I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.
so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)
Linux was always ready for the education sector. I think already for 10 years now.
It was ready since day one. Linus wrote Linux while a student at the University of Helsinki. It was inspired by MINIX, which was also targeted for use in schools.
My highschool used Ubuntu exclusively back in 2010
fair enough, I just hope at some point schools and organizations switches to the cool penguin.
Back in my days I was also disappointed that schools weren’t using Linux. So I totally agree with you.
When I heard about schools using Chromebooks literally the first thing I said was “Linux can do more than a Chromebook can and is free, why the hell aren’t they using that?!” Linux running on the cheapest OEM laptop (make sure you get ones without the prepaid Windows license so you don’t spend more than you need to) is a better experience than the most expensive Chromebook.
The user experience is not as important as the management tooling.
Don’t forget to test updates and make timeshift backups when needed, I never had a bad update but it really helps.
I shall offer this to the principal, thanks for reminding me!
yeah i’m thinking that if you want you might be able to wrangle this into a semi permanent job
A delayed update schedule really helps for environments like this. Keep your ear to the ground for critical updates, but I’ve done this sort of thing a few times and waiting a week or two to update is a really great solution.
One thing I’ve almost done before is to choose a computer as a test subject, update it before anything else, and if all things are good you’re probably fine.
This post reminded me of year 7, and spending like 3 or more hours with the school tech getting their shitty Education Queensland spyware to function on Linux Mint. Next thing was circumnavigating the web filter, and getting Wine to run 😂
bruh…lmaoo, luckily for me it was just VScode and thats it lol
Does your school have an it department? If not maybe that can be a job for you. Someone will need to maintain that fleet.
Beats me. maybe they do, maybe they don’t? I honestly have no clue, perhaps I should ask.
YES on the ask!!! Seconded big time
I love it. Way to go!
thanks a lot!
Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:
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LibreOffice can create really nice documents and presentations too. Heck, some tasks are more straightforward in LibreOffice than MS. 99% of schoolwork is done in Office suite, so this is nice. Win for Linux
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For stuff like coding in C or Python, it is even easier in Linux: download a compiler, open a text editor, type some codes then use terminal to run the codes in 10 minutes. In Windows, you need to download the stupid Cygwin and mess around with environmental variables to get Cygwin to recognize the libraries… Or if you want to automate things, MS Visual Studio will do that. The only downside is you will lose > 10 GB of space. Linux wins here again.
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Anything more advanced will unfortunately Windows land. I’m talking about advanced image programs like Photoshop or professional video apps. But again, if you need them then might as well get a Mac. Another hiccup would be in CAD software: Linux just doesnt have a good app.
tbf with all due respect Screw Adobe, idek why people even use their products, KDENLive and GIMP serve well, for the tasks I doing, and even if you want something more advanced, there is davinci resolve, it’s proprietary software but its forgivable if KDENLive isn’t cutting it for you
Some of the bigger issues with Kdenlive i’ve heard is around GPU acceleration and just force of habbit. Fair enough, I wouldn’t tell someone to jump ship if they productivity and professional skills are taking a hit. People need their livelihood. Still I do hold that most people overestimate how pro their workflow is
I mean, it’s never a good idea to FORCE anything but the “normies” (pardon my french) always use that as an excuse when there are definitely alternatives that are usable and can definitely do the job (ie: davinci resolve), like do seriously people wanna keep using software from a company that charges you CANCELATION FEES?
(how did adobe get away with charging you more money for cancelling your subscription, iirc it was like 60 or 80 bucks???)
Ohh yeah for sure. Most of these proprietary software are costing on brand names and institutional momentum.
