18 ms·

Schools should be using open source software

249 points by bradley_taunt 4y ago

sgwizdak 4y ago
This article discusses end user applications, but nothing regarding the classroom experience. (E.g., how does the teacher monitor individual screens to ensure they're staying on task?) My wife is a teacher and google classroom is what most of the districts in this area leverage.
chrisseaton 4y ago
You can tell this person is out of touch and doesn’t actually have any experience of the systems they’re complaining about, because they think people are still using IE and Word over Chrome and Google Docs.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  I mean, you're both assuming you know the local education systems of the author, and Microsoft is still very much taught in plenty of schools, and also... Chrome/Docs has the same problems, but even worse.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > Chrome/Docs has the same problems, but even worse Well exactly - if you want to tackle this ‘problem’ then first you have to understand why LibreOffice isn’t a replacement (because you need to replace Google Docs not Word.)
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The author doesn't even bother making a case for what these "problems" might be.
- djaychela 4y ago
  Not that long ago (5 years) I was teaching in a school that still used Internet explorer. I commented to the it guy that I used Firefox. His response was "I'm not having that rubbish on my network". A lot of school IT staff I've met in the UK are not at the cutting edge. Many of them are older, have an out of date skill set, and don't get regular training - there's just not the budget for it, and many schools would baulk at paying market rates for talented, up to date support staff / management.
- drcongo 4y ago
  My kids' last school still sends Word docs out as email attachments. I raised with them the fact that this is not a portable document format, was regularly unreadable on my Mac, and discriminates against the poorer families. Turned out the head mistress' brother works for Microsoft so this didn't go down well.
  - notjulianjaynes 4y ago
    >unreadable on my Mac >discriminates against poorer families I agree just funny. I'd argue PDF is equally problematic as it is often designed for A4 paper format, and this not easily readable on mobile devices, which poorer families are more likely to have as main computing device.
    - drcongo 4y ago
      PDF is, it's true, also appalling. What I was actually asking the school to do was just write the shit they put in Word docs in the actual email. There was absolutely no need for it to be in an attached document, it was just words and pictures.
      - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
        It's funny, isn't it, that email is the single most portable "document" format in existence.
  - tipsytoad 4y ago
    Is this really an issue? It can easily be imported as a Google Doc which is totally free.
- notjulianjaynes 4y ago
  I worked for a time as a substitute teacher in a school system where the kids were given individual Chromebooks beginning in middle school. Many staff expressed concerns over the privacy implications of having a cloud-tied indenty from such a young age. This was also a school who won an award for it's cyber security. More than once I found full student rosters with username/password printed out sitting on the teacher's desk. I suppose this is a different rant than school's should use FOSS. I don't think schools should impose a digital footprint on their very young as students. I have no children and no longer work in education.
- alaricus 4y ago
  It would not suprise me if a lot of schools still run Windows XP.
tgv 4y ago
> Photoshop. Illustrator. Why are these the first applications used for image editing and creation? Because they're bloody good (well, Photoshop is). And Gimp isn't. > Coding IDE (optional) ===> vim That's not out of touch, that's beyond the pale.
- hirako2000 4y ago
  Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter. On adobe, I prefer using photopea than ever having to touch photoshop again, that's a tell that it isn't all that great to since a free to use replias fits all my needs. I would concede photoshop has a better UX, on Windows and OSX that is true, but on its native linux home, it blends rather well with gtk approach to UIs and flow. IDE wise, plenty of OSS solutions on par with commercial products now, at least for tooling education needs.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Yes, but being able to use Gimp isn't going to help your career and being able to use Photoshop is.
    - seclorum_wien 4y ago
      Both programs are easy to use, though. If a company has Photoshop installed, use it, sure. But there is also no reason not to use GIMP if that is preferred, and .. you know .. gets the job done anyway. I get art from artists to integrate into apps all the time that wasn't made in photoshop. Most important is they know what they're doing, whatever they're using...
  - w4rh4wk5 4y ago
    > Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter. No, Gimp is quite bad when it comes to non-destructive editing. Even the FAQ mentions that [1]. As someone who works in game development, non-destructive editing, specifically layer effects are used everywhere. Especially for UI elements and stylizing text. [1]: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-support-any-kind-of-non-destructive-editing-like-adjustment-layers-layer-filters-andor-full-blown-node-based-editing https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-suppor...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
colesantiago 4y ago
As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. > IT departments could opt to use any one of the lightweight Linux distros available. Which one? That is the problem and don't get me started on tech support. This screams completely out of touch.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. The reason for that could have to do with schools. It could change if schools changed.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  > As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but this one (which comes up repeatedly) is not among them. It's absurd to argue that elementary schools should design their curriculum exclusively to train students for the job market.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    Who said this? All I am saying is that when non tech savvy people are working with software there is a high likelihood that they will be using the above software. Even if it is for the job market, I doubt a hiring manager would take a look twice at LibreOffice or even GIMP in a candidate's CV. Unfortunately Microsoft and Adobe or any other proprietary software is an expectation in some industries outside of the software industry.
- tigerlily 4y ago
  Like imagine if Microsoft just stopped supporting all their products though.
- alaricus 4y ago
hnusersarelame 4y ago
This is dreadfully out of touch and only serves the interests of FOSS advocates, not the students. Give kids the tools that will make them successful in their educational and professional careers. Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  > Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world. This statement is false. In my company it is used all the time for any image manipulations, by both graphic designers and managers. Last time I've seen photoshop was maybe in 2007 or so.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    You are the outlier then. I have been in publishing and advertising industry since the late eighties through many companies. I can’t remember a time that it wasn’t the defacto standard since at least the early 90s
    - digisign 4y ago
      Those are not particularly large industries.
      - kcplate 4y ago
        Not sure where you are from, but in the US they are still industries that produce significantly more digital image media than most all others. And by publishing, I am not just referring to print. Pretty much almost every photograph that you see on a media company website has been touched, color corrected, cropped or otherwise digitally manipulated by Photoshop.
        digisign 4y ago
        Anything that is expensive is going to be used less than other options that are free. Personally I've worked in VFX, Internet, medical companies, and while there were a few things got photoshoped here and there externally we almost always used something else, whether expensive or free.
cube00 4y ago
The "job market" argument no longer holds up with Google ruling the education roost. You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's Docs/Sheets used in enterprise as frequently as Microsoft's products.
- demopathos 4y ago
  > You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's Docs/Sheets used in enterprise as frequently Right now we don't see it. GSuite will completely take Microsoft's place in corporate environments in the next 10 years. All my peers entering the workforce right now love Google docs and detest Word. It's just a matter of time for when that age bracket becomes the decision makers.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I don't have experience with Office 365, but GSuite has been transformative. I never want to go back to mailing files around. Furthermore, while you'll always have power users who need Excel or Word for some reason, in general, GSuite for me has pretty much everything I need and it's far more streamlined. It's very rare that I want to do something--other than when I need to exchange Word files--that I can't do with Google (and even then I can usually work around it).
    - na85 4y ago
      I have experience with both and O365 is a fucking nightmare.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Google is not taking over the world https://www.saasgenius.com/blog/why-office-365-is-overtaking-google-apps-market-share/ https://www.saasgenius.com/blog/why-office-365-is-overtaking...
- nogbit 4y ago
  I do right now see Google Workspace being used as the primary goto for office docs and email at a very large company. It’s happening. O365 is a mess, with Excel online I can’t even create a named range, something so basic that has been in Google Sheets since day one. As an example.
msh 4y ago
You know a person have no clue about education when they suggest to use vim to teach people how to code.
- sunsunsunsun 4y ago
  You could easily spend a semester teaching how to use vim before you even write any code.
zerop 4y ago
Sharing from my experience of selling SaaS products for school management to schools - 1. School staff is not tech savy. They can not install or manage open source easily. 2. They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support. Software is critical to them but not their main business. They lack expertise and willingness to go for Open source software.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support. But there's commercial free software with paid support.
  - moralestapia 4y ago
    ORLY? Give me an OSS alternative to Google Workspace and I'll move today.
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      I'm no expert but aren't there literally dozens upon dozens of those? Nextcloud, Zimbra, Kolab, etc. for example? [1] There are hundreds of companies that provide nextcloud hosting with support alone [1]... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software#Open_source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software... 2. https://nextcloud.com/providers/ https://nextcloud.com/providers/
      - moralestapia 4y ago
        Nextcloud is quite good and is the only one I'd seriously consider from that list. However, their Standard plan (which is the one that has Office-like apps) is actually more expensive than what I pay now on G, so there's literally no incentive for me to switch.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        I don't know what you mean by "their." There are hundreds of providers. Some are like $5/month.
zachrip 4y ago
