NZ School Goes Open Source Amid Microsoft Mandate 305
Dan Jones writes "Kiwis have built an entire school IT system out of open source software, in less than two months, despite a deal between the New Zealand government and Microsoft that effectively mandates the use of Microsoft products in the country's schools. Albany Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Auckland has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. It's using a range of applications like OpenOffice, Moodle for education content, Mahara for student portfolios, and Koha for the library catalogue. Ubuntu Linux is on the desktop and Mandriva provides the server. Interestingly, the school will move into new purpose-built premises this year, which include a dedicated server room design based on standard New Zealand school requirements, including four racks each capable of holding 48 servers for its main systems. The main infrastructure at Albany Senior High only requires four servers, suggesting an almost 50-fold saving on hardware requirements."
Mandelbulb porn sighted! (Score:2, Funny)
IT Administrator who saved millions in licensing fees involved in scandal! Students used open source operating system to compile and publish their own unauthorized applications, which were of course sophomoric in character. Students were permitted to render mathematical constructs wihout let. Mandelbulb porn sighted!
The new administrator has promised to nip this in the bud: "Students will invent things within in the scope of propriety with the help of the new Microsoft systems that limit the scope of the
Re:Mandelbulb porn sighted! (Score:4, Insightful)
You write that as if it was normal, to assume that schools exist to teach children knowledge and make them intelligent.
School is a direct advancement from what Otto von Bismarck wanted:
Something like military service, but for children. To form them into what were the ideas back then:
To obey, to sit still and listen, to train things over and over again, to learn them by heart, etc.
Not to come up with free thoughts, ideas, and creativity. Because those would have created people who would want to lead themselves, not to blindly follow.
This was always the goal. And the idea that it could be something else, is a relatively new concept, that some dreamed about, but that still is very far from becoming real.
School is simply not what you should look at, if you want to educate your children to become creatives and leaders.
Even 4chan is better at free thought and creativity, than any school.
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This was always the goal. And the idea that it could be something else, is a relatively new concept, that some dreamed about, but that still is very far from becoming real.
The Athenians of old would like a word with you.
Re:Mandelbulb porn sighted! (Score:5, Interesting)
Really?
The "peripatetics" we so named because Aristotle taught his students by strolling around and chatting.
The "stoics" were named for the *stoa* or marketplace, bucause that's where they used to shoot the shit.
The "cynics" used to lurk under bridges, from whence they could hop out and intellectually ambush the unwary traveler (making them the first *trolls*).
The one thing you'd never see in ancient Greece is a group of students sitting in a rectangular grid of seats all doing identical work in parallel. That would have been seen as very strange indeed. Now we can't lay this entirely at Bismarck's feet, because it goes back further, to the need to impart Latin grammar to large number of aspiring but not too wealthy students (thus the "grammar school"). You wouldn't teach a gentleman that way, he'd have a tutor.
This class distinction remains in education today. Look at a top tier "prep" school that cater to the economic elite of this country, and you'll see a model which (unlike the standard classroom) would have made sense to the Greeks: a small number of students, maybe half a dozen, sitting around a table and having a discussion with a professor. That's because the results really matter; the aim is to produce an elite class. The method used to train our elite could be done walking around, or hanging around the marketplace, although lurking under bridges. They're supposed to be able think for themselves, but only within certain confines (i.e. not questioning the existence of an elite).
I'll go back under my bridge now.
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School is simply not what you should look at, if you want to educate your children to become creatives and leaders.
ITYM public school. You know, where the leaders of our country don't go. One big problem with the existence of private schools is that our leaders have no concept of what life is like for the average child. I was one of about four kids in my class who were always done early, and got top marks. But I couldn't just lay my head down on my desk and wait quietly when I was done, as I was expected to do, and ended up writing lines and shit like that for "disrupting the class", literally by doing things like "look
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Public school is a system intended to create soldiers and factory workers, and guess what? Most of the factories are gone. What's left?
Actually, if you look where the factories have gone, and look into the factories, you'll find something even more devastating for our school system: The factories don't contain many people any more. They're mostly full of robots. The few humans are there to tend to the robots, which means that they have a pretty good technical education.
