How Linux Saved A School's Failing Windows Laptop Program (opensource.com) 255
OpenSource.com reports on a Minnesota school's 1:1 program -- one device per child -- where "Lots of the Windows laptops were in very poor condition and needed to be replaced."
An anonymous reader writes:
An Indiegogo campaign triggered extra money and donations of laptops, allowing the school's Linux club to equip much of the school with Linux laptops. "When you're using open source software you're free to use operating systems and application software without the hassle of license keys or license tracking inherent with proprietary software," says Stu Keroff, the school's technology coordinator. "This allows a school to experiment [and] gives them the freedom to make mistakes...
But there's also another benefit. "By empowering the students to be part of that process we were able to get more done, and to generate more excitement about the learning that the students were taking part in." There's now a waiting list for the school's Linux club, where they'd planned to cap membership at 35...until 62 students applied. Instead, they found themselves creating two Linux clubs, one for the sixth graders, and one for the 7th and 8th graders.
And to answer the obvious question -- they're using Ubuntu, with the Unity desktop.
But there's also another benefit. "By empowering the students to be part of that process we were able to get more done, and to generate more excitement about the learning that the students were taking part in." There's now a waiting list for the school's Linux club, where they'd planned to cap membership at 35...until 62 students applied. Instead, they found themselves creating two Linux clubs, one for the sixth graders, and one for the 7th and 8th graders.
And to answer the obvious question -- they're using Ubuntu, with the Unity desktop.
Been to a few schools.. (Score:2)
Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS to keep things ticking along. They were happy with the results, and the kids got Linux exposure from an early age.
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Using MEPIS, they were able to hold onto older hardware that was still serviceable, just needed a lightweight OS
I am using Mepis now. It is/was brilliant. However it is now defunct - has not been updated since 2011 (although the underlying Debian has of course). As its desktop is KDE, it can hardly be called lightweight either. I'm preparing to change to Devuan with Xfce.
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"To answer the obvious question" (Score:4, Insightful)
they're using Ubuntu
Not an "obvious" question. As long as they're using Linux, I'm happy!
The year of the Linux Laptop? (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow I doubt it. I have tried Linux on laptops many times, and it was always painful. Laptops are much more complex and specialised machines than desktops built from standard components, and as a result you get difficulties with suspend, with WiFi, with the display, with the camera... it is just too much to try to fix unless you really enjoy that kind of work.
Now I have a Chromebook, and that is the first "Linux" laptop that really works. You can even run Ubuntu on it, although it does struggle with the HiDPI display.
Re: The year of the Linux Laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have used linux on an IBM Thinkpad, a Dell Inspiron, and 4 HP laptops of various lines, and this is the full list of hardware that didn't work:
- One TV tuner
- The fingerprint reader on at least 1 laptops (one other laptop with fingerprint reader worked). I haven't checked if there is a solution for the newer fingerprint readers.
All have suspended/resumed adequately compared to their behaviour under Windows. WiFi worked out-the-box except for one that required extraction of the firmware from the Windows driver (didn't require any command line though).
My current laptop has a Windows partition that gets almost no use, my usual linux distro, and an installation of RHEL7.2. The installation of my normal distro suspends fine, but the RHEL7.2 installation won't suspend. So, there may be differences such as this between distros depending on their focus.
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I have used Linux on way more machines than you have, and a way higher percentage of it has had problems. Suspend-Resume has worked properly on less than a third of the systems I've tried it on, for example. Graphics don't work at all on one system in spite of it having very old ATI graphics. No, wait, because it has ATI graphics. R690m, fuck you ATI, fool me once. I don't think my next CPU will even be from AMD and they mostly have been for years now but that's another rant — but it is a rant on Linu
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Are you STILL bitching about a driver that takes all of seven steps to install in Linux and doesn't even need Bash? Give me a fricking break.
It doesn't work. It's still glitchy AF in the best case. Not acceptable. The power saving for that era of processor is still garbage, too.
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These sorts of arguments always degenerate into a war of anecdotes. "I installed Linux on 10 machines and nothing worked!" "No, I installed Linux on 20 machines while walking in snow uphill both ways, and it always works!" Etc.
I'll add one more anecdote on the other side:
I just bought an HP laptop for use on a certain project that requires Windows. Specifically, it requires Windows 7, but I didn't know that when I bought the machine, and it came with Win10 on it. So, I bought a Win7 DVD and installed it.
Holy hell was it painful.
