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.)
How does one get a job like this? This is great! I want to get a job in a school or university and infect it with linux. “Guys, look! It’s cheaper and we can set it up then pay for support which still makes it cheaper and students can learn how to use it on their computers too, since it’s freely available to them!”
I got this “job” completely by accident, which is funny considering it all started from me being so annoyed with using windows 8 on the computer thats assigned to me (while being so used to linux), life is truly a roller-coaster haha
Nice! One step at a time.
yes!
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.
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!
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
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.
Wish I could do that when my school computers had Dos and Turbo Pascal. Ah, the good old himem.sys times. Miles better than W11.
Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
You are doing the lords work and I ain’t even a christian
What about selling those PCs and letting students to bring their own devices?
I love Linux. I’m running Linux and love the experience.
But…
i7-4970i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for emWhat in the world are you talking about, man??
Even ignoring the silliness of the “bloat” - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.
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
So… No, you didn’t stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google “linux roblox how to” and 20 minutes later they’re good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?
does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It’s completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that’s SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you’d be dealing with.
Liberation
Well done! Protip: You can use double new lines to format paragraphs. And full-stops.
Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)
Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.
You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man
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.
Would Edubuntu be a better fit?
That’s super awesome
Buuuut my guest gaming machine is a 4670k machine and I can confirm that not only does Windows 10 run very smoothly on it, but it also runs most modern games at 60+FPS! CPU-bound games can struggle. We finally got my partner a new computer and made that one the guest machine when Persona 5 went from 80FPS down to 5FPS when they got off the train hahaha
oh haha I see, I’ve been using linux for 5 years so far and I have been ONLY gaming on linux, I have ditched windows for good, this switch was very easy to me cuz I dont have any windows specfic apps/games dependency, everything I want is there, and the ones that aren’t, there are alternatives that are the same or better than the apps I’ve used on windows!
Ugh I would love to switch solely to Linux but I have ONE GAME that I play online with friends that’s an incredibly ridiculous install process and it is impossible to run on Linux without issues. It’s amazing that it even runs on Windows nowadays. (The Specialists, a mod for the original Half Life.)
you could play with a VM with GPU pass-through or have a seperate computer running windows made JUST to play that game (if you are wealthy enough), however these are merely suggestions, and it’s always up to you
Nahhh thank you, hahaha. My other machines are Linux, we just keep our high end gaming machines on Windows. That older computer with the 4670k is getting Pop! OS when I get around to it.
ah okay understood, fair enough, also PopOS is pretty good, cosmic is coming up pretty nicely, might give it a try when it gets to stable branch!
Oh and I should specify my old guest machine does have 16GB of RAM, solid state drives, and an RTX2070, so it’s probably a bit better equipped than school machines hahaha
great specs! I have a slightly underpowered computer compared to yours, R5 5600H and RX6500M, and I’m also a persona fan, great series tbh, my favorite is persona 4, its the most fun game to me in the series so far, rn I’m playing through P3 Reload!
Oooo nice! My partner has the best machine in the house now, since they always got my hand-me-downs and never a brand new machine. We built it about a year ago, so it’s got a 12600k, 32GB RAM, a 3070, 3TB SSD space, and 4TB HDD. Mine’s not terribly far from that, but I am a little envious hahaha
Ooo and yah, I’m doing P3R after P5!