The days of training kids to take r
Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no mandate for NZ schools to use Microsoft software. There is a collective agreement (one of many agreements, including one with Apple), and the schools have always been able to choose the software they want.
Standard slashdot bias and hype. FUD FUD FUD
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The contract stipulates that Microsoft gets paid regardless of whether schools actually use their software. So while the schools may not be forced through contract to use MS software, it doesn't matter to Microsoft as they still get paid for non-existent software.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Besides, I only consider it fair
There is nothing "fair" about Microsoft licensing agreements.
Nothing.
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Either way,
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
For as many student that go through the school are students not bred into the Microsoft culture and not dependent on their software to be productive. This is not good news to them.
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For as many student that go through the school are students not bred into the Microsoft culture and not dependent on their software to be productive.
Gladiators were taught to fight with heavy wooden swords so that the real sword would be easier to handle.
Surely it is better to give students crippled operating systems such as Vista so that their introduction to real world technology is a pleasant one? Rather than go the other way around?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.
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Starting the students on Vista is more like training gladiators with swords made out of aluminum foil.
In swordfighting, the parry [google.com.sg] movement means when the enemy is about to stab you, you use your own sword to push his sword away quickly.
With Windows Vista, you get this pop-up in the middle of combat:
"Windows needs your permission to continue
If you started this action, continue.
Parry Movement
Arm Motor Control
To continue, type an administrator password, and then click OK.
[Details] [OK] [Cancel]"
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Its the same where I work. A rate is negotiated based on the number of systems (and in my case) vmware images running windows. But if we save on windows licenses it helps in the long term because future contracts will get buy with fewer licenses.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
which leaves those administrators who decided to use open source software vulnerable to claims of wasting valuable resources implementing other solutions when "Industry Standard" microsoft software has already been paid for
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to TFA, they saved money despite paying for the unused MS licenses.
"The brilliance of Microsoft's business model is they get the same amount of money regardless of who uses it," Osborne said. However, the school has saved significantly in other areas,
I also like the fact that the whole system was planned and implemented in less than two months. Sort of gives the lie to the whole "Linux is difficult" thing.
Oxymoron? (Score:3, Funny)
It *DOES* matter to them (Score:3, Insightful)
They get paid, that's right.
They are not being used!!! That's the first step for people to end using Microsoft products!
Have we not discussed that one of the main reason for the Microsft monopoly is that people don't know anything else?
Rubbish! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rubbish! (Score:5, Funny)
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A sense of humour?
I thought you Kiwis had those too. I guess you're feeling a bit sheepish about the spelling errors...
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Weird huh?
A private company taxing *the government*.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're blaming slashdot for that statement? It was taken directly from the article on CIO magazines website.
Sounds like you've got your own set of biases going on.
50-fold savings? (Score:5, Interesting)
The school only has 230 students. I have a hard time believing they'd need 192 servers whether they used Linux or not.
And BTW, as long as you're standing on my lawn, may I remind you that my own high school's expenditure on servers was exactly zero? How's that for savings?
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This is the same government that made a deal with Microsoft to pay them regardless of whether Microsoft's software was actually installed. That doesn't sound like the kind of logical decision making that leads to entertaining the notion that 230 students might not need 192 servers after all.
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I can see a possible case where that might make sense.
If for example the cost of auditing what each machine was running was more than the discounted price offered by microsoft, ie just pay us a flat fee for every ma
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I agree, we had no servers. And I will tell you the access time to any students records was guaranteed to be less than the time it takes to log in. The gall if it! We actually used folders, and paper! Humm can we sue Microsoft for prior art? I mean folder, and object inside like Pictures and documents! When my kids ask what our generation did, I tell them where do you think the computers and internet came from? You think Al Gore invented it? Pufft
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Our college (in 2000), with several thousand students and 500 workstations had a total of 6 servers...
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:5, Funny)
The school only has 230 students. I have a hard time believing they'd need 192 servers whether they used Linux or not.
Here in NZ, we're so technologically advanced that we're skipping laptops and going straight to "one server per child".
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:4, Funny)
By the way, if you're having difficulty traveling between two points due to an obstruction, I might have a construction which will allow you to pass over it unhindered. For a modest price, of course...