Oh, the basic install was okay. I had a USB DVD drive lying around which just worked, plug-n-play. But once Windows got up and running almost nothing worked. I knew it would look awful because it wou
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It depends on the laptops and how well the manufacturer supports Linux. I find Hewlett-Packard laptops work just fine with Linux, I have a couple at work, both run Debian and there's no problems with the display, wifi, suspend/resume etc.
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Most of my family claimed their Windows was broken (since 8 came out), and ask me to fix it - which I do by installing Ubuntu Mate. Some understand the nature of the "fi
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Sadly (by stating that you've only had it working when someone else did it for you) you've just revealed you've done this far too few times to know much about it. It would be more convincing to hear from people with dozens of successes who are then able to blame the tools instead of their workmanship in the cases when they failed.
Me? I piggybacked on the success of others by choosing models that were reported as working so I don't have much to add eith
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I have never run anything *but* Linux on any of the laptops I've ever owned (mostly Acers and one HP).
I've had one or two cases where I had to extract the Windows wifi driver or to build a 64-bit version of a wifi driver from source. And I've not even bothered to worry about onboard wifi since smartphones and tethering became a thing. I have a 12-year-old Acer still running an ancient distro that for some reason doesn't support the built-in card reader, and I already had a couple of USB card readers on hand
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Well they had best avoid Windows ones, since Windows requires you to download the drivers for your Wifi card from the Internet using the Wifi that does not work without the drivers.
Sometimes you have to Google for help with Linux, but it is more use than trying to phone MS support, as well as cheaper. As for 3 days trying to sort out the Windows registration - well you could spend that watching Youtube on your new Linux
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You need to check out the respective entries on http://www.linux-on-laptops.co... [linux-on-laptops.com] before you buy. The problem are mostly with the vendors, not with Linux, hence you need to avoid bad vendors. With this approach, I have zero problems so far, except for one fingerprint-reader, which I do not care about anyways (they are far to easily tricked to qualify as security-mechanism).
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And I have to say the "Linux community" is not doing Linux any favour. The responses are unfortunately rather predictable: half agree with my experience, the other half calls me an idiot. I used to defend the style as "matter of fact", when actually it is sometimes just rude.
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Average users shouldn't install OS themselves. There's already plenty of laptops with linux pre-installed for sale. Custom OS installs are only good for enthusiast early-adopters and skilled people with particular requirements.
The short list of people who would heed that advice are average users who would agree they are average users and who care what you think.
OTOH, if they try they may actually learn something and become above average users.
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How it went (Score:4, Interesting)
"Kids, today we learn about how to search on the internet. First, connect to www.google.com and then enter "linux bluetooth keyboard doesn't work". Your assignment for tonight is to read all the forums and write a 2-page report due tomorrow on how to fix the linux bluetooth driver. Good luck, dismissed!"
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One of the laptops is a sony vaio; sdcard, bluetooth, keyboard backlight, nvidia card , screen backlight(yes, it was black), hdmi and audio jack didn't work or needed days of figuring out.
With linux > 3.4 they all work out of the box now.
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"But ms. Teacher, my bluetooth keyboard doesn't work! How do I write the search string?"
This allows a school to experiment [and] gives th (Score:2, Offtopic)
Unity (Score:2)
One thing that can be said for Unity is that it once someone is past the novice stage, it can be a great incentive to learn how to change you choice of desktop environment.
Ubuntu sucks for me (Score:3)
I've had enough of the stupid flaws, bad desktop environment and shit built in software.
The Software Center is a lesson in how not to build an application. I went on to it yesterday and it told me I had 11 updates. There were Install buttons next to each one and an Install button at the top right (should really say Install All to be clear what it does, but never mind).
I click this button, get the spinning circle and then get returned to the update screen a minute later telling me I've got 14 updates. No error message, no suggestion of what went wrong, nothing only now the Install All button has disappeared. Great design, great testing. I'm sure if I wasted half an hour fucking about with the command line it would work but then what's the point of having this application?
Linux is supposed to be better than Windows. This is not better. This is really poor. I'm going to try Mint and see if that's any better because I want to be able to use Linux over Windows, I really do but my experiences always seem to suck, especially on laptops.
This is cool! (Score:2)
My district dumpstered the surplus computers (Score:2)
I am a computer teacher at a middle school and I requested some of the surplus computers for my students to learn something other than Microsoft and Google office tools on. Quite literally, the school dumpstered the old computers instead. I am explicitly forbidden from teaching about the computer (yes, the topics I am not to discuss are in the state curriculum, I am just not to teach those sections).
I am not to teach scripts or programming outside of the robotics class, in that class I am to only use the Le
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I've worked many years in and with non-profits and government agencies, and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. You get bad and ugly when there's too little or too much money.
