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Another grammar faux pas is the improper use of "you". When sitting down down in a restaurant, for example, I get cringe when the waitress...
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Talkback
This is an excellent opportunity for open source, and should worry microsoft. If schools adopt the use of open source software, then students will leave schools with skills, not in ms office, but openoffice or staroffice. In addition, home pc's will use the open source software to remain 100% compatible with their coursework - and educating the parents in the process.
How very amazing this result is ...
Look at the software you get when doing a full (LINUX-) install:
- applications like openoffice, scribus, gimp ...
- webserver
- database
- compilers
- rich set of example sourccode
So there are lots of topics to teach and learn , starting from very simple topics like "how to write a thesis" to very complex ones. like "how to write a C programm" or "how to create a database".
And, by the way, creating a client/server environment, where you have an application server and cheap/old pc's as terminals help to reduce the hardware costs, too, as exactly this possibilty is a LINUX/Unix standard feature.
Great. We'll have a generation of people taught to use non-standard software, which is probably used in what?- 1 office in 1,000?
What levels of support will be available for such open source software?
Who would be responsible for problems should there be a catastrophic systems failure?
Open source software is all very well if you know what you are doing. But expecting "ordinary people" to use it might be expected from an organisation populated by geeks who wouldn't know an ordinary person if they tripped over one.
This would be a money saver but also a great move for the UK as a whole. Educating a generation of people about Linux/Apache/etc would be great for the businesses of the UK when these students graduate.
It would put us a a competitive advantage.
To Martin Scholes: Please, stop spewing rubbish.
- How is it non-standard software if all applications are built on file format and protocol standards? Stop the nonesense. Free Open Source software are more standard than any thing else available from any company. Nonesense.
- At least the community support is far better than any support you pay and get from MS. Add to that support form IBM, Novell, Red Hat, HPQ, etc... You get best of support
- If you build your own, you are responsible. If you purchase from any of the companies list above, the will be more than happy to surnish support that is much better that MS support and for a cost lot less than what you MS for Windows support.
- Get you facts straight. Linux today needs no more knowledge about computers than Windows. As a matter of fact, it is much easier to install, support, and maintain than windows. It is just a matter of getting familiar with it. Doing that takes lot less time than keep resolving the problems anyone would constantly encounter with Windows. Wake up Lackey, Your job is safe, instead of writing articles about Windows, you can write articles about Linux & FOSS.
Abe, your inability to enter into a debate without resorting to using insults sort of proves my point.
You really don't have the skills to deal with real people who use real computers in the real world.
You presume that I am an IT journalist. Wrong assumption.
Martin,
Rather short-sighted. Have you even tried anything outside the statis quo? Your comment suggests little or no knowledge of open source offerings, and a fear of learning something new. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Remember when no one was questioned for buying wordperfect? Or wordstar? Things change.
If open source gives us more bang for the buck, more reliability, and allows schools to put more money in areas that more directly affect education, then what's wrong with that.
It's the adults that have a hard time learning new things, not the students.
In Canada, the PEEL District shool board is or has penned an agreement with SUN to replace MS-Office with StarOffice. Although not implemented yet, from all sources I have seen it seems to have been signed.
martin's comments:
this is a very narrow perspective, and is very common among individuals that tend to fall into a couple of categories, fear of change or fear of change, take your pick.
the software available on and for linux is very standard and follows the same rules of menu structure as do products line MS-office, and others.
The radical difference is the linux file structure and handling, as it provides a greater level of security and control over the computer. my daughter is 9, she uses linux at home and windows at friends homes, and her firends use linux at our home, none of them mind, in fact, many of her friends have asked their parents to install linux on the family pc's (i am fielding many of those calls and will be helping them to do the installs over the coming weeks).
so you are viewing it from the perspective of adults and their inability to change, kids, are more than willing to accept the change and by extension can learn more about the what they are doing and the computer they use.
Fear of change? Or a lack of time to embrace change?
Perhaps if I didn't spend so much of my time having to produce a 300 word story to fill a space in ten to fifteen minutes, maybe I'd try to see about getting Linux installed on our servers.
The majority of business offices use Microsoft products. To fail to admit to this point is to say: "I wouldn't start from here." Pity. Because that is where we are.
The situation might be bad but that's where we are at.
ajority of offices use MS Office products
- OpenOffice is more compatible with older versions of MS Word than is MS Word 2003 itself. Gnumeric will handle Excel - and so on. Get hold of a copy of the OpenCD - although the Windows software on there is a couple of months out of date, there's a full copy copy
Should our head of IT decides to switch over to Linux, then that's what we would do.