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if they were bigger... there is little cost saving in building a server room for one rack vs a server room for four racks, even though you expect to use only one rack. However having to expand the server room later to accommodate a second rack now that's not just expensive but potentially disruptive to the school (construction is noisy and messy).
So it sounds like a sensible requirement to have a slightly over sized server room. And this being the government requirement possibly regardless of the school size. So there may be hardware savings, to call it 50-fold is baseless.
Having four servers for 230 students and maybe 30 staff or so sounds overkill to me even. But then again that's possibly designed with some redundancy in place, or with room for immediate expansion. Or are these application highly server based? Can also require more server power.
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:5, Informative)
1. The school is projected to grow to 1500 pupils over the next few years
2. The server room thing was the standard said they needed 8 racks of servers, instead they just needed 4 servers taking up less than half a rack.
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I was at Linux.conf.au and saw the talk by the company that deployed the system
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They don't need that many servers, they are saying there are 4 racks, each capable of holding 42sru. How many sru's does a ups take? 8? Switch? At least 1 each. How many 1sru patch pannels do they have? 10? San/nas? Voip phone system? Room for expansion? In a good network setup it's easy to use up 4 racks.
Does anyone on /. Work in networking any more?
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:5, Funny)
The majority of
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I don't know how big their network is, but I expect at least:
8 Us for Switch
8 Us of Patch pannels for Ethernet.
8 Us for PBX patch pannels
8 Us for the actual PBX + Accesories (Eg. ATAs, GSM -> SIP GWs, etc).
10 Us for UPS
6 Us for Audio system.
8 Us for Servers
4 Us for routers
20 Us for DIsplay/keyboard (2 Displays/kb on 2 different Racks)
10 Us for Power strips (across all racks)
And I'm missing a lot of things, probably.
That is 90 Us.
Off course, the first 10 or so Units in a Rack are rarely used, since they are not comfortable. If you add some space between equipments (It's good practice, also, many systems are not rackable, and they take up more space). That can take you to, let's say, 120 Us. Plus, some room for expansion.
4 Racks seems like a good setup to me.
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They're always used! You put a faceplate over them and stuff all the extra cables behind there in case you need them one day.
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Server room gear tends to get smaller over time too.
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, you've never used NT. :)
Re:50-fold savings? (Score:4, Informative)
I was thinking; 4 full racks is just good foresight. My office of 20 people had one full rack, and it had a display unit, a PBX unit, a 48 port switch, and the UPS near the bottom. You can stick one or two racks in a former broom closet, but if you're building at a new site, you might as well future proof it while you're at it.
The city of seattle has 400 fiber optic strands going to each municipal building, but only uses one. Does the author of this article suggest that since FiOS only sends one strand to the home, data compression has increased 400 fold since 1996? No -- it's because it's cheap, and you can future proof for only about 10% more.
I hate marketing.
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That was clearly the weakest part of the article, yes. First of all, there's four racks of space, not proof that any school actually is using all that capacity. Perhaps even there aren't four racks, just four drawn in on the blueprint as possible to cram into the room, ignoring HVAC and such. I think it's more likely someone wanted a server room, and that is as "small" as they'd reasonably get. Yes, perhaps today a broom closet is enough but having an actual room is practical in many ways for the people tha
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The school only has 230 students.
Thats a pretty average school by southern hemisphere standards. My sons primary school in Australia has 100 students. A big secondary school might have 500 or so.
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The school only has 230 students. I have a hard time believing they'd need 192 servers whether they used Linux or not.
Not heard of central provisioning then.. Standardised I.T. infrastructure mandates 192 servers per school reguardless of size+192 Windws server edition software+various resources reguardless of actual need. Somewhere there is a school that needs 237 servers, but only has 192 and can't get the extra alloocation because that would screw up the budgeting.
And BTW, as long as you're standing on my lawn, may I remind you that my own high school's expenditure on servers was exactly zero? How's that for savings?
Mine too. But then I'm old enough to have gone to school when computers were big complicated things that huge companies used. I also walked to school.. in th
FTA (Score:4, Interesting)
Well isn't that lovely. Demonstrably corrupt.