Schools need long term turnkey solutions that offer support and someone who will pick up the phone when they call. The school district I went to used macs and you were allowed to install whatever browser you wanted on them. We used google drive or just the hard drive to store files. Forcing folks to use niche software means they cannot just use whatever the rest of the world is using when they graduate. Teachers, parents, students, etc would need to learn these new programs that they haven't used before. I don't really seen any positives to this except a feel good story about open source. Who actually knows what the costs would be? The support time? Etc. I'm sure there will be a lot of school sysadmins reading this and thinking "please just stay in your lane."
- hirako2000 4y ago
  Yes, that's why IT admins in public funded institutions need to be told the standard they are to follow, 80% of the "internet" runs on linux, and GUIs have filled pretty much all gaps, drivers aren't the nightmare it was 20y ago. Open source even if causing problems that dont exist with commercial solutions is worth it overall. Plus, linux support licences do exist.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    > Plus, linux support licences do exist. I would much rather RH, SUSE, Canonical, Zorin, Elementary, or any other FL/OSS company get those contracts than Microsoft or Apple. Business runs on Windows because schools run on Windows.
    - compiler-guy 4y ago
      As a historical matter, this is exactly backwards. Schools chose windows because businesses used it. Linux and other unices barely even registered until the late 2000s, even at the university level, except within computer science departments. Even today, various linux UIs are somewhat behind Cinnamon ad Gnome, in fit, finish and polish. But in the 2000s it was a joke. KDE didn't appear until 1998 and it was very much a work in progress. Windows 95 had been out for three years and was leaps and bounds ahead. Every year since then has been wildly proclaimed as the "Year of the Linux Desktop". It keeps getting closer, but still isn't really there.
lordnacho 4y ago
Could be worth distinguishing between open source and free-to-use. Something like VS Code works nicely but costs nothing. If there's a budget problem in schools there's certainly software that can be used without paying for it.
enumjorge 4y ago
With open source you typically trade polish and easy-of-use for customizability and transparency. I feel like that’s the opposite of what school staff need, who are typically overworked and want simplicity above anything else. They need technology that is as transparent as possible, and open source software is typically not that.
mcdonje 4y ago
Not only schools, but any public entity. Taxpayer dollars should be respected. That means embracing lower cost options, supporting open source projects, and pushing for right to repair.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  I don't know. The purpose of schools is to teach kids, not advocate for particular popular campaigns/crusades.
  - digisign 4y ago
    It's not to advocate for corporate earnings either.
  - mcdonje 4y ago
    It's a lower cost option that teaches kids just as well. I'd argue that the more political, advocate-y option is by spending more money to support closed source private options when it's unnecessary.
    - AussieWog93 4y ago
      >It's a lower cost option $0 for the software, $500k/year for the IT support staff necessary to maintain an entire school's worth of Linux machines. Or just buy a Chromebook.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It wouldn’t be a lower cost office once you count support costs and retraining
parmezan 4y ago
Truth is people don't care what operating system they get as long as it 'just works'. LibreOffice is IMO too ugly and unusable to use for tech illiterates. Windows 10 and defender does a bloody good job of blocking lots of malware. Think of tools like mimikatz. You don't see Ubuntu blocking a mimikatz-like binaries. Firefox is slower compared to Chrome. People care about speed. Firefox is also not privacy friendly. Lots of telemetry to mozilla/google. You are out of touch and have embraced the cult that is Linux, Open Source. I don't understand why the algorithm pushes your post to the top.
- easrng 4y ago
  Firefox is not slower than Chrome. Some things are faster in Firefox (optimized JS, starting workers) and some are faster in Chrome (WASM).
t43562 4y ago
I live in the land of Raspberry Pi but the local school wants iPads and windows laptops. What can you do? A lot of people just aren't interested in computers and if there's one little disadvantage they are happy enough to not have anything. The stupid educational websites they like don't all work perfectly with RPi so "bzzzt". Next.
shadowgovt 4y ago
I need a term for this common conceptual error that I see folks in the software space make... One that I've made many times. It's like the inverse of smartest person in the room syndrome... It's the reasoning error where you believe that most people, or even the median person, is its competent at a skill you care passionately about as you are, because you've been doing it so long you forgotten how legitimately hard it is. Most schools do not have the financial resources to hire a system administrator who can maintain an open-source architecture or the technical shops in house to maintain one themselves. From their point of view, the freedom and flexibility granted by an open source framework is a cost, not a benefit. It means there's no right answer to how to do it, so when they screw up (and they inevitably will screw up regardless of what infrastructure they use), they don't have a standard, closed source architecture to point to to shift blame. From their point of view, closed source versus open source is irrelevant because the two are equivalently opaque to them. Given all of that, there is probably meat on the bones for a company that chooses to use a fully open source stack to build solutions for schools, and the schools willing to invest in the resources to do the work in the house will be able to grow from that open source solution to when they maintain. But that does put the company who goes that road at the disadvantage of every customer being a potential competitor in the future...
- robocat 4y ago
  It is the other end of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Read the paper: “unskilled and unaware” and “skilled and unaware” were the surprising discoveries.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    You're right! I had forgotten. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
jms429 4y ago
I was an IT manager in a school (not any more), and was asked by a parent why I wasn’t using Linux everywhere. Our Microsoft licensing cost £1000 per year, and our MSP cost about £10,000 for remote support and a weekly onsite. Using Linux, our licensing cost would have gone, and maybe we’d have gotten another year or two from desktop hardware, but our support costs would have increased massively - I couldn’t find a local msp who’d do desktop Linux support the same way we were getting. not to mention all the training for teachers, and the nightmare of finding replacements for things like smart notebook, custom assessment software, and windows only curriculum software. Biggest headache would have been the teachers. Some of them found windows 10 too difficult to use, and pushing them onto Linux would have needed a full time techie on hand. linux is better is not always the case.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Far point regarding support, but I’ve found that Linux is often actually a lot more friendly for non technical people than windows a long as you don’t step beyond what is possible in the UI.
  - the__alchemist 4y ago
    What were the use cases you've found success at? I've only found Linux (Ubuntu etc) to be a smooth and stable experience when not installing things beyond what's included by default. Have tried some variant of Linux every other year for the past 20. Turns into dependency hell and arcane incantations.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      It might be that you're thwarted by trying to install it on bleeding edge machines. I've run Debian stable on my home servers and Debian testing on my workstations for years. Nothing ever goes wrong, it's boring. Debian stable is rock solid.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      The only things I've had issues with were: - Device drivers and configuration of things like the X Server. From what I've heard this can be mitigated by buying well-supported hardware. - Software that wasn't included in the distro's package repositories. This is where linux can really fall down in my experience, along with the fact software like MS Office isn't supported at all. But if you don't need anything beyond standard software then it can often "just work" more smoothly than something like Windows.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
The only compelling point was reducing hardware costs. Even then, it showed how out of touch this guy is. Having a school system transition to raspberry pi’s sounds like a capped nightmare.
_trackno5 4y ago
This person is totally out of touch with reality. I do agree, however, that public entities should lean on open-source software where possible. It's our tax money that's paying for all those licenses. I see no point in govt agencies requiring windows licenses when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser.
- na85 4y ago
  >I see no point in govt agencies requiring windows licenses when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser. The point is there's someone to sue when things go wrong. I'm not being facetious. If government runs Gentoo and it turns out there's a decades-old bug in polkit that gets chained with an 0day that results in everyone's social security numbers getting leaked, who's responsible? If that happens with Microsoft they can in theory sue, and more importantly they can blame Microsoft in the media.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    There are critical security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products all the time. When was the last time Microsoft lost a lawsuit over one?
- scarface74 4y ago
  And it will also be your tax money that pays for the tech support.
- tester756 4y ago
  >when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser. I recently had to write some doc that utilized a lot of fanciness of word and no, web office feels like a demo version of desktop.
kkfx 4y ago
Schools BY LAW must only use FLOSS run on their own iron or state-backed one, no single private company must be allowed for safety of students data. That's is.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So should they replace every single system they use with open source software - even if it’s worse?
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Yes, because we see for DECADES how harmful is relaying on proprietary software. It's time, at least for public services, to came back to the old classic model: hw have to be paid, sw is free code. And that's not different for services: any public service must relay only on public services. So, for instance, no AWS etc. It's DEFINITIVELY not a long shot, is a thing that should already be there and now is hard just because too many was too lazy in the past.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Are the open source proponents going to step up to the plate to create the software that they need and the support and the back end services?
      - kkfx 4y ago
        Absolutely NO, because FLOSS does not means someone else work for free, my proposal is that ANY State hire people to develop public software, with public money for the States needs. Simply. BTW the same principle apply to weapons: beside private hand weapons and ammo all others must be ONLY a PUBLIC-ONLY show with the State that have internal research, production etc to avoid lobby pushes to go to war for business reasons.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Now you want every state to compete for scarce development talent and pay developer salaries? Even on the low end , in most major cities, developers cost $130K-$150K and that’s twice what teachers get paid. You want every state to be an expert in the literally dozens of areas that they need software? So now you’re taking budget in the public education system away from teachers to hire developers and hoping the public sector can do a better job. Not even the private sector is dumb enough to bring software development and IT in house for things that are out of its core competency.
