On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 17:27, Stuart Hammond wrote:
I think the idea of the government using OSS (eg Linux OS) on school desktop computers is slightly narrow sighted for education is there to allow people to go forth and gain employment and as most workplaces don't use Linux as the OS for there desktop machines it would not really be following that ethos.
Well i was at high school until Summer 2000 and we had been using Acorn and Mac computers until 1999 so i dont see that this realy matters. My School also didnt offer any Computer related GCSE's. I do believe it would be difficult for Schools to move away from Microsoft products as some syllabuses require the use of certain MS Office products. I'm not 100% sure about this but i do remember someone who wrote course outlines and material specified MS Word and MS Access. I tyred to get her to have a look at OpenOffice but when i mentioned StarOffice she wasn't interested(She seemed to really not like it).
How ever as some one who has just started to use Linux i am gradually finding windows terrible. i use Mozilla instead of Internet Explorer in Windows as it dose not crash when ever i get a popup ad also the GUI of Linux is so much nicer than Windows exspecaly with the built in multiple desktops and the ability to have more than one taskbar, however i think what Linux needs is easier software installation (tarballs etc. scare me) and better device/games support and then it would really be truly superior to Windows in every way (from a user point of view).
Mozilla seems to be doing very well on windows, I dont have much room on my Windows Partition as games are getting bigger and bigger recently(1.2Gb... and it still wants a cd in the drive?!?!) so i haven't installed it. Games are slowly coming to Linux and most drivers are already available but more use of Linux will bring more drivers and Games.
What it needs to solve all of these is probably better reconition in the business arena on desktops which would at least force the government to teach people how to use it.
Yours S Hammond
I say get um' while there young! ;) Well if Schools started using Linux then when the kids go out and get jobs they'll want to use what they know and its what they will use on there home computer. This will then create a bigger market for the games and drivers Linux still isn't getting.
As a side note what about getting university's to use Linux? My last university(APU) had a few Linux computer rooms(still only for Computer Science students) but the UEA seems quite lacking, id be happier if they even had a windows version of GCC(like www.mingw.org) but nope just fancy MS Visual Studio.
- Dennis Dryden