[ubuntu-uk] Windows free at last!

[John Oliver]

Within schools I think it is important to remember that Microsoft has 
been outdoing itself to bring educational establishments into migrating 
to Office365, which when you have Office 2013 and Windows 7 and above is 
great. It's just not so good with everything else (as the IMAP thread on 
this list goes to show).

Within Office365 you get all exchange email, "skydrive" (aka Sharepoint 
w/ a document library) and directory services for the organisation via 
EWS. Plus you don't need to worry about dealing with it yourself because 
it's all outsourced, as opposed to before where Exchange took an entire 
HP Blade server, using 16GB of RAM and still running a bit slowly!

Some part of migration is the UI - LibreOffice 4.2 has just come out and 
the screenshots at OMG! Ubuntu look pretty nice. I think the slickness 
of the application is important. I myself maintain a Windows 7 
installation on another partition, but only use it sometimes, basically 
just to redeem iTunes vouchers I get given. As for comparing LibreOffice 
to MS Office, I think MS Office, with the obvious aside of not being 
free in either sense, is a superior product (I just don't regularly need 
all its advanced features like References). I read somewhere that IBM? 
are producing a font that is compatible with Calibri, which will be very 
useful when trying to make sense of documents sent to me!

I would also suggest that it is important to remain familiar with 
different operating systems, such as Ubuntu, Windows or Mac OS because 
you could need to use them at some point. I know from my own experience 
that I prefer Ubuntu, but that doesn't mean that Win7 isn't a great OS 
too! (Gone are the crashes of Windows XP and Vista for now!)

To go back to iTunes, I do need to keep Windows just for that at the 
moment, though I will likely find some other reason to eventually. Apple 
aren't going to support iTunes for Linux any time soon, and I think it's 
them who are less resistant to change than Microsoft. Despite what we've 
heard from Microsoft in the past (ie >7 years ago), more recently they 
have started to not only acknowledge but actively support Linux users, 
particularly with web products (compare OWA 2007 with OWA 2010 and 
2013). Apple still maintains a furious pretence worthy of the Dursleys 
that Linux is unimportant and/or doesn't exist.

Schools are coming round to install software that isn't necessarily 
Microsoft or "the de facto (£600+ per user) software). To give an 
example, whilst I was still in secondary school I persuaded the Music 
department to install Musescore 1.1 alongside Sibelius 4. Musescore 
crashed less with the old Sibelius 4, but the school could not at that 
time afford to update to Sibelius 6 (which was latest at that time). 
They have now installed Sibelius 7 alongside MuseScore, so students 
still have the choice. Those going on to study A-level music will most 
likely already have Sibelius at home so use it (and why not!), but at 
GCSE level MuseScore was proved and should continue to be proved useful 
so students can experiment at home without forking out for a Sibelius 
license (currently £459.95). So in that way, as students switch at home 
and let people know about it at school, if the staff in the department 
can be persuaded to like it, then they can go up to IT Support and 
insist upon it being installed. (Incidentally, I myself introduced the 
Technology department to FreeMind when I did my GCSE Electronics and 
they got that installed in their department because they saw how useful 
it was).

What I wouldn't encourage is what I'm told happened a few years ago, is 
some students went round installing Ubuntu over workstations. Obviously 
that just wastes time for IT Support who are usually too busy anyway 
without having to deal with jokers.

I think I've said enough here; I may need a hardback book if I'm to 
carry on - sorry if my ramblings are a bit disjointed but I think I've 
covered everything.

Kind Regards,
John Oliver