Use of Linux in Canadian universities

[Timothy Webster]

Knowing only one OS is like knowing only one language. 
Someone who knows only one language is forced to see
the world through the constraints placed on them by the
one language they know. Or to put it another way if the only
tool we have is a hammer, everything in the world is a nail. 

 As far as your concerns about teaching a little linux to
90% of the users. That is what student tutors are hired to
do and what tutorials are for. The consequences of students
not knowing a little linux during their University years is
felt through the rest of their life. Unless they take it upon
themselves to re-train themselves. For example all of my
company documents are stored in a software control system.
This allows my company to merge documents written by
several people and recover a document version from any
point during its creation. The system requires open documents
such as openoffice, other xml formats.  
 

There are lots of programs only written for Windows, but at
the same time there are lots of tools, which are written for the
opensource developer, designer or user in mind.

Welcome to the ubuntu community. I hope you install linux
on your personal computer and try it. Ask people here for
alternatives to the windows programs you know. It will 
take a little time to learn them. But learning is a life
long experience. I hope you enjoy learning a linux,
discover new ways of doing things.


Cheers
Tim

Alyssa Knox <nylffn at gmail.com> wrote: It's not that they're (or rather "we're" =)  dumb, and yes, chances
are the ones who don't know Windows or Macs could learn Linux from the
ground-up, too. But given that people who are already comfortable
using Linux when they get to uni are relatively rare, it would mean
that not only the users who are new to computers in general would need
to be taught, but absolutely EVERYONE. For a part of the university
that does not have teaching as its primary mission, but rather
providing a resource for students to use to get their work done, I
think it would be crippling to have to educate 90% of users from the
ground-up.

That doesn't even cover courses that use specific apps, like
Dreamweaver or specialised archaeology or linguistic programs. Sure,
these things could havebeen created for Linux, but as things are now,
they weren't... and student computer labs need to offer them. I think
it is necessary for universities to follow the industry standard, and
alas, for the moment that is the 'doze.

I'm an English student, so I'm not sure if computer science or
engineering or math or what have you departments have Linux labs
tucked away somewhere. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Alyssa

On 9/8/06, ubuntu-ca-request at lists.ubuntu.com
 wrote:

> Hmm,
>
> What has happened to the students?, I did my stats assignments on a mainframe. When I did my thesis on unix, wow, I thought it was the greatest.
> But seriously are students actually dumber? I don't think so. It takes all of us time to learn something new. And if windows or Mac OS is new it takes time to learn that. I really don't see how that makes linux harder.  If linux is new it will take students time to learn it, too. Anyway it is the University's job to teach.
>
> Cheers
> Tim

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