However, I can imagine him thinking: "It took ages for us to get the PCs and the Macs in production to speak together! Go through thatr process again? I don't think so!"
@ martin:
"We'll have a generation of people taught to use non-standard software" - wont this then make a new standard - those that can use open source software?
As for those people who instantly dismiss software and architectures on the basis of it requiring some hard graft to get it working 100%, then they should be shot. It is exactly that (work shy) attitude that propagates the rumours which discredit what is otherwise excellent software.
As for the rest of the luddites, who to be honest are fortunate to have a job with that attitude, good luck - you will need it. The very nature of IT encourages growth, change and diversity.
As for the real topic here:
Open source software represents real "Best Value", but only in the long term. It would take a large commitment, and a country (or at least county) wide, well managed effort to REALLY make this work. The benefits would however be available to all. Parents would see a reduction in cost of their pc – making it accessible to more people, schools could reduce their ms licensing bill to virtually £0 and businesses could reap the rewards of being able to use open source software due to pre-trained staff too.
In no way however am I assuming that support costs wouldn’t initially rise though – however, this would only be an initial cost as over time the skilled population will increase, especially as more people are brought up with the open source offerings themselves.
In short, open source could be excellent, however the short term problems and costs are likely to dominate any management decision, and result in its dismissal – the unfortunate way of the world we find ourselves in today.
I think everyone here is missing the point.
I have always believed that the right tool should be used for the right task. If Martin is stuck with using M$ products and has little time to learn something new in the way he fulfils his job then so be it. The schools are however in a position to learn and I hope they learn new technologies alongside older ones. In my opinion it would be best to experience both M$ and Linux or Open Source solutions so that they can make an informed choice for themselves when the time comes.
*Please* can we have some balanced views and less prejudice. Aside from one or two measured responses, we've had idiots from both camps spouting pretty childish vitriol. Enough.
The balanced facts are that Linux *is* more robust and a more moral choice than Windows. But Windows *is* easier to use than Linux. And Windows *is* installed on something approaching 80% of the world's PCs.
I use many flavours of Unix (Solaris, Tru-64 & AIX) at work, as well as XP. My son runs Linux servers at home and has an XP laptop. I think I'm qualified to be objective!
The sad fact is that this is about teaching the skills in *current* worldwide use. But I *do* believe that familiarity with Linux / Unix should be a mandatory part of any IT course.
Thank you, annonymous.
Perhaps ulike you, I want computers and software that help me do my job. Which is not in IT. That's all.
I, and everyone else not involved in the IT industry (journalism, secretarial work, accounts, etc., etc.,) do not want or need to know about computer architecture and the like.
Years ago, people in offices used typewriters. They did not need to become typewriter mechanics, just typists. Expert typewriter engineers dealt with that side of it.
Am I Luddite? No, just someone who wants computers to help me perform my job to the best of my abilities
Some people (not all) who have responded to my posts here have a rather superior attitude.
Not everyone works in IT. Remembering this might help when you deal with people in the outside world who need to have products that do the job they want it to do when they need it. Without wanting to be IT professionals.
"Great. We'll have a generation of people taught to use non-standard software."
How about a generation of people who know how to use software based on recognised open standards, rather than the arbitrary ones decided on the whim of a firm whose primary motivation is money?
How about a generation of people who know how to use computers, rather than just applications?
Computing education in schools should start from the bottom, and work up. I firmly believe that the first thing a child should be taught on a computer is how to write a 'hello world' program (the language is up to you), and that everything should follow from there.
I'm not saying that everyone should learn how to write a complex word processor before being able to write a letter, but i am saying that they should have some comprehension of what's behind it.
It has been suggested that schools could only use Open Source if it was made easier to use. This sounds like an IT Windows user to me. The vast majority of teachers have had no training in the Microsoft software they are expected to use because of budget constraints. If the schools had the budget to train the staff it would make no difference whether it was Microsoft or Open Source as long as the applications worked. The usual excuse for not giving the training is that the staff "have it already at home", so they are 100% familiar with it already. Laptops are bought "fully loaded" and handed over with the expectation the staff will be able to "do everything" immadiately. When was the last time an IT department did this successfully.
Martiin, I would agree that time constraints on learning new technologies are a problem. How can one get up to speed on "X" if you're constantly working on keeping "Y up and running? This same paradigm applies to users as well. In school there is precious little time to spend on training teachers. Couple that with contractual limitations on how much training we can *require* teachers to attend in *any* area, be it technology, curriculum, you name it, and you are pretty much depending on your users to figure it out for themselves. Deploying open source, and more importantly, free software, the monies that would normally go into licencing costs could then be diverted into paying for substitute teachers while the staff attends training, as well as other areas that more directly affect our product, which is an educated student.
