[Nottingham] Running Ubuntu at Nottingham Uni

[Martin]

Resend!

See the one level in of quoting ;-)

David, anyone else: Please change your quoting to NOT include people's
full email address (SPAMMERs delight!)

On 24/05/12 18:08, Martin wrote:
> On 24/05/12 17:00, David Aldred wrote:
>>
>> On 24 May 2012 16:48, Martin 
>>  wrote:
>>
>>     On 24/05/12 16:39, David Aldred wrote:
>>     [---]
>>     > Though some of that assumption is having to start to break down as
>>     > students increasingly want to use iOS, Android and BBOS devices to
>>     talk
>>     > to University systems.   The problem for any institution is deciding
>>     > what 'support' means -  paying for expertise to support Windows, MAcs,
>>     > all flavours of Linux, BBOS, Android etc etc gets rather costly.
>>
>>     Hopefully your costs *reduce* due to fewer niggles and problems, and
>>     less of the expensive lock-in, with the Linux and *nix systems ;-)
>>
>>     ?
>>
>>
>> Well, hardly.  This is about supporting staff and students with their
>> use of other OSs - mainstream services (the ones for which the
>> university pays) will continue to run on whatever platform they need.  
>> It's the helpdesk and IT tech support for whatever flavour of whatever
>> OS someone happens to have installed (at their own choice and cost, or
>> lack of it) that comes expensive, and every additional system brings its
>> very own niggles.
> 
> Which is where your present system looks to be 'non-optimal'...
> 
> /Presumably/ the University setting is for where people can learn for
> themselves for everything about the present day world.
> 
> Take a look at the questions you get, and put together a FAQ that you
> can then point people to for say the top 90% of questions. Your IT
> support will still be needed to identify the problem for non-tech
> people, but then quickly/simply hand out the pointer to the fix. The
> solution is then as we did on the maillist from a "Google" reference.
> 
> *Empower* people so that they have control for themselves.
> 
> Simples... (To misquote a hideous Marketing creature.)
> 
> Even if the bureaucracy might be a little reluctant to change...
> 
> 
>> And it costs more if you have to be able to tell people how to configure
>> (say) a proxy on Android 2.1, Android 2.4, BBOS 5,6 and 7, Windows XP
>> and 7, MAcOS, iOS, Ubuntu 9.04 all the way through to 12.04, Fedora and
>> Suse than it does if you can just chuck out instructions for Windows 7,
>> and say the rest are unsupported.  
> 
> Then that suggests your proxying system is broken or borked for the bad
> old ways of One monopolistic supplier...
> 
> And for all those systems, the proxying terms are the same. The problem
> is more for teaching people to explore through menus and teaching them
> what the bits of jargon are.
> 
> 
>> (Of course those of us on the web side don't have the choice, really -
>> we have to make it work, or damn nearly work, on anything, back to IE6
>> as we have important research partnerships with the NHS, and lots of
>> users in China, who won't be upgrading any time soon.  But at least we
>> don't have to do the one-to-one support on them all).      
> 
> And that is a cost of your locked-in systems. Does that mean that you
> forever abandon anything new and easier?
> 
> 
>> After all, Linux is supposed to be community supported, isn't it?  Stef,
>> why not set up a Workspace for Linux support? 
> 
> I hope that is a positive move rather than a "push things to the side
> for free"?
> 
> 
> Seriously:
> 
> The University systems have to evolve for whatever new tech and new
> market place there is in the real world, each year. We shouldn't be
> languishing back in the days of IE6! If that must kept with, then IE6
> support should have it's own special support budget whilst the rest of
> the department and the rest of the world move on to better things.
> 
> If anything, the University should stay /ahead/ of the game and also
> lead all staff and students into staying up to date and being in control
> of their own devices.
> 
> And if there is a deluge of "I can't do this" or "I can't get it to
> work" type stuff, then either improve the way of working or hold free
> seminars to teach students and staff what they should be doing, as is
> done for other 'induction' courses... Either way reduces the load on IT
> to then make other things better...
> 
> 
> Has Microsoft so really very deeply insidiously undermined all education
> to still be lost in the days of IE6? That in itself is a real education
> about "lock-in"...
> 
> Is this 1984 or 1812?
> 
> Bring back Jon Masters? ;-)

Cheers,
Martin


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