Too little money is pretty straightforward; as a department is starved for resources and expertise it adopts a defensive posture. More time is spent trying to avoid work it can't do than doing work. The theme of the under-resourced department is stop the world from changing so we can catch up.
Too much money is just a more cos
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Nope, USA. Before coming to the school district I am at I worked in China for eight years. At the school in China, the concern was money. At this school it is about silos of control.
My .02 (Score:2)
OMG (Score:3)
Ok, from the top:
The laptops are 6 years old, being used daily by elementary and middle school aged children. Based on my personal experience in public school K-12 education, the laptops shouldn't be expected to last six years...
And how, exactly, did changing the OS installed on them correct the broken, left at home, or mis-treated laptops?
Obviously, once they installed Linux on them everyone made sure they were working properly and remembered to bring them to class... There wasn't anything mentioned that can be attributed to running Windows 7 on the laptops.
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Re:Unity? (Score:5, Interesting)
I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops. They outnumber Windows in my workplace. When we went to upgrade from 10.04 to 14.04 we did a bunch of comparison testing with various Linux distros and DEs. Ubuntu/Unity won and users are generally very satisfied with it. I use it as a daily driver with 2x 32" monitors and it's brilliant. Not for everyone obviously, but I certainly don't understand all the hate.
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I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops.
Out of curiosity, what are you using for centralized management?
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I manage a network of 150 Ubuntu desktops.
Out of curiosity, what are you using for centralized management?
SystemD?
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Not for everyone obviously, but I certainly don't understand all the hate.
Fear. They are in fear.
Re:Unity? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I seriously hate the Unity desktop with a passion."
Okay.
"I don't know anyone who likes it."
Okay.
"If Unity was the only desktop available for Linux, I'd use Windows."
It's not and who cares what you use.
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who cares what you use.
The attitude of Unity developers in a nutshell.
This is why Microsoft can literally fuck the pooch and its mother to death while jumping every shark in the Pacific, Apple can coast for years without significant progress outside of the mobile space, and still Linux sits at under 1% of the laptop/desktop market.
It's also why Firefox has gone from being THE major browser to a minor also-ran that's already reached the point where many developers don't even bother testing with it.
You are welcome to write software
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"I don't know anyone who likes it."
I do like Unity. I am not interesting in getting to know a person who writes rants like your one, though.
Re:Unity? (Score:4, Insightful)
it's like McDonald's food. nobody finds it delicious but nobody is completely repulsed by it either. if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind. it's just hard to be enthusiastic about it. (maybe this is different in the US, but here in Europe, only children look forward to going to McDonalds)
my only real gripe with unity is its file manager. i want to be able to see/edit the location line and have an UP arrow between the BACK and FORWARD ones.
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if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind.
How do you know what comes into my mind? WTF is a big mac anyway?
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i made a parable majority of readers here (americans) could relate to. you just came here to tell us you're a special snowflake. news at eleven.
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but nobody is completely repulsed by it either.
*puts my hand up* Point of information. Yes there are definitely some people grossed out by it :-)
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You are not alone in that.
Re: Unity? (Score:2)
The location line can be turned on using the dconf editor.
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I'm not sure I understand. Could you re-frame that simile as a car metaphor?
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I'm not sure I understand. Could you re-frame that simile as a car metaphor?
Car analogy: McDonalds food is like what you find at the bottom of the sump.
Re:Unity? (Score:4, Interesting)
While I agree with you 100% (well, maybe 90%; I've never seen a dock or dock analog that I liked), it kind of makes us dinosaurs to even have much of an opinion. Even an old fart like me switches between Windows, MacOS, Mint and Xfce and I hardly even notice. The differences between them may look stark, but it's like arguing about how much chrome trim you can slap on your car's tailfins before it gets tacky.
I used to be a KDE user, and I try every new version that comes out and I come to the same conclusion: gee that's impressive, but I don't need it; what I really want out of a desktop environment is to stay out of my way. In a way desktop environments have become like the command line shell -- which as a developer I still use quite a bit. You still need them, but the center of mass of user experience has shifted out to the cloud and to mobile devices. Stuff like widgets are a total waste of time because people do that stuff on their phone, or in browser extensions. A good file manager is nice, but these days most of my work data is in the cloud or in git. Most of the native desktop apps I use are cross platform, except one does occasionally need to fire up MS Office to communicate with the primitives.
