[ubuntu-uk] heads up - UK schools frameworks accepted

alan c aeclist at candt.waitrose.com
Tue Sep 23 18:51:54 BST 2008


Rob Beard wrote:
> alan c wrote:
>> Open Source makes historic UK breakthrough
>> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/22/open-source-makes-historic-uk
>> 
>> to date:
>> Sirius, Novell
>> more to come I believe
> 
> I was involved with a SFD event on Saturday in Torbay.  A couple of 
> school technicians turned up to the event.  In discussion with them they 
> mentioned that they'd love to use Open Source software but part of the 
> problem was that some of the educational applications weren't supported 
> by Linux (mainly Windows based stuff) and that a real barrier to change 
> was the teachers who would get in a flap when they used something 
> different (I got the impression that some teachers even the younger 
> teachers haven't got very good IT skills).
> 
> If you ask me, I think there should be a big push to some of the 
> developers of educational software.  For instance, Granny's Garden 
> (http://www.4mation.co.uk/cat/granny.html) which was around in the days 
> of the Beeb has a Windows and Mac version but no Linux version.
> 
> I did suggest looking into LTSP with a couple of beefy servers and maybe 
> for Windows compatibility a Windows 2003/2008 Terminal Server (surely a 
> few Windows 2003/2008 Terminal Server cal's and a couple of servers 
> would be cheaper than a load of PCs running Vista).
> 
> I think the most amusing thing that came out of it though in terms of 
> wasting money was what one of the other guys in the LUG told me.  A 
> friend of his went to look at a local secondary school which his 
> daughter was moving to.  He said that the school had a suite of Intel 
> based iMacs (and not the cheap ones either!) and guess what they were 
> running.... nope, not OS X but Windows XP instead!!!!!
> 
> (Why anyone would want to buy an £800 iMac to run XP when something like 
> a £300 Dell desktop would do the same.
> 
> Sounds to me like that particular school was putting style over cost.

maybe there will be a linux os variant called 'Credit Crunch'!

Well done for the SFD in Torbay! We need a few more in UK!
( I was in the Bracknell SFD event)
-- 
alan cocks
Kubuntu user#10391
Linux user #360648



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