I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.
so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)
Linux was always ready for the education sector. I think already for 10 years now.
My highschool used Ubuntu exclusively back in 2010
It was ready since day one. Linus wrote Linux while a student at the University of Helsinki. It was inspired by MINIX, which was also targeted for use in schools.
fair enough, I just hope at some point schools and organizations switches to the cool penguin.
Back in my days I was also disappointed that schools weren’t using Linux. So I totally agree with you.
When I heard about schools using Chromebooks literally the first thing I said was “Linux can do more than a Chromebook can and is free, why the hell aren’t they using that?!” Linux running on the cheapest OEM laptop (make sure you get ones without the prepaid Windows license so you don’t spend more than you need to) is a better experience than the most expensive Chromebook.
The user experience is not as important as the management tooling.
Linux is so good today. Windows is increasingly shooting itself in the foot and MacOS requires a huge premium (and also billionaires suck) which is increasingly incompatible with budget conscious sectors like education. Really great stuff if you’re managing to get people to love it there.
a lot definitely started to open up to it I think, I overheard 2 students wanted to try it on their laptops, so my move definitely did smth
That’s an awesome story. If all your doing is browsing the Web or using applications that can easily and stably run on linux or have drop in replacements then linux would definitely be totally viable. On the other hand if you need to install specific proprietary applications and you have to rely on wine then maybe not.
luckily its just VSCode, so I didnt have to install something thats too hard!
You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man
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I love it. Way to go!
thanks a lot!
I wouldn’t be shocked if more schools start looking for open source options as their funding gets cut by the current regime.
Germany already moved their tech stack to FOSS alternatives for their government assigned computers!
there is actual progress that’s being made 🥳
Nice work, you did a good thing 😊
thank you!
But if you left tomorrow would they be able to admin them?
good question however principal said he wanna keep linux on them forever, perhaps he will learn it and admin them himself, thats my guess
Maybe write up some basic admin instructions (updating, services start/stop, user management, etc). Hire yourself out as a consultant on call if you leave :D
They will just wipe these computers
I don’t think they will bother. They will end up in a landfill, and the school will buy new Windows computers.
Them paying you is so nice! I remember installing Ubuntu in some computer in high school before I even used Linux myself lol
ikr, didn’t expect that, perhaps they saw me spending so much time on that so they felt bad or smth
Did the same some years ago. It was for the gap between win7 and 10.
Everyone told me it was the best productive time. Because users can’t install stuff and my network blocked a lot of dumb shit.
But now we got new win 11 PCs and every user is back on solitaire or shady websites.
Don’t forget to test updates and make timeshift backups when needed, I never had a bad update but it really helps.
I shall offer this to the principal, thanks for reminding me!
yeah i’m thinking that if you want you might be able to wrangle this into a semi permanent job
A delayed update schedule really helps for environments like this. Keep your ear to the ground for critical updates, but I’ve done this sort of thing a few times and waiting a week or two to update is a really great solution.
One thing I’ve almost done before is to choose a computer as a test subject, update it before anything else, and if all things are good you’re probably fine.
Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:
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LibreOffice can create really nice documents and presentations too. Heck, some tasks are more straightforward in LibreOffice than MS. 99% of schoolwork is done in Office suite, so this is nice. Win for Linux
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For stuff like coding in C or Python, it is even easier in Linux: download a compiler, open a text editor, type some codes then use terminal to run the codes in 10 minutes. In Windows, you need to download the stupid Cygwin and mess around with environmental variables to get Cygwin to recognize the libraries… Or if you want to automate things, MS Visual Studio will do that. The only downside is you will lose > 10 GB of space. Linux wins here again.
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Anything more advanced will unfortunately Windows land. I’m talking about advanced image programs like Photoshop or professional video apps. But again, if you need them then might as well get a Mac. Another hiccup would be in CAD software: Linux just doesnt have a good app.
tbf with all due respect Screw Adobe, idek why people even use their products, KDENLive and GIMP serve well, for the tasks I doing, and even if you want something more advanced, there is davinci resolve, it’s proprietary software but its forgivable if KDENLive isn’t cutting it for you
Some of the bigger issues with Kdenlive i’ve heard is around GPU acceleration and just force of habbit. Fair enough, I wouldn’t tell someone to jump ship if they productivity and professional skills are taking a hit. People need their livelihood. Still I do hold that most people overestimate how pro their workflow is
I mean, it’s never a good idea to FORCE anything but the “normies” (pardon my french) always use that as an excuse when there are definitely alternatives that are usable and can definitely do the job (ie: davinci resolve), like do seriously people wanna keep using software from a company that charges you CANCELATION FEES?