Sounds to me like you're not willing to explore alternatives unless forced to do so, which is very understandable from an end users perspective, and to be honest, for many in IT as well. I don't mean to be deragatory when I say it's probably a good thing you're a journalist and not an IT decision maker.
You can get your feet wet by downloading OpenOffice.org. The 2.0 beta is stable and happily coexists with MS Office. Just make sure you don't select it as the default document handler for .DOC, .XLS, and .PPT files. That way you can get your feet wet without leaving the environment you're confortable with.
I switched to Linux at home earlier this year, and my wife, who is not a tech person, was able to get up to speed immediately, with increased productivity due to not having to deal with virus and spyware issues. She's had no problem switching to openoffice, nor gnome, one of several available graphical environments for linux and other *nix enviroments. Believe me, if she *had* experienced problems, We'd be back to running windows at home ;)
The biggest barrier to most organizations taking the plunge is lack of third party support, but this too getting much better, and at a rapidly accelerating pace. If this occurs, be prepared to learn. You may not have a choice, at least at work.
Learning a non-standard software? Sounds like the same mentality of those who shouted “get a horse” when 1 in a 1000 were choosing to try out the “new standard” . . . the horseless carriage.
Today's “standard” is just a milestone along the highway. Those continuing their journey cannot afford to camp out by any milestone. Let us not view “standards” as scientific laws but rather use them as a point of consensus to achieve the next standard.
we run only linux (xandros) at home. my wife who is just this side of a luddite, and for whom windows was a program to use just because, LOVES IT!!!!!!! She has had no freezing, no sudden drops, no reboots, and is using staroffice everyday, along with evolution. She has become one of the most rabid supporters of linux.
she has also convinced many of her friends to switch (for whom I have created dual boots - to maintain the warm fuzzies). Curiously, once they have gotten used to linux, they have not really used windows, and 2 have sked me to remove it, as they want the extra disk space.
so, really IMHO, learning linux and other non-standard software, is a matter of getting over the 'better the devil you know' mentality.
As to MS-Office being the standard, this is true, however - as a famous man once said (i really wish i could remember who) - what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right! (paraphrase that any way you like.
my point being - things will change, but not from the big boys, they will change because small firms that want to be more than competitive will begin to use this software and put the saved money into other projects. thus giving them an edge. Martin, I appreciate your fear, since we can all make time for what we see as important or necessary - however, try open office 2.0 for windows, i think you might just like it - open and create ms-office docs, one button export to pdf, what more do you want?
george
@ Steve Connors
Unless, of course, it is just like saying: "There's no future in these petrol-driven horseless carriages! What you need is the fantastically modern and fully up-to-date Stanley Steamer. It's the future, I tell you!"
@ George
George, you make some very good points. You support Linux without, like some posters have, making it sound like some bizarre religious cult.
Perhaps I might install Linux on my second home computer and see how it works. I have been thinking about looking at Linux for several years, but it's just that there's so little time and so much to do!
So little time and so much to do.
I often hear that in Microsoft mostly environments.
Not to say that Microsoft mostly environments are complete rubbish. Fact is that many organization still depand on it today to facilitate many of their operations. But it is striking to see, time and time again, that non-Microsoft solutions require a whole lot less maintenance, troubleshooting and are far easier to upgrade or expand. Whatever it is it just keeps on working. Even to a degree that it's taken for granted (which can be a problem in itself, mind you). Most strikingly noticed in environments that are half Microsoft based and half non-Microsoft based. More then 80% of the man hours (and budget) goes into maintaining the Microsoft environment. Worse if something needs to be upgraded or expanded. That's asking a lot in my opinion and should at the very least justify an investment in investigating alternative total solutions (many organizations make the mistake of testing out only a piece of the pie and then failing along the way rather then first determining what they have (A), then figure out where they want to end (B), to then figure out how to get from A to B) in a small scale test environment (might even be a single department, say, the IT department) that represents the operational environment as closely as possible. Although that might turn out not to lead to a land of milk and honey at least then you can say: we tested it, completely and totally, and it didn't work for us. However, if that does turn out to be a desired end goal then there's still plenty of work that needs to be done to get there but once that's over with there will be enough budget and man hours savings to allow to concentrate on business needs and demands like never before (next problem then is to keep it that way).
Arthur, the environment in which I work is a typical newspaper/magazine office. There are Apple Macs and PCs, all feeding in to a Mac server. (Is Linux compatible with a Mac server, by the way?)
When I made a jocular reference to workload I meant the amount of work done in writing articles, interviewing people, helping to set up pages, proofing, etc.