[Westwales] Linux in schools

[Simon Burns]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, James Davis wrote:

>                                     In particular, can you give a good
> arguement why schools would want to be running Linux other than "Linux is
> better than Microsoft"?

Not wishing to start a jihad, but ... The reasons I introduced Linux 
(*alongside* W2K Advanced Server) were:

1. It's much cheaper. Even Microsoft admit their line on total cost of 
ownership lacks credibility (but that isn't necessarily an admission that 
it's not true ;) I'm always surprised that people ignore this factor so 
easily, especially since budgets in education are so tight.

2. It is easier to administer. Graphical environments look tempting, but
it really is easier to set up a user under Linux than Windows. It's much
easier to communicate to others (ie support staff) how to do so as well,
since you're not describing pictures but a sequence of things the techie
needs to type.

3. Since I program perl, it's relatively simple for me to create web-based
systems to help users. For example, I created a help-desk app for Coleg
Ceredigion, and a user-creation script which staff could use to set up
accounts for new students.

4. It runs on low-cost hardware. However more powerful new PCs become, 
other vendors seem to be able to soak up the extra cycles almost by 
routine. Linux will still allow you to convert a 486 into a firewall, 
low-end server, etc.

5. Similarly, it's faster than Windows on a high-end system. Samba on
Linux (in a file-server role, in my case) is reported to be twice as fast
as Windows on the same box.

Anyway, I'm preaching to the converted I guess. The real problem is
convincing others of the benefits and that's more what my previous email
was about. I'm also used to getting numerous "How do I ..." questions from 
users and technical support staff, so I was interested in how those 
support issues would be tackled. Maybe something like the "ITSysMan" list 
but specifically for Linux users in education?

BTW, creating and releasing apps like the help-desk and user-creation
scripts was one way in which I thought I could help this project, although
I couldn't release the versions I created for Coleg Ceredigion (they don't
belong to me). But they weren't very complicated and could be reproduced
fairly quickly. However, I still need convincing about the project itself
;-)

--
Simon Burns
[Currently commuting to Cambridge each week... :-( ]