(how did adobe get away with charging you more money for cancelling your subscription, iirc it was like 60 or 80 bucks???)
Ohh yeah for sure. Most of these proprietary software are costing on brand names and institutional momentum.
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Cool story bro.
Except the story is actually cool, and you’re a real bro!
thanks man, you’re a real bro too!
Woohoo, some hacker kid is about to install Sober and Prism and will be the hero for everyone.
My kid’s elementary school has a computer club handling all the PCs. The other day they were surprised to hear that the PCs they were playing GCompris, Ktuberling, Pingus, Super Tux, Tuxpaint and Tux Kart on are running Linux.
For what it’s worth, the school computers in my school weren’t running Linux and they had Tuxpaint installed. Even proprietary OS users benefit from FOSS.
another example of: one of the best ways to teach children is to trick them.
try to force them to use linux and the terminal? booooring, hell no….
give them linux computers without games?
they’re 1337 haxors in two weeks… with skills that will help them for life….
especially if they ever get locked in a building with velociraptors….This is how (at least elder) millennials learned everything they know about technology. It’s the only way imo
Or they’ll install portable versions of Minecraft so many times they’ll decide to learn how to remove -rubbishfiles from root
my dad gave me permission to break the family computer as much as i wanted, and he would just take it to work and reinstall everything from an image….
now i can fix computer problemsI prefer removing the -french language pack on every install. The command comes with a typo though, so you need to fix that for it by adding
/*at the endmais pourquoi ?
that’s how I learned firewalls and networking lmao
couldn’t access my games, so I found ways around the firewalls and network blocks, just to play on coolmathgames lmao
I’m sure the velociraptors helped you stay focused too.
haha, I think I got a worldwide high score at the time, or at was close to one back then.
Clever girl…
Same. School firewall blocked based on host names, so we all learned a lot about the hosts file so we could manually set all of the IPs Minecraft needed to authenticate.
Ooh clever. I was able to get around mine by opening sites in an iframe, I made a bookmarklet for it
Hmm I was clearly too well behaved. Most of my knowledge of computers came through wanting to program them to do cool stuff, not bypass restrictions. The cheatiest thing I can remember doing is copying a cool puzzle game from the school computer onto a flash drive so I could play it at home, so I guess I did it backwards?
my dad told me like 5 dos commands, gave me permission to do whatever or break whatever on the home computer his work provided, told me there was some games on there but he didn’t know where… and i figured out the rest pretty much… whenever i broke it he’d just take it to work and bring it back fixed.
this was back in the wild wild west, where the hospital IT had one master hard drive image, and people threw random games and programs on there…
i was always surprised how ok he was with me breaking it weekly, but looking back on it i think he was proud…
i was really lucky in that i had free reign on yearly updated computers, starting on dos when i had just learned how to read, and growing up with that through all the versions of windows…
i mean, i hate microsoft and all, but i just think it’s crazy all of these people have super computers in their pockets and are afraid of the terminal….
it’d be hard to start a kid on the terminal first now, when they can use a touch screen in the crib….
my first computer didn’t even have pictures, but the next one did…Nice. In what year(s) did you have your first computer?
That’s one of the great things about switching to Linux … it forces you to learn something new and for kids that is a very good thing.
All those kids in the school that OP described were getting stagnant in a settled environment of living in Windows … now that they have Linux in front of them, they will go on to learn how to subvert the system under Linux. It’s not a bad thing in my opinion, it will create a whole crop of kids who now know how to fool around with Windows AND Linux.
I wish someone would have introduced me to Linux when I was kid.
yeah, that’s hopefully what I hope to happen, perhaps raising a generation of kids on linux will help linux to grow in marketshare!
I think most kids these days like to play bedrock edition, so it will be harder anyways.
Theres a flatpak for that.
