Does Your College Or University Support Linux? 835
yuna49 writes 'Lately I've been visiting colleges with my daughter, who is a senior in high school. Every school has proudly announced that they support both Windows and Macs, and most of these schools report having about a 50-50 split between the two. However we've been a Linux household for many years now, and my daughter routinely uses a laptop running Kubuntu 9.04. Sometimes I would ask the student tour guide if Linux was supported and was usually met with a blank stare. We're obviously not concerned about whether she can write papers using OpenOffice and Linux. Rather we've been wondering about using other computing services on campus like classroom applications, remote printing, VPNs, or Wi-Fi support (nearly all these campuses have ubiquitous Wi-Fi). Given the composition of Slashdot's readership, I thought I'd pose the question here. Does your school support Linux? Have you found it difficult or impossible to use Linux in concert with the school's computing services?'
University of brussels does (Score:2, Interesting)
You will want Virtual Box with XP installed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:1 semester of "Linux" is a required course (Score:2, Interesting)
Same where I went to college. The OS course was all done on Linux for obvious reasons and that what got me to switch to Linux at home.
Re:Does your car run on shit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Evidently the person posting cares (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, if you are getting an education for your life, not only can it help you in a career, but it helps you in every part of life you want to apply your education. That is a bit more of a challenge because there is more to consider. When you are looking for an education for your life, a school that matches your principles and values become important. Class size, diversity of staff, which federal programs they accept money from, non-discrimination policy, How good the Chinese food is, and the range of technology they embrace. Schools are ranked all the time by other peoples standards, and they are generally good guidelines. However, imho, one should check the data that is used to determine their ranking, but why not take it a step further and feel whether or not this is the type of environment you want to immerse yourself in that you hope will guide you for the rest of your life.
From what I have seen, a person that takes responsibility for their own education for themselves and on their own terms will be more successful in life and in their career, and likely to get better grades on top of that, than anyone that has gone to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, MIT cause their parents told them they had to.
And if you are a wack-nut Linux fanboy RMS worshiping FOSS junkie, or just someone that has grown up Linux and take pleasure in being a part of the community on some small level, I believe one is going to be much happier and successful in an environment as important as college where your culture is going to be embraced.
This is really about any belief or ideal. If you can' stand up for what you believe in, just little selfish things that YOU want (keeping in mind this is you going to college, not anyone else when it comes down to your choices), how are you ever supposed to stand up for what you know once you are there, let alone later in life?
Of course if all this just sounds silly, then it probably doesn't matter which school you end up going to. (obligatory straw-man)
Re:I can not imagine a CS dept not supporting Linu (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:support or allow? (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't realize the nightmare it will be when some kid can't get their work done because they bought this fashion accessory that can't DO anything and they don't know how to use it.
I suggest you pick up a mac made after 1999 and see what it can actually do. Seriously - fashion accessory?
Our scientists have Linux boxen (the plural of linux box is linux boxen) and they know how to use their own stuff. They don't need support from my team. That is how it should be in most schools.
That's great until you find out that the school requires your PC run some windows shiteware before your mac addy is allowed on the network. Much better to find out ahead of time if it will factor in your decision process.
The connection between academia and Apple is annoying. Apple provides cheap stuff, school likes cheap(er) stuff, students use it, go into real world... and find a Dell at their cube
The idea is to build support for macs in corpland. not that the current state of mac works well on a large network, but first things first.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)