cbracketdash 4y ago
Interestingly, many schools are now using ChromeOS, a "locked-down" version of linux. Alas, only Chrome and Google-based applications are allowed; however, it's a good step away from more expensive products.
- goldforever 4y ago
kwatsonafter 4y ago
There needs to be a, "third way" developed that isn't, "FOSS/Open Source" or, "Proprietary." It's worth remembering how much of the revolutionary computing of the 194/5/60's was developed using models that tactfully combined private and public industry. Programs like ARPA provided funding for open ended research which gave us the Alta and the ARPANet (thanks Lick!) while companies like IBM performed an important social function in providing especially young engineers with cutting edge jobs during their golden era. There's a vivid history on this subject that's worth looking into. https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine If we're going to be adults about the thing-- Developing technology requires global or at least national stability. Global stability traditionally has, "required" global hegemony. Developing technology allows the United States and her allies to to remain technically ahead of competing nations which in a feedback loop allows for the development of further technology. There's a sideways argument that in truth, in some sense, that the technology we, "ought" (Hume) to be using in schools should be, "nationalized" in the same sense that the, "internet" as a tangible infrastructure is a, "national" resource. Imagine a kind of Sudbury School where children use advanced, "democracy computers" to, "rehearse" avid citizenship given the political constraints of our society. The computer could facilitate a social revolution in an educational setting if used in this manner. I really do think this is what Alan C. Kay is talking about when he says, "the computing revolution hasn't happened yet." Also HyperCard! and Project Xanadu! and Blackjack! and Hookers! (Exclamation point!)
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  “ …children use advanced, ‘democracy computers’ to, ‘rehearse’ avid citizenship given the political constraints of our society” What does this mean?
  - kwatsonafter 4y ago
    Sorry I get a little too, "Dr. Evil finger quotes" sometimes. The idea I'm trying to share; inspired by the work of Brenda Laurel (Purple Moon). Try to consider a kind of digital machine that works kind of like a video game in that it might keep a child or young adult's attention for a period of time-- try to consider the failings of, "educational software" as it's come to exist in that it typically tries to, "trick" a young person into doing, "schoolwork in a manner that resembles a kind of video game" (Mario Teaches Typing). Ok. Consider an alternative-- a kind of digital space where a young person can utilize a digitally interactive experience to rehearse morally challenging situations or to practice good citizenship in an intellectually and aesthetically stimulating manner. The idea is that this kind of machine might have the ability to revolutionize education by facilitating the self-learning of sophisticated moral concepts. Consider the critical intersection between contemporary politics, education, and computers. In Europe the result of continually increasing rates of literacy as a result of the invention of moveable type resulted in critical political and social revolutions (The American Revolution being one of them). The question is-- could a sophisticated form of dynamic media facilitate a kind of sociopolitical revolution or paradigm shift in human culture? Following from the invention and proliferation of print it seems possible. It's also worthwhile to consider what Socrates said about books (...) Do kids need a sophisticated machine to play make believe? I don't think so personally.
psadauskas 4y ago
Not just that, but any software that is funded by government grants should be mandatory open-source, with some possibly some minimal exceptions for top-secret things like ICBM guidance systems.
blagie 4y ago
Personally, I think the argument today is different. I see the kinds of data being collected about my child by school ed-tech vendors, and it's scary. Looking backwards in history, Nazi Germany and Soviet police states are good examples of why having people know too much about you can get you killed, depending on political system. Looking at the present, people's jobs and political careers are destroyed for having said things which were mainstream views a half-century ago. Statues are torn down of people who held perfectly mainstream views 150 years ago. I have no idea which of the things my child says and knows now will be taboo in another 50 years. I do know the schools are storing all of that in archives with a whole bunch of fly-by-night ed-tech vendors. I don't know how this is going to end, but mark my words: This will end badly. We have a history and a present of persecuting people for less, and privacy is what protects us.
johncoltrane 4y ago
Schools should use software that works.
quijoteuniv 4y ago
I think this is so obvious that even Microsoft is wondering how they have pulled it of so long. Now to avoid people leaving Microsoft have included WSL and it works pretty well. Soon with GUI too…
sQEjOG4eEBcsVwU 4y ago
I definitely agree with this, and my only real "complaint" is that this applies to not just schools, but everywhere. For schools, I'd definitely love to see open hardware, if not just to give the kids a chance to understand the chips that run the software as well.
jcranmer 4y ago
> Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Why have these become the "standard" of text manipulation and processing? I hate to break this to you, but because (especially for PowerPoint) these are legitimately among the best options, at the very least, distinctly better than any open-source office offerings. Maybe the author is unaware of how well these programs do in their roles because they've been actively avoiding any situation that would call for the use of these or similar programs... the use of a plain text document, not even a lightly-formatted HTML document, makes me think that they actively go out of their way to avoid using a word processor.
- zzo38computer 4y ago
  > the use of a plain text document, not even a lightly-formatted HTML document, makes me think that they actively go out of their way to avoid using a word processor. This might also be because a plain text document is much more portable (even without needing a web browser to display them, but also can be displayed in a web browser too if wanted) and does not have the mess of formatting of modern HTML. (I often write many of my own documents as plain text files, too.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
makecheck 4y ago
Like any organization, things have to be reliable and some open-source doesn’t really have the support model figured out. And if cost is an issue, that is more an indictment of how schools are funded: if there doesn’t seem to be room in the budget for buying software and/or support, why is that the budget?
VoidWhisperer 4y ago
I can count on one hand the number of teachers that I had in high school that would be able to maintain the use of open source software for their classrooms.. one did (eclipse for CS AP) and the other was the web design prof who had a decent understanding of computers. The rest of the teachers and actually many of the students too were not technically inclined enough to be able to deal with the issues that can come up in open source software, and that would've for sure overwhelmed the like two IT dudes who were already busy regularly having to fix projectors and SmartBoard problems
u801e 4y ago
After reading through the post, I think that more, if not almost all, posts should be in plain text.
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Just wondering about the line length. Would piping the OA through `fmt` not help readability?
  - u801e 4y ago
    format=flowed [1] could work, but, given most implementations I've seen, you would have to resize the window to get the desired line length. [1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2646.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2646.txt
    - 2b3a51 4y ago
      Thanks, I'll investigate how to set format=flowed in Seamonkey. I've never actually read an RFC before. I went with wget https://tdarb.org/ -O - | markdown | lynx -stdin for now having noticed that the text files are in Markdown format. I was curious as to why the text files on the server were not hard wrapped to a fixed width. I tried the 'shinobi' script locally with some dummy posts with fixed width text and it worked ok browsing both the text files themselves and as rss/xml feed in Seamonkey.
- thorncorona 4y ago
  Why? It looks absolutely garish and hard to read.
  - opan 4y ago
    You could view it in a browser, pager, or text editor of your choice and apply your favorite font and font size.
    - o4b 4y ago
carlospwk 4y ago
I'd love to agree with this but almost every experience I've had with an open source project that has a complex GUI has been painful. Tried to switch from Sheets to Libre Office Calc and it's like going back to an incredibly buggy Excel, with a downgrade in UX/UI. PS. Why is this post a .txt file? I can't even click the links.
- kcplate 4y ago
  I found it ironic. The reason I avoid FOSS alternatives is because of the UX issues. I get wanting to be small and unobtrusive, but at least make your links clickable.
ankaAr 4y ago
I'm from Argentina. We have a OLPC like plan named "Conectar Igualdad" And the City of Buenos Aires had (or have, I don't know if still running) another one named "Plan Sarmiento". Both plans were the battle zone between Microsoft and open source software community. For the first plan, the government started a project named Huayra Linux, a debian derivate with a bunch of software designed here for the kids. For Sarmiento, it came with a debian tweaked installation, that was barely working because the closed source of the wimax chipset (it was only working for windows, and yes, the students had free internet in the city) The battle was so hard, that Microsoft licensed the windows distribution for 1 dollar each, and they got a contract where all the machines must to be installed with windows. Despite a lot of trials and errors, a lot of work without a project to learn from (maybe ceybal from uruguay is the closest example of a really well project) and the scale (I'm talking about millions of notebooks) I'm sure that open source software is the best from a IT perspective, from social perspective and with the best margin to build things that your school, your students, your city or country needs.
- raybb 4y ago
  Looks like it's still going https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectar_Igualdad https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectar_Igualdad
  - ankaAr 4y ago
    Yes, that is still working, I don't know about the buenos aires city project.
webmaven 4y ago
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to speak frankly with the then CTO of the NYC department of education, and pitched them on the idea of replacing Windows with Linux, or at least MS Office with OpenOffice, touting both the Free-as-in-Speech and Free-as-in-Beer benefits, as well as the lower hardware costs. What they told me was that similar pitches from vendors like RedHat were useful to them in that they invariably prompted Microsoft to offer a deal, IIRC, somewhere around 1$/month/computer (annually, about the cost of a new keyboard; which they had to buy a lot of), and that they had to replace the computer hardware often enough due to wear and tear (students are very hard on computers) that the hardware savings would be illusory. If I were to try and make a similar pitch today I might try calculating in the cost of electricity, but there is simply no way Microsoft is going to let itself be undercut on price for the software per-se for those big marquee accounts. Of course when taking competitive bids like that, you really should price in the eventual switching costs when comparing bids, but hardly anyone does that correctly in the public OR private sector, and sunk-cost fallacies tends to overwhelm the decision making process.