Re:FTA (Score:4, Interesting)
Demonstrably corrupt.
Not really. It's a volume license agreement for schools, etc. I don't see how "not-necessarily smart decision" == corruption, unless you know something we don't? And it could be a good business decision if the majority of the schools use Windows, etc - the volume discounts can be significant.
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It is inherently corrupt as it financially excludes the use of all other competing software, be it open source or proprietary. I assume the contract would also be for an extended number of years. The purpose of the contract is quite simply to burden every industry that wants to hire those students with the cost of retraining them to open source software and then the marketdroid schills claiming those cost as a disadvantage of using open source and all of it willing supported by the New Zealand government.
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It makes more sense to me to blanket license a country than negotiate licenses for individual schools. While some schools may not use MS software, the country probably still saves money in the long run compared to negotiating for each school.
Re:FTA (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep in mind that, in New Zealand, the software that is used in schools will ultimately be paid for by the Ministry of Education either through a general licences or as part of the budgets devolved to schools, so it is in the Ministries interest to minimise the overall cost.
And, as a semi-aside New Zealand has been the least corrupt country on Transparency International's index pretty much every year since 2003 (some years were ties with Denmark), and the volume licence was an example of the Government serving the needs of individual schools well (who were going to use MS stuff anyway), rather than a corrupt deal.
Re:FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called a 'loss leader'.... the kids produced by this system will not know that there are alternatives and be on the hook for full priced retail software for life... so yes, it's a very good deal... for MS.
Re:FTA (Score:5, Interesting)
The catch in Queensland is that unless you are using the MOI (mandated operating interface) you are screwed. Using Firefox? Sorry, can't help you. OO.org? Same thing. Not Outlook? Then it's your fault you have an email issue. Does AVG show a virus? Not a mandated scanner, so you are NOT infected. Try using squeak in the classroom, and you get slapped. Don't use linux, or cygwin etc. In fact any non-approved software can (and often will) be deleted if your laptop is dropped into Information Services, as your problem is put down to "non-mandated software" as the 1st option.
This clearly makes support simpler, but can make teaching more challenging, especially if you want the kids to use computers as tools for thinking, and not just document management systems.
Fifty fold savings in servers? Awful writing. (Score:3, Interesting)
So the article basically says that they have a machine room with four somewhat standard racks. That's pretty small. Figure that at some point you'll need some network gear which will likely take up at least one of the racks (switches, patch panels to other areas of the building, routers/firewalls), hopefully some UPS gear, a few servers.. four 48U racks doesn't go very far. And it only makes sense nowadays to have a couple larger servers hosting a bunch of virtual machines for mundane things. They would be wise to do that no matter what OS they run, and that more than anything is why you can cut down on the number of physical machines that are installed.
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And it only makes sense nowadays to have a couple larger servers hosting a bunch of virtual machines for mundane things. They would be wise to do that no matter what OS they run, and that more than anything is why you can cut down on the number of physical machines that are installed.
So much this. The latest virtual-desktop stuff from VMware is pretty spiffy. It really is now possible to run both useful virtual servers and useful virtual desktops, and at the same time simplify all the support infrastructure (backups, AV, server/desktop config control, etc.) considerably. A couple of 5U PowerEdge servers running vSphere can probably do everything a 230-student school needs quite handily.
It also would be nice in this instance especially as it would allow students to flip effortlessly
Of leaping we go... (Score:4, Insightful)
including four racks each capable of holding 48 servers for its main systems. The main infrastructure at Albany Senior High only requires four servers, suggesting an almost 50-fold saving on hardware requirements.
That is a frankly hilarious leap of inference. If you have a 4 door car, that means that you always travel with 5 adults, right? I mean, c'mon. It's statements like that that make OSS guys seem like wild-eyed loony tunes. Instead of making ridiculous, bold statements, why don't you, y'know, do some homework? How many servers do they really use, regardless of how many racks they have? It might be 4-8 big ones. That would be an interesting statement of fact, and would demonstrate the value of OSS. Instead, you just seem lazy and not able to objectively gather data.
Hnnngh.... (Score:3, Funny)
Once Were Warriors.
