Stories related to Linux use in education.

 My kid hates Linux, Apr 18, 2008

My oldest son is a fairly typical 15 year-old end user. He’s on the computer all the time, has a decent idea how to get things done, and is largely not interested in the inner workings of hardware or operating system. He, like most other users, just wants the computer to work.

For two large school districts – in Canada and the U.S. – Linux and other open source software is the plat du jour on the education menu.

Linux has a lot to offer cash-strapped education departments. It’s free, for one thing. It is naturally secure with distinctly non-privileged accounts and it is easily centrally administered. However, the experiences by schools that have gone this route are a mixed bag. Let us investigate some and see what lessons there are.

Anyone who has thought that, as nice as the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child computers are for the target market of third-world children, they'd also make a lot of sense for U.S. kids too, is in good company. The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., Larry Langford, had the same thought and the result is that the city will be deploying 15,000 OLPCs to its school system.

Educational institutions will increase spending on open-source software and services over the next few years, but that doesn't mean proprietary software will be left in the dark, according to a new report covering 14 countries.

A British educational report suggests the upgrade would increase costs and create software compatibility problems while providing little benefit.

Human-powered computing team supplies a supercomputer with enough juice to model a nuclear fusion reaction.

It is hard to believe that my 10th and 11th Grade Vietnamese and foreign students at the American International School in Saigon have been using Linux for about one month now. I am very impressed at how fast they were able to use Linux in a short period of time.

For nearly a year, Fresno Unified school officials searched for a laptop that wouldn't clutter a student's desk.

Video Furnace has licensed its MPEG-4-based video distribution system to OSTN, a student-produced video network. Video Furnace System 4 uses Internet2 or private, multicast-enabled Ethernet networks to deliver multicast feeds to desktops, regardless of the operating system, browser, or plug-in.

With its new affiliate, the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) intends to promote the certification of Linux professionals across Europe. LPI-Central Europe will be responsible for Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as for the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices.

“Software distributives, developed on the basis of Linux and tested within 2007-2008 might actually be installed in schools by 2009 end”

Many other countries are turning to Linux and open-source for their school-house computer needs, and now there's a conference for those who want to bring it to schools in the U.S.

The One Laptop per Child's XO, better known as the $100 laptop, gets most of the headlines but NComputing is showing in Macedonia, with its Ubuntu Linux based servers and virtual PC terminals, that there's more than one way to get inexpensive Linux desktops into students' hands.

France’s ministry for education has migrated 2,500 servers across its 30 local education authorities to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in line with the ministry's open-source investment strategy to avoid problems associated with vendor lock-in.

A German state has signed a major contract with Novell for the supply of Linux server and desktop products to 33 universities.

The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) is deploying Suse Linux Enterprise across 30,000 desktops and 1,880 servers in schools in southern India.

In a first for South Africa, Linux Holdings have launched a full-time Linux Training Academy.

An experiment is underway in a number of St. Petersburg schools to install Linux OS in computer rooms with by September 1st. However, it is not clear so far who will be funding the program. A number of computers with Linux OS already appeared in Alexander Ponosov’s school.

Designed as an add-on “EDU-CD” to accompany the upcoming 10.3 release of openSUSE, the so-called “SLEducator” is designed to “[ease] the installation and configuration of an educational network and student desktop.”

The dead hand of monopoly has fallen on our schools. According to this morning's Herald, it seems that supposedly vast Vista profits aren't enough for Microsoft. Now they're taxing Apple computers too.

The San Diego Unified School District has selected Novell's SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) as the standard platform for its "Always-On Learning Initiative," a mobile computing initiative intended to help students achieve academic success and prepare them for life and work in the 21st century.

While experience tells us that Linux, no matter how light the distro, will not turn an old computer into a modern screamer, this will certainly be a step up for students who would not have otherwise had access to a PC at home.

The technology audit and firing come as the district attempts to transition many of its computers from the Windows ME operating system to a Linux operating system.

Each computer will also include a free set of software which will include a word processing application, a photo manipulation application and a few games along with a Linux operating system.