2b3a51 4y ago
I work in the UK post compulsory sector (18+ basic skills teaching, aka adult education, mostly maths), so not the primary age focus of the OA. A few reflections after the organisations I work for pivoted at a month's notice to 100% online delivery: Most of the students I see use their phones as the main Web access device (zoom online classes + video lessons + pdf files for documents and all). Touch screen/direct manipulation UI is were it seems to be at. Students like drawing on my slides. I work with a teacher who makes extensive use of Google's Jamboard (Please don't cancel this project!!!) to check understanding. Each student in an online class of 10 can have a copy of a problem on their own page in Jamboard and show their working. One of my employers IT dept (Microsoft shop all through, 1500+ client PCs) was happy to make OpenOffice(*)/GIMP/Inkscape available on the network. Students discovered the packages themselves and some used them without realising that they could have their own copies at home for nowt. The other employer has gone Microsoft 365 total with Teams and all. The Web based office applications allow students to produce basic docs and keep the resulting files in their online storage. Few problems so far. Some integration with Moodle for course pages. A large College locally uses Google Education to provide similar facilities. Students who take courses from both institutions seem to work well with the two different systems. I think people in these days of mobile devices are less dependent on one UI. Addressing the OA's main point: yes I think we could use more open source OS and applications in schools. Chromebooks are almost there when you think about it. BUT I suspect the future is Web apps. Contrast geogebra(1) with Logo(2) (and I think there is room for both) (1) https://www.geogebra.org/calculator https://www.geogebra.org/calculator (2) https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_p... Meta: I had to use links -dump https://tdarb.org/posts/schools.txt https://tdarb.org/posts/schools.txt | fmt | less to read the OA. Lines just too long on graphical Web browser.
cityzen 4y ago
I am beyond livid that my kids have to use this Google classroom bullshit. I have zero doubts they are building profiles on our kids no matter what the lying liars at the top say. I keep telling my wife, “I still cannot believe that a multinational ADVERTISING company is being used to “teach” kids”. It is so incredibly stupid when you look at it for what it is. I hope Larry and Sergey are loving this monster they created.
hulitu 4y ago
> A great deal of push-back comes from stubborn IT professionals[0] determined to keep things running on Windows - since this is mostly what they are familiar with. No. The push back comes from management. In a university in Eastern europe (20 years ago) people were using what was available: unix on servers (sun, linux, BSD) and DOS and some windows 3.1 then 95 and NT on PCs. Windows was pirated like the majority of windows software. Then the law made SW piracy a felony. And as the law began to be enforced, MS came and made agreements with the university to distribute the MS software for free to students and to teach classes with Microsoft products. This was during the times when Linux was a "cancer" and "communism". The IT professionals must dance as the management sings.
abetusk 4y ago
Wow, I didn't expect to see so much pushback from the community here. This sounds pretty obvious to me. Gimp is really not adequate for everyday usage compared with Photoshop? Really? LibreOffice/OpenOffice doesn't provide adequate alternatives to spreadsheet/doc/csv? Really? Notepad++ is not good enough of a text editor? Really? One semi valid criticism is that there isn't a support infrastructure to help organizations with their open source needs. While I don't believe it on it's face, regardless, this is an opportunity to push for that infrastructure and to help every single FOSS project with funding to support the community needs. Public infrastructure should not be captured by vendor lock-in.
- kcplate 4y ago
  It’s also about how much time you need to put into the apps. The UX as stated elsewhere on this thread with these alternatives just doesn’t measure up. For one off, simple jobs, used sparingly…those FOSS alternatives are fine. If I need to spend more than 10 minutes of time using them…I’m frustrated beyond measure at their UX issues.
  - digisign 4y ago
    These are newbie children learning their first apps. They don't need "professional" features or ground-breaking UX. Not to mention these apps are generally better than MS stuff from the 90s, which were good enough. Learn a spreadsheet, pick up any spreadsheet easily for the rest of your life.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      If the cost to entry is lower, but the costs to maintain is higher, to the point where it’s a wash or worse (according to some comments on this thread from people managing education tech), why wouldn’t you use the de facto standard? Seems to me the only reason to push FOSS in that case is for activism purposes over any real value to the student.
      - digisign 4y ago
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
Gotta love the authoritarianism of the open source evangelists. "Schools should only be allowed to use and teach with open source software." So that's be freedom for thee but not for me. Good to know.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Public schools are part of the government, and the government should absolutely be held to higher standards than its citizens.
  - o4b 4y ago
    Schools should maximize student learning among many other competing dimensions (cost, accessibility, etc). Where does a commitment to OSS sit in that list?
- digisign 4y ago
  Yes, freedom to line BillG's pockets, rather than contribute to society.
sbuk 4y ago
This article should have been written using HTML...
alaricus 4y ago
Everyone should be using open source.
scotty79 4y ago
They should also cook food and prepare beverages instead of selling branded packaged products. But that's not what's profitable.
tipsytoad 4y ago
I think the funniest thing about the post and the whole thread is how little (unfortunately) the rest of the world care about open source. And why should they? It's a true non-issue for them. If I were school governor I'd be running everything on Chromebooks by now. Free storage, sync and applications.
_8j50 4y ago
I helped introduce and support opensource software in corporate environments that are very intolerant of it. Don't get me wrong, I got it working ok but it is not for the faint of heart. If you don't have a team of skilled people who are willing and able to support OSS, then I firmly believe you shouldn't be using it. When I have critical bugs and outages I scramble to ask devs and OSS community for help. Sometimes I get help quick, other times it is months before anyone even has time to look at it. My priority is not mainatainers' priority. Not should it be. I have no feeling of entitlement to receive support/help and I am totally grateful for any given. Most HNers are devs/swe and of the startup/FAANG culture. In IT/Ops at orgs that have tech only to support their main objectives, this is how a bug/issue is handled: You get a ticket opened with the vendor and they fix it, maybe you get on a call with them asap. You have a need? If you pay them enough they will deliver. Is their product too hard to support? Or maybe it is just fine. IT folks bitch about it a bit and spend their time evaluating alternatives for the upcoming contract renewal. They don't fork things or create PRs. We use a product I won't name from a FAANG and their support is like OSS support as is the UX of it. I can tolerate it but everyone else complain and struggle so much with it! I had a critical feature needed for an OSS product, I searched and begged. Finally I forked an existing solution and got it to work (still works) but I can't upstream my work because it is now deprecated and they decided to do things differently (but not complete enough to meet my needs). I had another critical issue that caused many problems. I opened issues and talked to the devs a lot, eventually a kind dev recently worked with me to get it fixed after many months. I am fine with it, knew what I was getting into and accept the state of OSS. But good luck finding people that will do this full time and meet uptime/support SLA/KPI. It can be done, I have worked at a tech company with an army of devs and engineers do wonders with OSS. But having woked in a small and big teams outside of tech... yeah..I stand by my sentiment about accepting the state and support cost of OSS upfront. It is not OSS fault if you don't understand what you are getting into beforehand. Some of my favorite OSS that I support have bad reputation which I have and still am trying to fight because people thought it would be like commercial enterprise software: Install and you are done. Have issues? Call support. Developer suddenly decides to something random that affects you? Complain and threaten with some legal b.s. , that won't work in OSS. You need one or two people that are essentially contributing devs to the OSS software you plan on using. It only harms OSS when you promote it without understanding the requirements of your target audience.
jrm4 4y ago
I'm a huge Linux guy, but I'm comfortable jettisoning most of the concrete suggestions in this article because we now have the benefit of time and these technologies are all practically open enough. Few, if any, today are dangerously restrictive even though back then it made sense to be worried. "Microsoft Word" is generally fine because we have Google and Libreoffice, etc. An important note I'd include is -- we probably have these things because of the pressure of the free and open source software that does exist. But what I primarily want to mention is that there is a looming uncertain threat of dangerously restrictive software that is not practically open enough. This is the "LMS." Canvas, Blackboard et al. This is where the energy and pressure of FOSS type principles needs to be pointed at today.
questiondev 4y ago
open source learning
hishamp 4y ago
An article from our state: “How switching to Linux-based free OS is saving Kerala govt schools Rs 3,000 crore.” https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-switching-linux-based-free-os-saving-kerala-govt-schools-rs-3000-crore-101844 https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-switching-linux-ba...
- shameempk 4y ago
  State has its own Linux distribution for students: https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads
t_mann 4y ago
The monospace font just tops it off. Yeah, it does the job in principle, but it gets kids and parents wondering why it seems so removed from the 'real world' (usually assumed to be represented by the parents' job environments, in most cases corporate office jobs). I'd say, teach kids some actually foundational CS and IT basics (binary number conversion, imperative programming, OSI model,...), similar to how math is taught, maybe show them the basics of SSH connections, package managers, shell scripting,..., but don't mix in tech discussions with other classes that are supposed to teach them language skills, geography knowledge,...
LatteLazy 4y ago
Schools should use whatever is popular in the real world. Because that is what they will need to know when they graduate. And preparing for that is the whole point of School. Right now, that's iOS and Windows.