Now are geeks.
Drum roll please... (Score:4, Funny)
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Now get off my lawn, you grammar/math Nazis!
Sell Data Center Servcies (Score:4, Interesting)
I suppose what the article means is that there are 4 x 48U racks installed in the server room. It is fiction that each rack could actually loaded with 48 x 1U servers! Potential problems are: cooling, weight, air (fire hazard), power supply.
Most likely actual rack usage looks as follows:
- Rack with 5 Servers
- Rack for Patching and switches
- Rack for phone system / phone patches
- Rack for backup.
If they have remaining capacity, they could rent it out/sell to other community organisations.
Not a matter of cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Today it's just sensible to use open source.Not only does it cause far fewer headaches, it also enables children to learn more about the technology.
It's much easier for interested children to expand their knowledge. For example if they want to learn about TCP/IP, they can just use netcat, and then later maybe wireshark.
Others might learn about programming by using shell scripts.
Over time you will have many people in lots of different jobs knowing a bit about computers. This will lead to departments having one or two persons with such experience. The knowledge of those people will then slowly diffuse in the department and cause higher efficiency.
Watch out for the video (Score:5, Informative)
Watch out for the video release of the presentation, including the deputy principal of the school who was there and did a bit of acting :)
Presentation details [lca2010.org.nz]
I hear the videos will be out in just over a week
The way they do filtering with NuFW is interesting - it can authorize outgoing connections based on the _application_ that is trying to create the connection, by calling back to a PAM module on the client machine. And there are rulesets depending on the logged in user group. Beats forcing everyone to use proxies.
And to clear up, by 'standard server space' they mean 4 x 12RU, they only needed to use one 12RU rack.
Naming (Score:3, Insightful)
Moodle, Mahara, Koha, Ubuntu, Mandriva
Is the weirdology in software naming caused by the lack of available domain names or something? Just asking...
Re:Naming (Score:5, Insightful)
Moodle, Mahara, Koha, Ubuntu, Mandriva
Is the weirdology in software naming caused by the lack of available domain names or something? Just asking...
Trademark law.
Try finding a name that is available in 150 countries. The first one that you don't hate is the one to go with.
Re:Naming (Score:5, Informative)
"Koha" is a Maori word meaning gift/donation. The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, so it's a pretty appropriate name for a FOSS library catalogue system written in NZ for anyone to use freely :)
PS Slashdot ate my "a macron" character - "Maori" should have a "-" over the "a".
48 servers (Score:2)
No lock-in... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a new school, one that was not previously locked in to any proprietary setup... They were able to start with a clean slate and do things properly.
Incidentally, how big or inefficient is the average school in new zealand if they require 48 servers? Just what exactly would all those servers do?
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I have worked with hundreds of NZ schools IT in my career.
I can tell you this:
The average server count is one.
The most physical servers ive seen at some of the larger schools in the country ive worked with (~2500-3000 students) has been about 25
The biggest schools in the country can function with capacity to spare on a couple of HP DL380s and an iSCSI san when managed well.
There are a lot of morons in school IT.
The networks with the happiest users use a Microsoft platform
The networks with the unhappiest use
anonymous bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
In what capacity, what are the names of these schools.
The schools with Linux networks BURN CASH on consultants
Absolute rubbish, once a Linux server is installed and configured, (and baring hardware failure)it just runs. Perhaps you should have consulted the people at Albany Senior High School.
The tight time frame -- two weeks for evaluation, one week for design and two weeks for implementation -- didn't create too much disruption, Br
here's a solution for everyone (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 8 to Feature Fully Virtual Monopoly
"We already have some schools switching to other operating systems. This new version of Windows will allow them to do that while still claiming to be 'Windows only.' "
fully sarcastic blog entry here [blogspot.com].
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I suspect that the more servers that were used, the more MS gets paid in the deal. Combine that with governments' tendency to buy a lot of stuff that it doesn't need and the reasoning for using 192 servers becomes all too clear.
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OK, 4 racks * 48 servers/rack = 192 servers at new location
No wonder we are running short on IP addresses.
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Common things are not made easy and intuitive. I had to type text paths to set up folder shortcuts on the desktops, for example...