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Btw I would recommend leaving a note on the desktop saying something like COMPUTER_SPECS.TXT. I had Linux on my computers in school, and I was thinking “holy crap Linux is slow and old”, but it turned out to be cheap hardware (and I didn’t know better, back then)
lol I thought this was a guerrilla IT warfare post where you snuck in and did it, but you actually did it with permission… 😂
Could you imagine the stories that would circulate in the playgrounds? “I heard the Linux fairy is close. Timmy can’t play Roblox in class anymore.”
yeah, I don’t want trouble xD
I had dual booted Ubuntu with Windows when I was in college, without having any prior exposure to Linux or any skill in coding or even scripting. The install itself was incredibly easy and I was wondering why more kids don’t do it. All the core functions that a computer was supposed to, Ubuntu was doing it better than Windows save one - running windows specific software.
I guess Linux was good enough for education back then itself, but it ddn’t run fancy games and I could not convince anyone else to dual boot their PC.
ah fair enough
this is actually so insanely epic, good job!
pretty cool of the principal too to allow you to do stuff like this
Seconding the last part. When I was in high school, the admins wouldn’t approve most after school clubs, or students displaying their artwork. Here this admin is encouraging their students’ curiosity and talents, while letting the students have real impact in their school. Grade A stuff right there.
ikr, didn’t expect him to agree
But if you left tomorrow would they be able to admin them?
good question however principal said he wanna keep linux on them forever, perhaps he will learn it and admin them himself, thats my guess
They will just wipe these computers
I don’t think they will bother. They will end up in a landfill, and the school will buy new Windows computers.
This is great for a handful of devices but I deploy and administrate hundreds of devices at my school. As much as I would love to, there’s no way I could sell this without a really robust way of managing device policies & software deployment. I understand RHEL has something like that but that it isn’t quite up to the same standard as the Microsoft admin ecosystem just yet.
You should take a look at Ansible, it’s the same problem as infra teams in tech companies to manage Linux deployment and it’s a mostly solved problem
Yeah, I have this conversation and lot on the sad truth is that until there’s a Linux distro that’s as manageable as Windows is with Group Policy, no big organisation is adopting it. Unfortunately, nothing in the Linux space comes close.
ah fair enough, hopefully one day, there is an easy way for linux to do what your school are looking for!
for my school they teach programming as such python webdev etc, so getting linux primed up for that was rather simple, I’m surprised, they haven’t did this before I suggested it!
Now you go with veyon?
Just a funny story, but, I use an Ubuntu laptop as my work computer as a teacher, and once, while I was helping another student with work, a student opened my laptop and began trying to install Roblox. She got far enough to figure out it wouldn’t work, and started searching for how to install it. When I came over she was trying to figure out how to set up Wine. She got pretty close to getting it working before I came over. I was secretly pretty impressed with how fast she figured it out. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
that’s actually an interesting story, makes you wonder if kids nowadys do get exposed to linux first and not windows, would actually learn it faster than having to unlearn windows first?
Or they’re so used to smartphone that windows and Linux are equally alien to them
we dont have those people…yet, I fear for the day when we do though…
Having taught college level students software development, Ctrl-c & ctrl-v was foreign to many
that’s quite unfortunate
i’ve had the same situation with university students
I wouldn’t even be mad honestly. I learned a ton of my early computer skills trying to get stuff running where I shouldn’t or get into things I had no business messing with. That’s how kids learn!
Gives me hope, I’m glad the kids are still curious and willing to learn. I’ve seen too many early-20s people at work who have absolutely zero computer skills.
There are plenty of Minecraft launchers in the flatpak store so you might wanna make sure they’re not taking advantage of that lol
if they know what flatpak is anyways! however good point lol
Well it’s literally the app named “software” and this is a programming school so someone’s bound to find out
true but then they have to know the sudo password to install such apps, unless the teachers, the principal or me tell them that, I doubt they’ll be successful but hey you do still raise a good point and I shall probably discuss this with the principal
You generally don’t need sudo to install flatpaks and actually pretty sure they advise against it.
for us mint always asks for it, so if you dont type it, it’ll just not install it, idk tbh
Actually, for flatpaks specifically, even by the software manager it won’t ask for root privileges and go straight to installing
Check up on it, that’s my experience at least and I’ve got my own laptop running the latest version of Linux Mint. It could be some change in config you’ve doneI have school on saturday so I will post an update here if I remember (hopefully I do)