249 points by bradley_taunt 4y ago

This article discusses end user applications, but nothing regarding the classroom experience. (E.g., how does the teacher monitor individual screens to ensure they're staying on task?) My wife is a teacher and google classroom is what most of the districts in this area leverage.

chrisseaton 4y ago

You can tell this person is out of touch and doesn’t actually have any experience of the systems they’re complaining about, because they think people are still using IE and Word over Chrome and Google Docs.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
I mean, you're both assuming you know the local education systems of the author, and Microsoft is still very much taught in plenty of schools, and also... Chrome/Docs has the same problems, but even worse.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > Chrome/Docs has the same problems, but even worse Well exactly - if you want to tackle this ‘problem’ then first you have to understand why LibreOffice isn’t a replacement (because you need to replace Google Docs not Word.)
- jeffbee 4y ago
  The author doesn't even bother making a case for what these "problems" might be.
djaychela 4y ago
Not that long ago (5 years) I was teaching in a school that still used Internet explorer. I commented to the it guy that I used Firefox. His response was "I'm not having that rubbish on my network". A lot of school IT staff I've met in the UK are not at the cutting edge. Many of them are older, have an out of date skill set, and don't get regular training - there's just not the budget for it, and many schools would baulk at paying market rates for talented, up to date support staff / management.
drcongo 4y ago
My kids' last school still sends Word docs out as email attachments. I raised with them the fact that this is not a portable document format, was regularly unreadable on my Mac, and discriminates against the poorer families. Turned out the head mistress' brother works for Microsoft so this didn't go down well.
- notjulianjaynes 4y ago
  >unreadable on my Mac >discriminates against poorer families I agree just funny. I'd argue PDF is equally problematic as it is often designed for A4 paper format, and this not easily readable on mobile devices, which poorer families are more likely to have as main computing device.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    PDF is, it's true, also appalling. What I was actually asking the school to do was just write the shit they put in Word docs in the actual email. There was absolutely no need for it to be in an attached document, it was just words and pictures.
    - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
      It's funny, isn't it, that email is the single most portable "document" format in existence.
- tipsytoad 4y ago
  Is this really an issue? It can easily be imported as a Google Doc which is totally free.
notjulianjaynes 4y ago
I worked for a time as a substitute teacher in a school system where the kids were given individual Chromebooks beginning in middle school. Many staff expressed concerns over the privacy implications of having a cloud-tied indenty from such a young age. This was also a school who won an award for it's cyber security. More than once I found full student rosters with username/password printed out sitting on the teacher's desk. I suppose this is a different rant than school's should use FOSS. I don't think schools should impose a digital footprint on their very young as students. I have no children and no longer work in education.
alaricus 4y ago
It would not suprise me if a lot of schools still run Windows XP.

tgv 4y ago

> Photoshop. Illustrator. Why are these the first applications used for image editing and creation? Because they're bloody good (well, Photoshop is). And Gimp isn't. > Coding IDE (optional) ===> vim That's not out of touch, that's beyond the pale.

hirako2000 4y ago
Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter. On adobe, I prefer using photopea than ever having to touch photoshop again, that's a tell that it isn't all that great to since a free to use replias fits all my needs. I would concede photoshop has a better UX, on Windows and OSX that is true, but on its native linux home, it blends rather well with gtk approach to UIs and flow. IDE wise, plenty of OSS solutions on par with commercial products now, at least for tooling education needs.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Yes, but being able to use Gimp isn't going to help your career and being able to use Photoshop is.
  - seclorum_wien 4y ago
    Both programs are easy to use, though. If a company has Photoshop installed, use it, sure. But there is also no reason not to use GIMP if that is preferred, and .. you know .. gets the job done anyway. I get art from artists to integrate into apps all the time that wasn't made in photoshop. Most important is they know what they're doing, whatever they're using...
- w4rh4wk5 4y ago
  > Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter. No, Gimp is quite bad when it comes to non-destructive editing. Even the FAQ mentions that [1]. As someone who works in game development, non-destructive editing, specifically layer effects are used everywhere. Especially for UI elements and stylizing text. [1]: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-support-any-kind-of-non-destructive-editing-like-adjustment-layers-layer-filters-andor-full-blown-node-based-editing https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-suppor...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

colesantiago 4y ago

As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. > IT departments could opt to use any one of the lightweight Linux distros available. Which one? That is the problem and don't get me started on tech support. This screams completely out of touch.

guerrilla 4y ago
> As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. The reason for that could have to do with schools. It could change if schools changed.
bachmeier 4y ago
> As far as I know most industries other than the software industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones. There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but this one (which comes up repeatedly) is not among them. It's absurd to argue that elementary schools should design their curriculum exclusively to train students for the job market.
- colesantiago 4y ago
  Who said this? All I am saying is that when non tech savvy people are working with software there is a high likelihood that they will be using the above software. Even if it is for the job market, I doubt a hiring manager would take a look twice at LibreOffice or even GIMP in a candidate's CV. Unfortunately Microsoft and Adobe or any other proprietary software is an expectation in some industries outside of the software industry.
tigerlily 4y ago
Like imagine if Microsoft just stopped supporting all their products though.
alaricus 4y ago

hnusersarelame 4y ago

This is dreadfully out of touch and only serves the interests of FOSS advocates, not the students. Give kids the tools that will make them successful in their educational and professional careers. Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
> Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world. This statement is false. In my company it is used all the time for any image manipulations, by both graphic designers and managers. Last time I've seen photoshop was maybe in 2007 or so.
- kcplate 4y ago
  You are the outlier then. I have been in publishing and advertising industry since the late eighties through many companies. I can’t remember a time that it wasn’t the defacto standard since at least the early 90s
  - digisign 4y ago
    Those are not particularly large industries.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Not sure where you are from, but in the US they are still industries that produce significantly more digital image media than most all others. And by publishing, I am not just referring to print. Pretty much almost every photograph that you see on a media company website has been touched, color corrected, cropped or otherwise digitally manipulated by Photoshop.
      - digisign 4y ago
        Anything that is expensive is going to be used less than other options that are free. Personally I've worked in VFX, Internet, medical companies, and while there were a few things got photoshoped here and there externally we almost always used something else, whether expensive or free.

cube00 4y ago

The "job market" argument no longer holds up with Google ruling the education roost. You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's Docs/Sheets used in enterprise as frequently as Microsoft's products.

demopathos 4y ago
> You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's Docs/Sheets used in enterprise as frequently Right now we don't see it. GSuite will completely take Microsoft's place in corporate environments in the next 10 years. All my peers entering the workforce right now love Google docs and detest Word. It's just a matter of time for when that age bracket becomes the decision makers.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I don't have experience with Office 365, but GSuite has been transformative. I never want to go back to mailing files around. Furthermore, while you'll always have power users who need Excel or Word for some reason, in general, GSuite for me has pretty much everything I need and it's far more streamlined. It's very rare that I want to do something--other than when I need to exchange Word files--that I can't do with Google (and even then I can usually work around it).
  - na85 4y ago
    I have experience with both and O365 is a fucking nightmare.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Google is not taking over the world https://www.saasgenius.com/blog/why-office-365-is-overtaking-google-apps-market-share/ https://www.saasgenius.com/blog/why-office-365-is-overtaking...
nogbit 4y ago
I do right now see Google Workspace being used as the primary goto for office docs and email at a very large company. It’s happening. O365 is a mess, with Excel online I can’t even create a named range, something so basic that has been in Google Sheets since day one. As an example.

msh 4y ago

You know a person have no clue about education when they suggest to use vim to teach people how to code.

sunsunsunsun 4y ago
You could easily spend a semester teaching how to use vim before you even write any code.

zerop 4y ago

Sharing from my experience of selling SaaS products for school management to schools - 1. School staff is not tech savy. They can not install or manage open source easily. 2. They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support. Software is critical to them but not their main business. They lack expertise and willingness to go for Open source software.

guerrilla 4y ago
> They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support. But there's commercial free software with paid support.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  ORLY? Give me an OSS alternative to Google Workspace and I'll move today.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    I'm no expert but aren't there literally dozens upon dozens of those? Nextcloud, Zimbra, Kolab, etc. for example? [1] There are hundreds of companies that provide nextcloud hosting with support alone [1]... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software#Open_source_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software... 2. https://nextcloud.com/providers/ https://nextcloud.com/providers/
    - moralestapia 4y ago
      Nextcloud is quite good and is the only one I'd seriously consider from that list. However, their Standard plan (which is the one that has Office-like apps) is actually more expensive than what I pay now on G, so there's literally no incentive for me to switch.
      - guerrilla 4y ago
        I don't know what you mean by "their." There are hundreds of providers. Some are like $5/month.

zachrip 4y ago

Schools need long term turnkey solutions that offer support and someone who will pick up the phone when they call. The school district I went to used macs and you were allowed to install whatever browser you wanted on them. We used google drive or just the hard drive to store files. Forcing folks to use niche software means they cannot just use whatever the rest of the world is using when they graduate. Teachers, parents, students, etc would need to learn these new programs that they haven't used before. I don't really seen any positives to this except a feel good story about open source. Who actually knows what the costs would be? The support time? Etc. I'm sure there will be a lot of school sysadmins reading this and thinking "please just stay in your lane."