If it weren't for MS Office there'd be no reason at all to ever use Windows. I may be a little ahead of the curve for my ancient cohort, but my college age kids have no attachment to Windows or MacOS at all; they use whatever is provided. What matters to them is the phone and the browser.
The main differences these days are how much screen real estate your desktop environment takes up (less is more), how user notifications are handled (getting better in most cases), and how nice the fonts are (still rocky in some Linux distros).
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I was thinking in terms of Windows, and to a lesser degree MacOS. Yes, stuff can get hidden, which is generally the first thing I do (hit F11 in Windows for example). Which just proves my point: you may be proud of that stuff but it's just clutter to me.
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it's like McDonald's food. nobody finds it delicious but nobody is completely repulsed by it either. if push comes to shove (e.g. you're hungry and in a hurry), a big mac will eventually cross your mind. it's just hard to be enthusiastic about it. (maybe this is different in the US, but here in Europe, only children look forward to going to McDonalds)
my only real gripe with unity is its file manager. i want to be able to see/edit the location line and have an UP arrow between the BACK and FORWARD ones.
Pretty often, I'm just bored and out of ideas on what to eat. If I decide I just want something fast and cheap, I find myself going to Burger King, Wendy's or Roy Rogers (previously, Hardees in Atlanta). I tried McD's just once in the last 3 months, and the fact that the cokes were mixed from the drink dispenser, giving me cranberry flavored coke when I selected the plain ole coke, made me avoid that place again.
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What about a big alienware, then?
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outside of win and fruit, a geek had to read and study
My second biggest gripe about Linux. I can't just install some flavor or another on my Mom's computer and give her an easy book. If I install it, I'll get tons of calls when she wants to accomplish something and I'll have to tell there ---- well, there are about 20 different ways to do it, but none of them are "mom-friendly".
My biggest gripe is that the world of Linux is so fractured because of all of the different opinions on the "right" way. Choosing between 20 different distros and 5 different window
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I love the Unity desktop. It's the biggest reason I continue to use Ubuntu on my laptops.
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It is a school after all, what better way for young minds to start learning about Linux that giving them a horrid desktop and stating "With a bit of reading you can swap to something better".
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all systemd anyway.
To be fair; the laptops are a means to an end, not the learning goal in and off itself.
It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.
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It's all systemd anyway.
It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.
True but not germane, as there are numerous other Linux distros that work just as well out of the box.
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It's all systemd anyway.
It makes sense, especially for 8th graders and below, to not dive into the murky waters of having to hack convoluted configuration files to get a driver working.
True but not germane, as there are numerous other Linux distros that work just as well out of the box.
Maybe, but within the Ubuntu editions, there is also 'Edubuntu', which could be perfect for this role
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're fucking these kids over for life anyway. ... It's simply an act of desperation.
The alternative is not Windows, because they've basically found (like every other school without a rich patron that's tried the same thing) that replacements for obsolescence, and the loss of paid-for licenses with hardware failure makes it impossible to get to full coverage because after a certain number of units are implemented, replacing existing units takes up the entire budget.
There's a similar situation when schools try to roll out iPads. They try to stage them by year groups, and given that they don't go with the latest shiny-shiny (can't afford it), the units are only likely to be supported with iOS updates for about 3 years, so well before their 5-year rollout is finished, they're suddenly forced into implementing rolling replacements with the budget that was supposed to be for new devices. (Although at least iOS app licenses aren't tied to a specific device so can be reinstalled on the replacements.)
Pupils will have a chance to get to learn Windows in class, but this gives them something extra that they would otherwise be denied.
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the loss of paid-for licenses with hardware failure
Any sufficiently large organization (such as a school district) should have better management of their licenses such that they aren't tied directly to a single piece of hardware. I know from experience (my wife was a teacher for many years) that the school districts don't usually have a good technology program, but that's because they don't pay well and the knowledgeable will likely be working in the private sector. But a hardware failure should NEVER be the reason you lose a license.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Obviously... (Score:3)
Wow, who knew solving education problems could be so easy? Ok, play this out in your head - your neighborhood elementary school with 600 students evenly distributed in grades K-5 get $500 laptops. Let's for the sake of argument say that we only give laptops starting in 1st grade. Great, your local s
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Informative)
Where I work we hire folks right out of technical school with no experience as well as 50 year old's with a significant list of certs and experience. We are primarily a Windows shop. A newbie who runs Linux at home or an old guy who maintains a local non profit's Linux network would have an edge over other applicants.
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there are some institutions, mainly gouvernemental institutions in Europe switching massively to LibreOffice and Linux... Ok, the story is about the USA, but it does show that the market could change. Beside, I expect someone to be able to adapt to a new OS and tool suite quiet easily. Even with a FOSS background, these kids will easily be able to adapt to any job requiring Windows and MS Office.
