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I teach a university course for which we require students to install Linux on their Windows laptops, all of them different. These are overwhemingly inexperience

I teach a university course for which we require students to install Linux on their Windows laptops, all of them different. These are overwhemingly inexperienced students that we give a short manual, mostly about tweaking a few bios settings before you insert the installation medium. Of the 35 students in my class, 25 completed the installation without issue, with all hardware (never asked about fingerprint scanners) running fine. The rest required some help from expert googlers like me and some patience, in most cases related to Nvidia drivers. We got all but two to work fine or well enough in the end. Having 5 to 10 consecutive bad experiences sounds like a fluke to me, given the 70% instant success rate I've seen.

deleted 4y ago
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dwighttk 4y ago
To be fair every time I’ve tried it has been on a cheap or free computer and I haven’t needed to get it running… I’d probably have gotten better results of it was my only option or if I went out and tried to plan my computer purchase to make Linux work. And this is extending back like 20 years, so it has, I’m sure, gotten better somewhat.
chrisseaton 4y ago
> I teach a university course for which we require students to install Linux on their Windows laptops Can’t they use a normal cloud instance or a VM?
- vanviegen 4y ago
  Our first year consists of a pretty intense dive into programming, with many assignments for which we provide starter material. And for that we want all students to run a predictable environment. Also, dual booting helps some students to cleanly separate course work from gaming. :-) A few students (those whose laptops we could not convince to run Linux) work within a VM, but that experience is comparatively miserable.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    You should try some cloud development environments - could give people a completely predictable environment.
- midislack 4y ago
  This, Microsoft needs to identify this institution for eradication.
nicbou 4y ago
It's not just about getting it to run. The devil is in the details: sleep mode, bluetooth, power usage, etc etc. Usually, the first 90% went great, and the last 10% took whole weekends to fix.
- vanviegen 4y ago
  I included that in 'running fine', though admittedly some of these laptops may not be showing great battery life and may experience the occasional issue waking up from sleep mode. These students have been using their Linux installations for almost a year now; enough time for any subtle problems to emerge.

deleted 4y ago

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dwighttk 4y ago

To be fair every time I’ve tried it has been on a cheap or free computer and I haven’t needed to get it running… I’d probably have gotten better results of it was my only option or if I went out and tried to plan my computer purchase to make Linux work. And this is extending back like 20 years, so it has, I’m sure, gotten better somewhat.

chrisseaton 4y ago

> I teach a university course for which we require students to install Linux on their Windows laptops Can’t they use a normal cloud instance or a VM?

vanviegen 4y ago
Our first year consists of a pretty intense dive into programming, with many assignments for which we provide starter material. And for that we want all students to run a predictable environment. Also, dual booting helps some students to cleanly separate course work from gaming. :-) A few students (those whose laptops we could not convince to run Linux) work within a VM, but that experience is comparatively miserable.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  You should try some cloud development environments - could give people a completely predictable environment.
midislack 4y ago
This, Microsoft needs to identify this institution for eradication.

nicbou 4y ago

It's not just about getting it to run. The devil is in the details: sleep mode, bluetooth, power usage, etc etc. Usually, the first 90% went great, and the last 10% took whole weekends to fix.

vanviegen 4y ago
I included that in 'running fine', though admittedly some of these laptops may not be showing great battery life and may experience the occasional issue waking up from sleep mode. These students have been using their Linux installations for almost a year now; enough time for any subtle problems to emerge.