hirako2000 4y ago
Yes, that's why IT admins in public funded institutions need to be told the standard they are to follow, 80% of the "internet" runs on linux, and GUIs have filled pretty much all gaps, drivers aren't the nightmare it was 20y ago. Open source even if causing problems that dont exist with commercial solutions is worth it overall. Plus, linux support licences do exist.
- Shared404 4y ago
  > Plus, linux support licences do exist. I would much rather RH, SUSE, Canonical, Zorin, Elementary, or any other FL/OSS company get those contracts than Microsoft or Apple. Business runs on Windows because schools run on Windows.
  - compiler-guy 4y ago
    As a historical matter, this is exactly backwards. Schools chose windows because businesses used it. Linux and other unices barely even registered until the late 2000s, even at the university level, except within computer science departments. Even today, various linux UIs are somewhat behind Cinnamon ad Gnome, in fit, finish and polish. But in the 2000s it was a joke. KDE didn't appear until 1998 and it was very much a work in progress. Windows 95 had been out for three years and was leaps and bounds ahead. Every year since then has been wildly proclaimed as the "Year of the Linux Desktop". It keeps getting closer, but still isn't really there.

lordnacho 4y ago

Could be worth distinguishing between open source and free-to-use. Something like VS Code works nicely but costs nothing. If there's a budget problem in schools there's certainly software that can be used without paying for it.

enumjorge 4y ago

With open source you typically trade polish and easy-of-use for customizability and transparency. I feel like that’s the opposite of what school staff need, who are typically overworked and want simplicity above anything else. They need technology that is as transparent as possible, and open source software is typically not that.

mcdonje 4y ago

Not only schools, but any public entity. Taxpayer dollars should be respected. That means embracing lower cost options, supporting open source projects, and pushing for right to repair.

AussieWog93 4y ago
I don't know. The purpose of schools is to teach kids, not advocate for particular popular campaigns/crusades.
- digisign 4y ago
  It's not to advocate for corporate earnings either.
- mcdonje 4y ago
  It's a lower cost option that teaches kids just as well. I'd argue that the more political, advocate-y option is by spending more money to support closed source private options when it's unnecessary.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    >It's a lower cost option $0 for the software, $500k/year for the IT support staff necessary to maintain an entire school's worth of Linux machines. Or just buy a Chromebook.
scarface74 4y ago
It wouldn’t be a lower cost office once you count support costs and retraining

parmezan 4y ago

Truth is people don't care what operating system they get as long as it 'just works'. LibreOffice is IMO too ugly and unusable to use for tech illiterates. Windows 10 and defender does a bloody good job of blocking lots of malware. Think of tools like mimikatz. You don't see Ubuntu blocking a mimikatz-like binaries. Firefox is slower compared to Chrome. People care about speed. Firefox is also not privacy friendly. Lots of telemetry to mozilla/google. You are out of touch and have embraced the cult that is Linux, Open Source. I don't understand why the algorithm pushes your post to the top.

easrng 4y ago
Firefox is not slower than Chrome. Some things are faster in Firefox (optimized JS, starting workers) and some are faster in Chrome (WASM).

t43562 4y ago

I live in the land of Raspberry Pi but the local school wants iPads and windows laptops. What can you do? A lot of people just aren't interested in computers and if there's one little disadvantage they are happy enough to not have anything. The stupid educational websites they like don't all work perfectly with RPi so "bzzzt". Next.

shadowgovt 4y ago

I need a term for this common conceptual error that I see folks in the software space make... One that I've made many times. It's like the inverse of smartest person in the room syndrome... It's the reasoning error where you believe that most people, or even the median person, is its competent at a skill you care passionately about as you are, because you've been doing it so long you forgotten how legitimately hard it is. Most schools do not have the financial resources to hire a system administrator who can maintain an open-source architecture or the technical shops in house to maintain one themselves. From their point of view, the freedom and flexibility granted by an open source framework is a cost, not a benefit. It means there's no right answer to how to do it, so when they screw up (and they inevitably will screw up regardless of what infrastructure they use), they don't have a standard, closed source architecture to point to to shift blame. From their point of view, closed source versus open source is irrelevant because the two are equivalently opaque to them. Given all of that, there is probably meat on the bones for a company that chooses to use a fully open source stack to build solutions for schools, and the schools willing to invest in the resources to do the work in the house will be able to grow from that open source solution to when they maintain. But that does put the company who goes that road at the disadvantage of every customer being a potential competitor in the future...

robocat 4y ago
It is the other end of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Read the paper: “unskilled and unaware” and “skilled and unaware” were the surprising discoveries.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  You're right! I had forgotten. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

jms429 4y ago

I was an IT manager in a school (not any more), and was asked by a parent why I wasn’t using Linux everywhere. Our Microsoft licensing cost £1000 per year, and our MSP cost about £10,000 for remote support and a weekly onsite. Using Linux, our licensing cost would have gone, and maybe we’d have gotten another year or two from desktop hardware, but our support costs would have increased massively - I couldn’t find a local msp who’d do desktop Linux support the same way we were getting. not to mention all the training for teachers, and the nightmare of finding replacements for things like smart notebook, custom assessment software, and windows only curriculum software. Biggest headache would have been the teachers. Some of them found windows 10 too difficult to use, and pushing them onto Linux would have needed a full time techie on hand. linux is better is not always the case.

nicoburns 4y ago
Far point regarding support, but I’ve found that Linux is often actually a lot more friendly for non technical people than windows a long as you don’t step beyond what is possible in the UI.
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  What were the use cases you've found success at? I've only found Linux (Ubuntu etc) to be a smooth and stable experience when not installing things beyond what's included by default. Have tried some variant of Linux every other year for the past 20. Turns into dependency hell and arcane incantations.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It might be that you're thwarted by trying to install it on bleeding edge machines. I've run Debian stable on my home servers and Debian testing on my workstations for years. Nothing ever goes wrong, it's boring. Debian stable is rock solid.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    The only things I've had issues with were: - Device drivers and configuration of things like the X Server. From what I've heard this can be mitigated by buying well-supported hardware. - Software that wasn't included in the distro's package repositories. This is where linux can really fall down in my experience, along with the fact software like MS Office isn't supported at all. But if you don't need anything beyond standard software then it can often "just work" more smoothly than something like Windows.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

The only compelling point was reducing hardware costs. Even then, it showed how out of touch this guy is. Having a school system transition to raspberry pi’s sounds like a capped nightmare.

_trackno5 4y ago

This person is totally out of touch with reality. I do agree, however, that public entities should lean on open-source software where possible. It's our tax money that's paying for all those licenses. I see no point in govt agencies requiring windows licenses when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser.

na85 4y ago
>I see no point in govt agencies requiring windows licenses when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser. The point is there's someone to sue when things go wrong. I'm not being facetious. If government runs Gentoo and it turns out there's a decades-old bug in polkit that gets chained with an 0day that results in everyone's social security numbers getting leaked, who's responsible? If that happens with Microsoft they can in theory sue, and more importantly they can blame Microsoft in the media.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  There are critical security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products all the time. When was the last time Microsoft lost a lawsuit over one?
scarface74 4y ago
And it will also be your tax money that pays for the tech support.
tester756 4y ago
>when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a web browser. I recently had to write some doc that utilized a lot of fanciness of word and no, web office feels like a demo version of desktop.

kkfx 4y ago

Schools BY LAW must only use FLOSS run on their own iron or state-backed one, no single private company must be allowed for safety of students data. That's is.

scarface74 4y ago
So should they replace every single system they use with open source software - even if it’s worse?
- kkfx 4y ago
  Yes, because we see for DECADES how harmful is relaying on proprietary software. It's time, at least for public services, to came back to the old classic model: hw have to be paid, sw is free code. And that's not different for services: any public service must relay only on public services. So, for instance, no AWS etc. It's DEFINITIVELY not a long shot, is a thing that should already be there and now is hard just because too many was too lazy in the past.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Are the open source proponents going to step up to the plate to create the software that they need and the support and the back end services?
    - kkfx 4y ago
      Absolutely NO, because FLOSS does not means someone else work for free, my proposal is that ANY State hire people to develop public software, with public money for the States needs. Simply. BTW the same principle apply to weapons: beside private hand weapons and ammo all others must be ONLY a PUBLIC-ONLY show with the State that have internal research, production etc to avoid lobby pushes to go to war for business reasons.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Now you want every state to compete for scarce development talent and pay developer salaries? Even on the low end , in most major cities, developers cost $130K-$150K and that’s twice what teachers get paid. You want every state to be an expert in the literally dozens of areas that they need software? So now you’re taking budget in the public education system away from teachers to hire developers and hoping the public sector can do a better job. Not even the private sector is dumb enough to bring software development and IT in house for things that are out of its core competency.

cbracketdash 4y ago

Interestingly, many schools are now using ChromeOS, a "locked-down" version of linux. Alas, only Chrome and Google-based applications are allowed; however, it's a good step away from more expensive products.

