A friend and I are planning a report to be submitted to our university's IT department on the advantages of implementing Linux throughout the university. Currently everything from mail servers to workstations is strictly Microsoft.

Our recommendation report would not only include server-end advantages but possible workstation advantages (obviously licensing costs, but also such things as implementing thin clients, etc).

What ideas do you all have?

Does anybody know of some rock-solid statistics or reports that have been done showing the advantages of Linux over Microsoft? Specifically in the academic environment?

Any info is appreciated!

Talking about academics, the best factor is money.

I don't know where you're from but there are a lot of studies in France and Germany to implement academic networks with open source systems...so google is your friend.

Yes i think you should talk about money.
They will be able to save a lot of time in you're university because taking care about licences for this or for that is money, energy and time consuming.

Maybe you can also tell that gnu/linux is an operating system that is very lively and still will be in the future.

Also it has the same goal as education : everybody should be able to access to unlimited knowledge regarding they're poor or not (but maybe it's not the conception of education in every country)

And students would be able to install an operating system at home without being outlaw, because as far as i know i rarely paid my licences.

So maybe money + a moral point of view would be a good mix

Ciao

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I like the argument that open-source is good for education because you can inspect the source, rather than relying on proprietary tools. Plus the money issue, always the best argument for penny pinchers...