot of Knoppix won't happen in < 96 MB, and isn't particularly happy in less than ~128 MB, your comment promulgates several fallacies:
Knoppix and kin offer the analytics necessary to profile a system, what they lack are the heuristics to make a sane statement of what improvements would be useful for a system. The idea of a bootable distro which simply runs an analyzer and produces a report (to be saved to file, printed, etc.) is reasonably straightforward.
Yes, you can run Knoppix entirely in RAM (800+ MB are recommended), and yes, performance of a bootable CD isn't what you'd see from a HD install (in part because of the overhead of reading from CD and performing the on-the-fly decompression). But tests of system speed (memory, CPU, hdparm) should give a pretty good sense of performance characteristics.
There are also floppy-based distros which run entirely in RAM (eg: Tom's Root Boot, Trinux), but they have pretty minimal system requirements.
Re:A donated computer analyser and linuxator (Score:2)
I have to say that you have a *REALLY* poor grasp of reality - apart from the debunking that KMSelf gave you, I challenge you to produce a 1X drive that you can boot from.
Re:A donated computer analyser and linuxator (Score:2)
$500/year: software, not hardware (Score:2)
Not a bad deal, overall ... just not a computer on every desk for $500 or a single laptop.
Re:$500/year: software, not hardware (Score:2)
According to the fine link in the summary...well, why spoil it for you? [linspire.com]
Why linux is suited for schools. (Score:2)
Not a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
With computers in every classroom, it really requires each teacher to become a system admin and I think it really distracts the students from their work. I have a friend from Vietnam, who never had computers in his classrooms growing up, and he was way more skillful in math then the r
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2)
-matthew
Microsoft Bob here to save the day! (Score:5, Funny)
Offer not valid outside the USA especially Finland.
Re:Microsoft Bob here to save the day! (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Bob here to save the day! (Score:2)
'nuff said?
Re:Microsoft Bob here to save the day! (Score:2)
Insanely stupid adverts too -- the movie one has a girl crying black tears, and I think she later morphs into a skull; they give a phone number/website and imply that if you don't report everyone, the pirates will destroy western society, especially your children[*].
[*] Ok, I'm paraphrasing a lot; I don't remember the actual wording, but was jaw-droppingly over-the-top.
Is this all about the service contracts? (Score:2)
Why $500 per school? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a student.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The fight back from the dells and windows (Score:3, Interesting)
Big difference (Score:2)
It sure does make a huge impact on their overall educations. They will suffer. Computers != solution for bad teachers. Now we have another babysitter along side of the TV.
Sure, they can be useful, but they are mostly a distraction and should only be used when neccessary. You know these people will want to use them all day long because of their "investment"
Has anyone t
We couldn't give 3 year old machines to Wake cty (Score:2)
Too bad it's with Linspire (Score:2)
Coral Cache (Score:2)
was their IT staff involved? (Score:2)
I wonder how much input the IT people had because most of them are probably MCSE's or whatever, and linux poses a real threat to them. and to be honest, schools don't care much, at least fro mwhat I've seen, about costs. Saving money sounds great, but see the problem is that if you don't spend it all, then you get less next year. and if you get alot of value, i.e. lot
Re:was their IT staff involved? (Score:2)
Re:was their IT staff involved? (Score:2)
i tried a few years ago to convert an old, and totally useless, lab into a linux thi
Good (Score:2)
I prefer the Microsoft platform for application development, but it makes no difference what the students and teachers are using the access the applications, sin
Nice that they get computers and all... (Score:2)
Re:Nice that they get computers and all... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice that they get computers and all... (Score:2)
Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I thought it had been shown over and over again that computers do not contribute to the overall quality of education for children. And in some cases, relying on comptuters can actually reduce the quality because the basics get ignored.
Seriously, what IS the value of having computers in schools besides computer literacy? Sure, kids should have *a* computer class. Maybe a few computer labs for research. But why one computer per student? What is the value? So kids can skip lunch and IM their friends in another room?
-matthew
Low-Cost Non-Microsoft PCs (Score:2)
I Suppose Even Linspire Is A Step Up From MS (Score:4, Insightful)
At least they'll have better security (Score:2, Insightful)
As I Said On Another Site About This Story (Score:2)
when the schools actually DO purchase 300,000 Linux installs, let us know THEN.
This is a pilot project.
Stupid... (Score:2)
Re:What it is with Linspire (Score:2)
Linspire has one, Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora don't.
Linspire has actually been paying attention to *how* software gets deployed to the mass market, big companies and government agencies. Red Hat also figured this out long ago. The rest of the distros naively think that somehow "if you build it, they will come". That works in Kevin Costner movies but not in the real world.
Re:What it is with Linspire (Score:2)
My guess is that it probably doesn't apply because the schools are buying preconfigured computers from Wintergreen, not educational licenses from Linspire.
Re:What it is with Linspire (Score:2)
Linspire also does a lot of "it-just-works" modifications. Check out Linspi
Re:I know where to find a job now! (Score:2)
Re:Shit (Score:2)
#apt-get install synaptic
Problem solved.
Re:Good Luck! (Score:2)
Re:Good Luck! (Score:2)
Re:Not in my school! (Score:2)
(Not even counting that Novell owns Suse Linux now.)
Your school wouldn't need to buy new computers.
This isn't about new computers.
It is about software, not hardware.
Re:Not in my school! (Score:2)
I really don't understand why schools are so gung-ho to spend tons of money on computer hardware and software, but are completely willing to hire sufficient systems adminstration staff.
Re:Improves education (Score:2)
Searching Google [google.com] is usually the best way to get an answer to a question.
Re:Why do they chose to pay? (Score:2)
I'm really curious. Did I miss something?
Yes, you missed some marketing training. Not exactly basic marketing, but basic pricing training. To sum up: an offer from an unknown source for an unknown product for $0 is seen as a bad choice. There are also two other issues.
In this case, if the audience was computer savvy, and could judge the product (the OS) based on its merits, then a $0 price tag would be fine. However, when selling to an audience that is not conversant in the product, the audience uses th
Re:Linspire? (Score:2)
If you don't like Wine, don't use it. I really don't have a problem with some folks wanting Linux to run photoshop, office, games, or whatever. Contribute to e.g. The GIMP and OpenOffice.org projects if you have a problem with this. Make them good enough for everyone to switch.
And since when does the default `look' define whether Linux distributions are "REAL" ? There are literally millions of Window Manager and Theme combinations available. Pick
Re:Linspire? (Score:2)
Re:Agreed. Linspire is an Expensive Solution. (Score:2)
Wrong. As long as the proprietary software doesn't distribute the Qt libraries with it, then the GPL-licensed Qt included with the Linux distro is a non-issue.
The GPL doesn't force all software using the libraries to be GPL software. It forces all software distribu
Re:Agreed. Linspire is an Expensive Solution. (Score:2)
Yeah, and proprietary software developed with the GPL Qt libraries is dependent on GPL APIs. What's your point? (Before somebody goes off on licensing issues.... Yes, it is legal for proprietary software to use the GPL Qt libraries.)
The proprietary Qt libraries are identical t
Re:support? (Score:2)
Re:support? (Score:2)
OMG. ROFL.
There's no way in hell you could run an entire public school worth of computers without dedicated adminstration staff.
Re:support? (Score:2)
Ha! Spoken like someone who has never had to maintain computers with children beating on them (the computers). Who, exactly, do you think is going to make the "phone support" calls? Students? Teachers? Who are they goign to call? Teachers have enough to worry about and they rarely get paid enough to do what they do as it is. The reality is that properly supporting many Windows machines is a full time job.
-matthew