goldforever 4y ago

kwatsonafter 4y ago

There needs to be a, "third way" developed that isn't, "FOSS/Open Source" or, "Proprietary." It's worth remembering how much of the revolutionary computing of the 194/5/60's was developed using models that tactfully combined private and public industry. Programs like ARPA provided funding for open ended research which gave us the Alta and the ARPANet (thanks Lick!) while companies like IBM performed an important social function in providing especially young engineers with cutting edge jobs during their golden era. There's a vivid history on this subject that's worth looking into. https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine If we're going to be adults about the thing-- Developing technology requires global or at least national stability. Global stability traditionally has, "required" global hegemony. Developing technology allows the United States and her allies to to remain technically ahead of competing nations which in a feedback loop allows for the development of further technology. There's a sideways argument that in truth, in some sense, that the technology we, "ought" (Hume) to be using in schools should be, "nationalized" in the same sense that the, "internet" as a tangible infrastructure is a, "national" resource. Imagine a kind of Sudbury School where children use advanced, "democracy computers" to, "rehearse" avid citizenship given the political constraints of our society. The computer could facilitate a social revolution in an educational setting if used in this manner. I really do think this is what Alan C. Kay is talking about when he says, "the computing revolution hasn't happened yet." Also HyperCard! and Project Xanadu! and Blackjack! and Hookers! (Exclamation point!)

germinalphrase 4y ago
“ …children use advanced, ‘democracy computers’ to, ‘rehearse’ avid citizenship given the political constraints of our society” What does this mean?
- kwatsonafter 4y ago
  Sorry I get a little too, "Dr. Evil finger quotes" sometimes. The idea I'm trying to share; inspired by the work of Brenda Laurel (Purple Moon). Try to consider a kind of digital machine that works kind of like a video game in that it might keep a child or young adult's attention for a period of time-- try to consider the failings of, "educational software" as it's come to exist in that it typically tries to, "trick" a young person into doing, "schoolwork in a manner that resembles a kind of video game" (Mario Teaches Typing). Ok. Consider an alternative-- a kind of digital space where a young person can utilize a digitally interactive experience to rehearse morally challenging situations or to practice good citizenship in an intellectually and aesthetically stimulating manner. The idea is that this kind of machine might have the ability to revolutionize education by facilitating the self-learning of sophisticated moral concepts. Consider the critical intersection between contemporary politics, education, and computers. In Europe the result of continually increasing rates of literacy as a result of the invention of moveable type resulted in critical political and social revolutions (The American Revolution being one of them). The question is-- could a sophisticated form of dynamic media facilitate a kind of sociopolitical revolution or paradigm shift in human culture? Following from the invention and proliferation of print it seems possible. It's also worthwhile to consider what Socrates said about books (...) Do kids need a sophisticated machine to play make believe? I don't think so personally.

psadauskas 4y ago

Not just that, but any software that is funded by government grants should be mandatory open-source, with some possibly some minimal exceptions for top-secret things like ICBM guidance systems.

blagie 4y ago

Personally, I think the argument today is different. I see the kinds of data being collected about my child by school ed-tech vendors, and it's scary. Looking backwards in history, Nazi Germany and Soviet police states are good examples of why having people know too much about you can get you killed, depending on political system. Looking at the present, people's jobs and political careers are destroyed for having said things which were mainstream views a half-century ago. Statues are torn down of people who held perfectly mainstream views 150 years ago. I have no idea which of the things my child says and knows now will be taboo in another 50 years. I do know the schools are storing all of that in archives with a whole bunch of fly-by-night ed-tech vendors. I don't know how this is going to end, but mark my words: This will end badly. We have a history and a present of persecuting people for less, and privacy is what protects us.

johncoltrane 4y ago

Schools should use software that works.

quijoteuniv 4y ago

I think this is so obvious that even Microsoft is wondering how they have pulled it of so long. Now to avoid people leaving Microsoft have included WSL and it works pretty well. Soon with GUI too…

sQEjOG4eEBcsVwU 4y ago

I definitely agree with this, and my only real "complaint" is that this applies to not just schools, but everywhere. For schools, I'd definitely love to see open hardware, if not just to give the kids a chance to understand the chips that run the software as well.

jcranmer 4y ago

> Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Why have these become the "standard" of text manipulation and processing? I hate to break this to you, but because (especially for PowerPoint) these are legitimately among the best options, at the very least, distinctly better than any open-source office offerings. Maybe the author is unaware of how well these programs do in their roles because they've been actively avoiding any situation that would call for the use of these or similar programs... the use of a plain text document, not even a lightly-formatted HTML document, makes me think that they actively go out of their way to avoid using a word processor.

zzo38computer 4y ago
> the use of a plain text document, not even a lightly-formatted HTML document, makes me think that they actively go out of their way to avoid using a word processor. This might also be because a plain text document is much more portable (even without needing a web browser to display them, but also can be displayed in a web browser too if wanted) and does not have the mess of formatting of modern HTML. (I often write many of my own documents as plain text files, too.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

makecheck 4y ago

Like any organization, things have to be reliable and some open-source doesn’t really have the support model figured out. And if cost is an issue, that is more an indictment of how schools are funded: if there doesn’t seem to be room in the budget for buying software and/or support, why is that the budget?

VoidWhisperer 4y ago

I can count on one hand the number of teachers that I had in high school that would be able to maintain the use of open source software for their classrooms.. one did (eclipse for CS AP) and the other was the web design prof who had a decent understanding of computers. The rest of the teachers and actually many of the students too were not technically inclined enough to be able to deal with the issues that can come up in open source software, and that would've for sure overwhelmed the like two IT dudes who were already busy regularly having to fix projectors and SmartBoard problems

u801e 4y ago

After reading through the post, I think that more, if not almost all, posts should be in plain text.

2b3a51 4y ago
Just wondering about the line length. Would piping the OA through `fmt` not help readability?
- u801e 4y ago
  format=flowed [1] could work, but, given most implementations I've seen, you would have to resize the window to get the desired line length. [1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2646.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2646.txt
  - 2b3a51 4y ago
    Thanks, I'll investigate how to set format=flowed in Seamonkey. I've never actually read an RFC before. I went with wget https://tdarb.org/ -O - | markdown | lynx -stdin for now having noticed that the text files are in Markdown format. I was curious as to why the text files on the server were not hard wrapped to a fixed width. I tried the 'shinobi' script locally with some dummy posts with fixed width text and it worked ok browsing both the text files themselves and as rss/xml feed in Seamonkey.
thorncorona 4y ago
Why? It looks absolutely garish and hard to read.
- opan 4y ago
  You could view it in a browser, pager, or text editor of your choice and apply your favorite font and font size.
  - o4b 4y ago

carlospwk 4y ago

I'd love to agree with this but almost every experience I've had with an open source project that has a complex GUI has been painful. Tried to switch from Sheets to Libre Office Calc and it's like going back to an incredibly buggy Excel, with a downgrade in UX/UI. PS. Why is this post a .txt file? I can't even click the links.

kcplate 4y ago
I found it ironic. The reason I avoid FOSS alternatives is because of the UX issues. I get wanting to be small and unobtrusive, but at least make your links clickable.

ankaAr 4y ago

I'm from Argentina. We have a OLPC like plan named "Conectar Igualdad" And the City of Buenos Aires had (or have, I don't know if still running) another one named "Plan Sarmiento". Both plans were the battle zone between Microsoft and open source software community. For the first plan, the government started a project named Huayra Linux, a debian derivate with a bunch of software designed here for the kids. For Sarmiento, it came with a debian tweaked installation, that was barely working because the closed source of the wimax chipset (it was only working for windows, and yes, the students had free internet in the city) The battle was so hard, that Microsoft licensed the windows distribution for 1 dollar each, and they got a contract where all the machines must to be installed with windows. Despite a lot of trials and errors, a lot of work without a project to learn from (maybe ceybal from uruguay is the closest example of a really well project) and the scale (I'm talking about millions of notebooks) I'm sure that open source software is the best from a IT perspective, from social perspective and with the best margin to build things that your school, your students, your city or country needs.

raybb 4y ago
Looks like it's still going https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectar_Igualdad https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectar_Igualdad
- ankaAr 4y ago
  Yes, that is still working, I don't know about the buenos aires city project.

webmaven 4y ago

Some time ago, I had the opportunity to speak frankly with the then CTO of the NYC department of education, and pitched them on the idea of replacing Windows with Linux, or at least MS Office with OpenOffice, touting both the Free-as-in-Speech and Free-as-in-Beer benefits, as well as the lower hardware costs. What they told me was that similar pitches from vendors like RedHat were useful to them in that they invariably prompted Microsoft to offer a deal, IIRC, somewhere around 1$/month/computer (annually, about the cost of a new keyboard; which they had to buy a lot of), and that they had to replace the computer hardware often enough due to wear and tear (students are very hard on computers) that the hardware savings would be illusory. If I were to try and make a similar pitch today I might try calculating in the cost of electricity, but there is simply no way Microsoft is going to let itself be undercut on price for the software per-se for those big marquee accounts. Of course when taking competitive bids like that, you really should price in the eventual switching costs when comparing bids, but hardly anyone does that correctly in the public OR private sector, and sunk-cost fallacies tends to overwhelm the decision making process.