Right-click the item/folder of interest, "Make Link", drag new "shortcut" to Desktop, rename as desired.
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Or doesn't "SHIFT + CTRL + Drag folder to desktop" work?
You did it the hard way (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an easier way to create folder shortcuts on the desktop, which doesn't involve typing text paths: Right-click on the folder you want a shortcut to. Click "Make link". Drag the link to the desktop. Rename it if desired.
I'm not sure if the lack of "all users"-type functionality is a deficiency in Ubuntu, or an annoyance in Windows. For a single-user desktop, "All Users" is completely unnecessary, and on multi-user desktops I've more often seen it lead to annoyances than actually be useful. Google Chrome's Windows installer actually installs the program to the user desktop only by default, which will become more common as UAC-type enforcement on the Windows desktop becomes more common.
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I'm annoyed by All Users.
A couple times now games have half-crashed my desktop. When Explorer starts up again, anything that was in All Users is missing. That's half the desktop icons, and most of the start menu. A reboot fixes it, but the first time it happened I was scratching my head for a few minutes. :P
It really isn't necessary, especially since Windows security is starting to line up with Linux. (Installing apps per profile and stuff)
Re:Not There Yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is that because Linux is not like Windows, it will never supplant it. But, a copy of Windows will never be as good at being Windows-like than Windows itself, so attempting to mimic Windows is a losing strategy.
IMHO there are many ways in which Linux is better than Windows. I am able to work much faster under Linux than I can do under Windows and I find doing almost anything under Windows an exercise in frustration.
You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was trying to make things easy for them to get started and ease into those kinds of things gradually. They are already upset enough about changes (going away from Windows); that would just compound things. I didn't plan to do it that way for mere amusement, I had a reason.
Why? Technology should enable what we wish to do, not what the mach
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Perhaps, but I'm also looking at this from the standpoint of an "average user". Fiddling at the command prompt for relatively common needs is "unacceptable" by today's standards.
Sure, we'd collectively like the demand if they had to rent nerds at $50/hr or whatnot to set stuff up for them in their homes, but that's not going happen. People would rather pay the MS tax instead and use what they know to do it themselves.
If Linux is not going to have the same look and feel as Windows, at least make it easy to f
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1. I didn't tell a houseguest that my desktops are Ubuntu now (used to be XP) and they managed to login/surf without any help
2. Computer drop in for older people using Ubuntu, I had to tell one user where to find the word processor and I now have a one page 'manual', everyone fairly happy
None of this is statistically significant, of course, but these users certainly aren't 'power' users. Actually there are two other points here:
3. You can arrange the desktop
Windows has some _really_ big no-nos (Score:5, Insightful)
There is one _big_ minefield with Windows, and that is software distribution. How on earth can a non-geek ever find out if a software package he downloads is legit or a piece of malware? This is probably the single biggest worry about amateurs using windows systems. (to some extend the problem is the same with the Mac)
Most Linux distributions solve that by having a package manager. I can safely tell a person to search for software in there and be assured that the chance they download malware is very slim.
As long as Microsoft refuses to address this problem and make all files downloaded instantly executable, I just cannot recommend Windows to the average user.
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Re:Not There Yet (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry, your kid has probably figured it all out by now. You can go back to Windows.
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> I had to type text paths to set up folder shortcuts on the desktops
with the mouse, it works the same as on Windows: click the folder + CTRL+SHIFT drag it on the desktop. Rename it if you need later on.
Or right click, Make link, move/rename it.
Contextual menu is there to help, in most case.
> Setting up a place for common desktop items, equivalent to Windows "all users", was a bear.
There doesn't seem to be a GUI for it.
http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/menustructure-2.html.en [gnome.org]
I p
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One glass typewriter is like another (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of this stuff is so similar that it doesn't matter. When you get down to mail merges or other stuff just about every company does it differently on the same platform so they'll have to learn it anyway.
True, if they are setting up computer systems they'll be at a disadvantage - you have to know the Microsoft platform to understand that you choose "local printer" when you want to connect directly to a printer on the network (and a thousand other quirks).
