Could this be the end of Microsoft
 

Hey guys I was surfing around last night and I stumbled on this interesting article. From what I can understand it looks like this could be the begainging of the end for M$ heres the link let me know what you think. Am I just dreaming or could this really be the break for linux.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...source_school/

My wife is a school teacher for ages 5 through 11, and until recently, was managing the ICT for about 600 students. Apart from the usual "No one knows how to use that", the biggest issue was that their Encarta, several similar apps, and some "No. Silly. The mouse is the thing that looks like a mouse" apps, didn't work under linux. If I was a good little evangelist I would check what apps she needed and set up something similar as a demo. In that "What happens if I delete this?" environment, a bootable CD would be ideal. Alas she no longer does the ICT there.

I read someone ranting the other day about the retraining issues involved in porting users away from Windows. If the students all used Linux in the schools, once they entered the workforce, the retraining would be Bill's problem.

It is good that we get young people to get used to Linux. Most of us do not remember learning DOS and Windows but we did. Just as we learned Linux. I do not think that if you start from zero, anyone of the two should be harder to learn than the other (depending on dist, of course).

Of course the problem is the teachers that are not used to the Linux world, there are still some holes left to fill, for example equivalent software and reliable drivers for hardware. As jmajor pointed out many people are used to a specific software and it may be hard to find anything simular to that in the OSS world. And an elementary (correct me if I am wrong but I do not know the US school system very well) teacher do not have the skills to emulate their favorite software using wine.

This will maybe turn some schools into testing Linux and OSS but I know one school here were I live that tried it, but they gave up because they could not handle it. We still need big players to make their products work with Linux.

Regards.

lol - not remember using DOS???

I not only remember it, I revert to it for complicated operations that simply cannot be performed easily by the Winders Explorer panel. Getting Linux into the class room is probably the best move that can be made, even if this is referring to UK classrooms only, since Linux is free - no more need for an academic institution to apportion a budget for learning software, or at the very least, not to apportion *as much*.

If only the schools here in the states would wise up....

I think you read wrong, "not remember using DOS" was not what I said, I said "not remember learning DOS". I ment that we may not think of when we were small (or I was) and learned the commands for DOS, or when Windows 95 came and I had to learn how to use the start meny and so on. This was kinda easy but still, it needed to be learned. Most people say that it is hard to learn Linux but as I remember it, learning Linux was just as hard as learning Windows, the only difference is that I was just a little kid when I learned Windows and we all know that kids learn "easier" then older people, right?

That was my point.

Thats my problem I learned DOS and Windows as a little kid and am now trying to learn Linux after being set in my Windows ways after 15 years. Makes it kinda hard when you expect it to do one thing and it does some thing compleately different. Though now that I look back on it I dont think that there was linux when I started learning computers, or it was just coming out onto the internet (which I was strictly forbbiden from for reasons best left alone).

That is why I am kind of glad that even if I did not start out with Linux I am still young enough to not have too much of a hard time learning Linux. I think that I can say later on in my life that Linux was there when I grew up, so therfore I grew into Linux, which made it more easy to adopt than it would have been if I was too much into the Windows routine when trying to migrate to the Linux way of thinking.

Today I find Linux much more logic than Windows and since I started out with "harder" distros I am now comfortable with the command line and finds it faster and quicker to use than Explorer in Windows.

That is why I think that it is great that we try to learn kids how to use Linux, because that have not yet grew into the routine of the Windows-way of computer usage, they are fresh and can adopt Linux more easily.

Regards.

Exactly Im embarressed to say this but I showed my sister who is like 10 linux the other day and and now she know things that took me like a week to figure out.

Linux In Schools
 

PC Magazine has a story (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1844695,00.asp) about Linspire being tested in Indiana schools. This also sounds like a break for linux and education.

I have a friend who teaches elementary school, currently a split grade 5/6 class. He is best described as technophobic.

His computer is a Pentium II Win98 that he bought many years ago in a fit of, er, ah, "youthful exuberance" (he was about 50 at the time, so it wasn't THAT youthful, I suppose)... and that for four years he only turned on three times a year, when he did report cards. He did so little printing that he ended up discarding the inkjet printer he had with it, as the works had gotten gummed up irretrevably (he claimed, I won't confirm or deny) by dried up inkjet ink.

Four years without going online once. Four years without a single security patch update to his WIndows 98. Four years without a single update to his antivirus.

This summer, he accepted a position as General Manager of a local ice rink's hockey association. He then had to get online because he now had to communicate with 12 coaches, 12 assistant coaches, 12 trainers, the Board, his fellow association officials, etc. etc. Quelle horreur!! I could see his Beast becoming a pr0n hosting site and Zombie Spam King. Last month, I installed a slave drive and an ethernet card and dual booted this ancient paperweight into something a tad more useful, using the Mandrake 10.1 release.

He hadn't even been able to get online for at least two years under dialup and was despairing about ever getting online - his gloomy remarks were getting under my skin by the time the install was finished. Now he's on high-speed DSL, sending and receiving e-mail. We might just get him surfing the net in a couple of months, but that'll take a bit more education. And we are taking the classes sloooowly.

Today, he was talking about another friend of his, a retired school teacher who was deathly afraid of sending e-mail because HER aged computer would "probably spread viruses" as attachments. Looks like I've got another install coming up. If it's as ancient as she says, it might be a candidate for one of the lightweight "live" distros.

If this keeps up, I might end up converting a number of Toronto District School Board teachers.

This is a huge problem, actually. Having taught in both public and private schools, I can attest to the fact that the vast majority of teachers (particularly in the humanities--I'm an ex-English teacher myself, so I'm not anti-humanities) are computer-phobic and computer illiterate in general, with few exceptions. One could argue that because they don't know how to use a Mac or a Windows PC, not knowing how to use Linux either doesn't really matter, but it means just one more thing for them to learn.

That's the ultimate irony. I know many teachers who wonder why students don't want to learn Shakespeare, history, language, critical thinking, etc., but who also themselves are not open to learning the basic functions they need to type up and organize handouts or surf the internet safely.

P.S. Actually, scrap all that. I'm American. Just realized we're talking about the UK. Wouldn't be surprised if it was the same, though.