The market is changing. And people with Linux can easily adapt to Windows - they are already adapted to OSX.
One of the nice things about Linux is that it is stable enough that you can actually learn stuff on it. The last few years of working with Windows has been trying to fix stuff that has broken.
Android isn't as good for homework (Score:2)
> "Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world"
Though Android is the most prevalent OS in the world, Ubuntu is more appropriate for doing schoolwork.
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Is that you Steve?
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Of course, if he means the desktop then every workplace I've seen are using almost entirely Macs now all the way up to the CEO. Windows is seen as an anachronism.
That's because we don't find it amusing to have half the updates break something, and then a smug fanboi comes in and makes like its our fault.
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If that were true, Apple would have much higher shipped unit numbers. I'm starting to see mixed use --- certain people have Macs and certain people have PCs.
SQL on Mac? Squirrel? (Score:2)
I noticed your user name; do you have a favorite SQL tool on Mac? Squirrel is fine, but not awesome.
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I like Sequel Pro: http://www.sequelpro.com/ [sequelpro.com]
Re: Obviously... (Score:2, Insightful)
I dont know, I did fine on entry into the workforce 20 years ago. We used macs in middle, hs, and in tech school. A word processing program, spreadsheet, and a web browser is the same concept on every os. If you need more than that in the business world hopefully one would be intelligent enough to find their way around it!
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They're fucking these kids over for life anyway. Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world
We're not talking about Android here.
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We had Commodore C64's when I was in grade school.
You won't believe the things I have to go through in order to browse Slashdot on my C64, simply because I cannot switch to Windows.
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Without the skills to use the most prevalent OS in the world
You are right! Those MS-DOS skills I learned in high school sure do come in handy!
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Indeed. I was so crippled by the fact that when I was in school I didn't learn the OS and environment that was most prevalent in enterprise ("glass house") at that time and instead learned "alternative" computers, operating systems, and languages. I had no exposure to JCL or MVS or IMS or COBOL and hardly any to FORTRAN. I was horribly handicapped by that dreadful state of affairs.
Oh wait, later when I was developing system software/hardware that was displacing some of that cruft, I learned a bit of JCL as
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You haven't seen Common Core 8th grade math, have you?
Vertice Edge Graphs
Slope of a function
I'm a little amazed that they are trying to teach what I suffered through in Algebra II. my junior high school year.
And more surprised that they refuse to teach multiplication tables, 'traditional' long division, 'traditional' multiplication.
Schools should be teaching 2nd graders to play cribbage to learn addition. I shocked every teacher that tried to teach me addition of columns of numbers by treating many 2 digits
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Re: Obviously... (Score:2)
That's like telling teenagers they have to build a car before they're allowed to drive. The computers are a tool, not the ultimate goal in and of themselves.
Re: Obviously... (Score:2)
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The move to Linux or any other FOSS is a political/ideological issue.
As opposed to moves to Microsoft products being a financial incentive/bribery issue.
microsoft-pays-nfl-to-use-surface [techdirt.com]
microsoft-back-to-trying-to-bribe-people-to-use-bing [techdirt.com]
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So which one is better for the school's needs: Win 7, Win 8, Win 8.1 or Win 10? You get ONE CHANCE because of the cost of trying any of them.
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So tell me, how do you run Free Software on a proprietary operating system (by which I assume you mean WIndows) without the hassle of license tracking?
Idiot.
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Keroff did not say "When you're using open source applications...". He said "When you're using open source software...".
Since you don't seem to understand what an "operating system" is, let me provide you a helpful definition:
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. [wikipedia.org]
Now... you were saying something about someone being a "dimwit"...?
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In a little while they'll get a great offer from Microsoft and Apple, free computers, devices and software
I'm still waiting for my offer.
Re: Good move (Score:2)
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You give me $5k, stick the other $5k in your pocket, and the kids can use Ubuntu. Sounds fair to me!
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And the best part is (Score:2)
The best part of all those free apps is all the crap-ware which gets installed with them. I swear every time I get a free app for M$ windows, it tries to hi-jack my browser with some POS add-on.
Everytime some friend/relative asks me to help him with his MS windows computer I feel like poking myself in the eye. I feel so dirty.
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No - because Edubuntu is not designed for Education!
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I edit fookin' XML all fookin' day, every fookin' day, been fookin' doing it for fookin' years, and it pays pretty fookin' well, too. Want to make something of it, matey?
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