Increasingly, businesses, government entities and schools are starting to look beyond Windows, which IDC says securely dominates the desktop market with a 94% market share. Instead they’re considering running Linux as their client operating environment. But the move is a slow one. In the meantime, Sun’s JDS turns heads:
Fonterra, Auckland University giving Linux serious consideration.
Moving Linux to School Desktops
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Back when I was in school, there was nothing but Apple IIe’s
It certainly would be good, for GNU/Linux, to move into the academic field.
In my opinion one of the reasons why Apple lost it’s market share, was due MS Windows moving into academia, and Apple sorta dropping out of (K-12)schools
.
Apple’s small marktet share can’t be compared to the past in that fashion. The market back then was say 50million units overall, today it’s 1 billion or 10 billion. Apple lost market share more because the market expanded rapidly with IBM compatibles. Apple does almost as much business as HP, or Dell, Has a higher profit compared to either company.
Now Linux on the School Desktop is great for two reasons,
1) User Licensing, Students can use Open Office, running from a central server, to make updating easier. Adminastrators can use which ever they need.
2) New users won’t be able to run email viruses, or download and run virus laden programs easily.
with Linux desktops Virus emails become a clogged mailbox, not a network-wide system destroying probelm. very good for schools with budgets.
And just suppose that we made it possible to move applications to the desktops by making use of X. That would make it unnecessary to move Linux to all those desktops. Free apps on all those desktops is the real goal. Linux on those desktops is not a satisfactory goal. It should NOT be done. The focus should be on putting X server software on those displays and running the display and user input portions of remote-host-based applications (i.e., client applications) on the students’ displays.
Don’t forget the ease of giving the students copies to run at home. Free of licensing restrictions. Knoppix would be the perfect giveaway.
Some places don’t have the infrastructure, meaning which powerful servers to do what you propose. Computer labs in many departments tend to be small and with a small budget.
Their existing equipment can be reused. I am not against server-based computing. In fact, I am a big proponent of LTSP set ups, but it all depends on what the infrastructure of the place allows you to do.
And when people talk about Linux on the desktop, they tend to refer to the fact that people will be using Linux applications for desktop tasks. People care less whether the app is hosted somewhere or whether it runs locally, so long as it is responsive.
Increasingly, businesses, government entities and schools are starting to look beyond Windows, which IDC says securely dominates the desktop market with a 94% market share.
But how can IDC rely on the above fact yet it is a well known fact that the actual amount of Linux on desktops is almost impossible to determine? Facts like these are plain wrong. I run a small internet cafe in a “third world” country were I changed to running all my original old OEM IBM windows desktops with LTSP. It’s been 3 years now with peace. All the viruses that have plagued the windows worlds recently were a not an issue. I guess IDC still counts my boxes as windows desktops!!
Cb..
… using linux @ school.
in fact if a teacher “Trusts Me” & im in a position in the room so if an admin runs in i can turn off my monitor off, My teachers will let me run Mepis, Knoppix,or Morphix; which ever flavor I have a craving for…
but sometimes i still have to use windows…
(yes i get my work done on either, I just prefer to work in linux. Im more Comfortable)
http://coollinux.spyw.com
And in Brazilian schools…
http://www.brazzil.com/2004/html/articles/mar04/p107mar04.htm
Good bye M$ !
It’s about time acedemia supported something truly acedemic.
There are much more Debian’s than Windows 2000 machines at our university. Also a few Sun stations.
A happy Tux on everyones desktop. Kids and adults cheer with excitement in enjoying their new found freedom
This is pretty cool. On technical universities like MIT and such, you can expect FLOSS to being run there. But other schools/uni’s which aren’t mainly computing, science and technical related seem to switch.
There are problems however. For example imagine a school where one learns how to become professional graphics designer. There are quite a few open programs for that, but Apple MacOSX is currently used on these schools (at least here, afaik). This used to be SGI IRIX years back, and some switched to Microsoft Windows too. Btw, i’m interested to hear info regarding this on your school.
Regarding the government, there’s a devoted site to that about open standards and open software for governments. They write documents for assistence to the government, and local cities are switching or experimenting as well which news is posted there. It is however unfortunately (?) not in English.
http://www.ososs.nl
I find this initiative awesome and hope other communities will pick this up regarding their government (and/or NGO’s), or perhaps those already exist — i’d like to know then.
When I was in school learning animation and compositing for film I learned originally on IRIX systems that later switched to Linux. The only thing that was Apple at the time was the editor which I now use for free on Linux. Why did the school switch to Linux? Cost was the main reason since it’s cheaper to not only distribute across a network but also aquire applications through Open Source projects.
My friend that’s a designer just got excited that he can run Cold Fusion on Linux and Flash MX, Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks on Wine. Even Macromedia is now testing porting their products to Linux. A lot of Adobe’s product line such as Photoshop runs on Wine.
Though really there are several Open Source Linux alternatives for Windows applications which can cut cost significantly. Something school boards take into consideration.
http://winehq.com/
http://www.codeweavers.com/
Aren’t we all. When I was in high school (way back in 1983), we got taken on a tour to an Apple plant for a field trip and got to see the Apple Lisa on display. Amazing, you could actually move this thing around on the desk, click buttons and windows would open on the screen. We were flabbergasted.
“Back when I was in school, there was nothing but Apple IIe’s
”
Didn’t seem like they were good for much either besides playing text adventures games. Thank God for Zork!