By the way, I've heard EXACTLY this argument before about why schools should be full of Apple computers. It really has very little merit. If you are talking about a single semester technical college course it has merit, but for general situations it doesn't.
In a ten year time scale we went from MSDOS to XP in business desktop computing. There is no point at all in directly targeting a specific business desktop environment in the early and middle years of school and not much in the late years.
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It's not that bad. For what most people do, Windows and Linux, OOo and MS Office... work pretty much the same.
What has MS worried, and why they want ot make their stuff essentially free for schools (or , as in NZ, a once-off national license, implying no marginal costs when a school chooses Windows and Office), is that all students for that school will know about Linux.
Hopefully, Linux will be good enough so that the students will be satisfied with it.
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If there is a case for some students learning specific MS programs, they can always run them on the student's own MS system or under the hypervisor. For many purposes, such as email and web-surfing, it makes little difference which specific program and OS the students use. Students who learn to use a spreadsheet or a word processor on Ubuntu will learn not only how to use those particular programs but the concepts behind them. Learning to use another program at work won't be that hard if they already know
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maybe for the likes of you and I, but for most people out there just moving the button across the screen stumps them.
i'd be pissed off if my kid was being taught to use applications 99% of the business world don't use.
99% of the world won't be using any 2010 software in 2020.
20 years ago IRIX was what you needed to know if you wanted to do CGI work.
Now IRIX has been replaced by OSX, Linux, and Windows XP/7
I don't get this fascination with teaching kids what is used by the business world.
In twenty years the business world will be running the software written by the kids in elementary school today.
Every kid should use a word processor that he or she wrote, at least once.
The ability to go, "where would I have put that?", m
Re:congrats. (Score:4, Insightful)
They would be better off *not* using ms products for the majority of their learning...
When I attended school, the school computers came with wordperfect and that's what we had to learn... Who uses wordperfect now? And this was wordperfect for dos we learnt, the current wordperfect versions as well as not being widely used, are completely different to the dos version anyway.
What schoolkids will find in schools today will not necessarily be what's widely used when they leave school.
So what you need to do, is teach the kids multiple programs, and teach them to think for themselves...
Don't teach them where to find a button to do X, teach them why they want to do X, and what such a function is likely to be called and have them work out for themselves how to do the same thing in multiple different programs. Teach them properly like this, and they will be prepared for whatever they encounter when they leave school and not tied to specific applications that have long since been forgotten.
The whole purpose of a school is to teach, if the result of the school's teaching means they get stumped when a button moves then the school has done a piss poor job... Buttons move around all the time, not just in computer programs... My TV has buttons on the side or the remote control for controlling it, my older TV had no remote control and had buttons on the front. In my car you need to twist one of the storks attached to the steering column to activate the headlamps, on the car i had before there was a knob you had to turn embedded into the dashboard.
Personally i'd be far more pissed if my kids were being taught in such a half assed manner that made them dependent on what's available today from a single supplier, which in no way prepares them for what might be available tomorrow.
I want my kids to learn how to think for themselves, not be indoctrinated by microsoft...
Re:congrats. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yay! By that logic most people would fail in the real world of business.
You know when I went to school, we had a real world business system from Microsoft. We had Microsoft Works for Xenix and Microsoft Works for DOS. State of the art systems as Microsoft surely called them back then.
It's no use teaching children about feature 5432 of version 54.22.154.12.b of some software product as it will disappear or be made obsolete by some other function in the next version, often by the time the teacher actually gets ot teach what he has learnt.
What does matter is teaching what those programs are about. What is a word processor? What are the typical features of such a piece of software? It doesn't matter if you teach that with Microsoft Word 95 or Open Office, in fact Open Office has the advantage of being available to the children.
No matter what software product you will use as an example, by the time the children start working, it will be long obsolete.
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> now your students will have no idea what to do when they go out into the real world of business where everything is microsoft.
>
> you MIGHT have saved a few bucks at the students expense. bravo.
This is of course nonsense.
If the student hasn't learned things in the abstract and is unable to move
from word processor to word processor or whatnot pretty much at will then
the relevant education has already failed him. This will manifest the next
time Microsoft decides to pull another Office 2007.
Kids toda