2b3a51 4y ago

I work in the UK post compulsory sector (18+ basic skills teaching, aka adult education, mostly maths), so not the primary age focus of the OA. A few reflections after the organisations I work for pivoted at a month's notice to 100% online delivery: Most of the students I see use their phones as the main Web access device (zoom online classes + video lessons + pdf files for documents and all). Touch screen/direct manipulation UI is were it seems to be at. Students like drawing on my slides. I work with a teacher who makes extensive use of Google's Jamboard (Please don't cancel this project!!!) to check understanding. Each student in an online class of 10 can have a copy of a problem on their own page in Jamboard and show their working. One of my employers IT dept (Microsoft shop all through, 1500+ client PCs) was happy to make OpenOffice(*)/GIMP/Inkscape available on the network. Students discovered the packages themselves and some used them without realising that they could have their own copies at home for nowt. The other employer has gone Microsoft 365 total with Teams and all. The Web based office applications allow students to produce basic docs and keep the resulting files in their online storage. Few problems so far. Some integration with Moodle for course pages. A large College locally uses Google Education to provide similar facilities. Students who take courses from both institutions seem to work well with the two different systems. I think people in these days of mobile devices are less dependent on one UI. Addressing the OA's main point: yes I think we could use more open source OS and applications in schools. Chromebooks are almost there when you think about it. BUT I suspect the future is Web apps. Contrast geogebra(1) with Logo(2) (and I think there is room for both) (1) https://www.geogebra.org/calculator https://www.geogebra.org/calculator (2) https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_p... Meta: I had to use links -dump https://tdarb.org/posts/schools.txt https://tdarb.org/posts/schools.txt | fmt | less to read the OA. Lines just too long on graphical Web browser.

cityzen 4y ago

I am beyond livid that my kids have to use this Google classroom bullshit. I have zero doubts they are building profiles on our kids no matter what the lying liars at the top say. I keep telling my wife, “I still cannot believe that a multinational ADVERTISING company is being used to “teach” kids”. It is so incredibly stupid when you look at it for what it is. I hope Larry and Sergey are loving this monster they created.

hulitu 4y ago

> A great deal of push-back comes from stubborn IT professionals[0] determined to keep things running on Windows - since this is mostly what they are familiar with. No. The push back comes from management. In a university in Eastern europe (20 years ago) people were using what was available: unix on servers (sun, linux, BSD) and DOS and some windows 3.1 then 95 and NT on PCs. Windows was pirated like the majority of windows software. Then the law made SW piracy a felony. And as the law began to be enforced, MS came and made agreements with the university to distribute the MS software for free to students and to teach classes with Microsoft products. This was during the times when Linux was a "cancer" and "communism". The IT professionals must dance as the management sings.

abetusk 4y ago

Wow, I didn't expect to see so much pushback from the community here. This sounds pretty obvious to me. Gimp is really not adequate for everyday usage compared with Photoshop? Really? LibreOffice/OpenOffice doesn't provide adequate alternatives to spreadsheet/doc/csv? Really? Notepad++ is not good enough of a text editor? Really? One semi valid criticism is that there isn't a support infrastructure to help organizations with their open source needs. While I don't believe it on it's face, regardless, this is an opportunity to push for that infrastructure and to help every single FOSS project with funding to support the community needs. Public infrastructure should not be captured by vendor lock-in.

kcplate 4y ago
It’s also about how much time you need to put into the apps. The UX as stated elsewhere on this thread with these alternatives just doesn’t measure up. For one off, simple jobs, used sparingly…those FOSS alternatives are fine. If I need to spend more than 10 minutes of time using them…I’m frustrated beyond measure at their UX issues.
- digisign 4y ago
  These are newbie children learning their first apps. They don't need "professional" features or ground-breaking UX. Not to mention these apps are generally better than MS stuff from the 90s, which were good enough. Learn a spreadsheet, pick up any spreadsheet easily for the rest of your life.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    If the cost to entry is lower, but the costs to maintain is higher, to the point where it’s a wash or worse (according to some comments on this thread from people managing education tech), why wouldn’t you use the de facto standard? Seems to me the only reason to push FOSS in that case is for activism purposes over any real value to the student.
    - digisign 4y ago

r_hoods_ghost 4y ago

Gotta love the authoritarianism of the open source evangelists. "Schools should only be allowed to use and teach with open source software." So that's be freedom for thee but not for me. Good to know.

josephcsible 4y ago
Public schools are part of the government, and the government should absolutely be held to higher standards than its citizens.
- o4b 4y ago
  Schools should maximize student learning among many other competing dimensions (cost, accessibility, etc). Where does a commitment to OSS sit in that list?
digisign 4y ago
Yes, freedom to line BillG's pockets, rather than contribute to society.

sbuk 4y ago

This article should have been written using HTML...

alaricus 4y ago

Everyone should be using open source.

scotty79 4y ago

They should also cook food and prepare beverages instead of selling branded packaged products. But that's not what's profitable.

tipsytoad 4y ago

I think the funniest thing about the post and the whole thread is how little (unfortunately) the rest of the world care about open source. And why should they? It's a true non-issue for them. If I were school governor I'd be running everything on Chromebooks by now. Free storage, sync and applications.

_8j50 4y ago

I helped introduce and support opensource software in corporate environments that are very intolerant of it. Don't get me wrong, I got it working ok but it is not for the faint of heart. If you don't have a team of skilled people who are willing and able to support OSS, then I firmly believe you shouldn't be using it. When I have critical bugs and outages I scramble to ask devs and OSS community for help. Sometimes I get help quick, other times it is months before anyone even has time to look at it. My priority is not mainatainers' priority. Not should it be. I have no feeling of entitlement to receive support/help and I am totally grateful for any given. Most HNers are devs/swe and of the startup/FAANG culture. In IT/Ops at orgs that have tech only to support their main objectives, this is how a bug/issue is handled: You get a ticket opened with the vendor and they fix it, maybe you get on a call with them asap. You have a need? If you pay them enough they will deliver. Is their product too hard to support? Or maybe it is just fine. IT folks bitch about it a bit and spend their time evaluating alternatives for the upcoming contract renewal. They don't fork things or create PRs. We use a product I won't name from a FAANG and their support is like OSS support as is the UX of it. I can tolerate it but everyone else complain and struggle so much with it! I had a critical feature needed for an OSS product, I searched and begged. Finally I forked an existing solution and got it to work (still works) but I can't upstream my work because it is now deprecated and they decided to do things differently (but not complete enough to meet my needs). I had another critical issue that caused many problems. I opened issues and talked to the devs a lot, eventually a kind dev recently worked with me to get it fixed after many months. I am fine with it, knew what I was getting into and accept the state of OSS. But good luck finding people that will do this full time and meet uptime/support SLA/KPI. It can be done, I have worked at a tech company with an army of devs and engineers do wonders with OSS. But having woked in a small and big teams outside of tech... yeah..I stand by my sentiment about accepting the state and support cost of OSS upfront. It is not OSS fault if you don't understand what you are getting into beforehand. Some of my favorite OSS that I support have bad reputation which I have and still am trying to fight because people thought it would be like commercial enterprise software: Install and you are done. Have issues? Call support. Developer suddenly decides to something random that affects you? Complain and threaten with some legal b.s. , that won't work in OSS. You need one or two people that are essentially contributing devs to the OSS software you plan on using. It only harms OSS when you promote it without understanding the requirements of your target audience.

jrm4 4y ago

I'm a huge Linux guy, but I'm comfortable jettisoning most of the concrete suggestions in this article because we now have the benefit of time and these technologies are all practically open enough. Few, if any, today are dangerously restrictive even though back then it made sense to be worried. "Microsoft Word" is generally fine because we have Google and Libreoffice, etc. An important note I'd include is -- we probably have these things because of the pressure of the free and open source software that does exist. But what I primarily want to mention is that there is a looming uncertain threat of dangerously restrictive software that is not practically open enough. This is the "LMS." Canvas, Blackboard et al. This is where the energy and pressure of FOSS type principles needs to be pointed at today.

questiondev 4y ago

open source learning

hishamp 4y ago

An article from our state: “How switching to Linux-based free OS is saving Kerala govt schools Rs 3,000 crore.” https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-switching-linux-based-free-os-saving-kerala-govt-schools-rs-3000-crore-101844 https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/how-switching-linux-ba...

shameempk 4y ago
State has its own Linux distribution for students: https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads

t_mann 4y ago

The monospace font just tops it off. Yeah, it does the job in principle, but it gets kids and parents wondering why it seems so removed from the 'real world' (usually assumed to be represented by the parents' job environments, in most cases corporate office jobs). I'd say, teach kids some actually foundational CS and IT basics (binary number conversion, imperative programming, OSI model,...), similar to how math is taught, maybe show them the basics of SSH connections, package managers, shell scripting,..., but don't mix in tech discussions with other classes that are supposed to teach them language skills, geography knowledge,...

LatteLazy 4y ago

Schools should use whatever is popular in the real world. Because that is what they will need to know when they graduate. And preparing for that is the whole point of School. Right now, that's iOS and Windows.