While there are several different distributions of Linux specifically aimed at educators and students, they are not all created equal. Most, however, bear striking similarities -- both in the basic code and in the assortment of software offerings bundled into the distribution. Though each flavor of Linux has its own pros and cons, that variety may actually work to a user's advantage.

The group wanted to make a point that Open Source software works on Windows machines, not just on computers running a version of GNU/Linux, a popular alternative operating system.

In short, the absence of high-performance commercial desktop software hurts Linux.

The University of Melbourne's University Systems Project is set to undergo its largest transformation since its launch four years ago with the core Unix systems to be replaced by Linux by the end of the year.

Windsor, Calif. School District IT administrator Heather Carver is migrating most of the district's 70 servers and most of its 5,000 desktop machines from a mostly-Windows environment that is quickly becoming obsolete to a new mixed environment that includes PCs running SUSE Linux, Wyse Linux thin-client terminals, and a smattering of Mac and Windows machines.

Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported late last week that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future.

Bexley will switch all of its computers over to Linux, an open-source operating system. Open source means that the code for the software is available for anyone to procure and manipulate, unlike Microsoft operating systems.

The wireless project, run by Inkululeko Technologies, allows schools to communicate with one another as well as allowing administrators to perform remote support.

It seems to me that Linux is a viable solution for any educator with old, seemingly useless computers, and administrators shackled down by exorbitant licensing costs of running OS X or Windows on dozens or hundreds of machines ought to consider it as an alternative.

Absa and Engen will spend R600 000 to provide ten Northern Cape schools with Linux-based school laboratories.

To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software, the Ile-de-France, the political district of greater Paris, will give 175,000 school children and apprentices USB keys loaded with open-source software.

the SUNY (State University of New York) Linux Learning Collaborative, a partnership between Millard Fillmore College at the University at Buffalo and Just-in-Time Resources, is offering online Linux training leading to the LPIC-1.

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE is being kept out of schools through government policy which "stifles innovation and locks users into high cost software," open sorcerers claim.

I'm writing this post using Fedora Core 6 on my new laptop. I've been running some flavor of Linux for a while now and I think I've finally settled on Fedora Core since it's doing such a nice job with both multimedia and office productivity tasks.

The NSW (Australia) Department of Education and Training (DET) may increase the penetration of Linux on its 165,000 desktop fleet because open source is "clearly an industry trend".

It looks like the education space could be the first, real place where Linux could grab beachhead in the desktop PC market.

In a bid to increase the number of Linux users in the CNMI, Northern Marianas College faculty member David Rumptz will be giving away at least 20 desktop computers to interested Linux users.

With 4,000 students and just 21 computers, the Cotton Hill Girls High School in the south Indian city of Trivandrum wouldn't appear to be at the vanguard of anything related to information technology. Yet the 71-year-old school is abandoning Microsoft (MSFT) Windows software in favor of its free, open-source rival, Linux.

A B.C. post-secondary institution said it intends to grow the number of Linux machines in its data centre as it replaces older hardware infrastructure with blade servers.

Today, the consumer can walk into almost any retailer selling electronics and buy a computer with Windows (and usually MS Office) pre-installed — no muss, no fuss. Finding an Apple retailer is much more of a challenge but at least the consumer knows about Apple and can find a retailer if they are looking. How easy is it to find a Linux workstation retailer?

The CMS committee began to look at open-source projects in earnest, Hitlin said. It appraised Bricolage, Mason and OpenCMS but deemed them not quite right. Plone soon came to the forefront.

OpenLab, a Linux distribution widely used in education environments, today released a beta of the forthcoming OpenLab 4 release.

A Welsh county council has brokered a deal to provide open source email to up to 40,000 pupils and teachers.

After the cola ban, it is now the turn of Microsoft to log out of Kerala. Children in 12,500 high schools in the state, India’s most literate, will not be taught Windows. Instead, instructors are lining up Linux for them. This is because Kerala has chalked out a plan for migrating its high school students to free software platforms in three years.

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