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charles.macdonald | 5 Nov 2003 18:07
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[OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems for educational use?

I heard a quote the other day that indicated that someone from redhat did not think that his product was the
best desktop for consumer use, I am wondering where it (and the fedora system which is apparently to be the
successor)  would fit in in an educational setting.

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Access Systems | 5 Nov 2003 18:25

Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems for educational use?

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 charles.macdonald <at> hrdc-drhc.gc.ca wrote:

> I heard a quote the other day that indicated that someone from redhat did not think that his product was the
best desktop for consumer use, I am wondering where it (and the fedora system which is apparently to be the
successor)  would fit in in an educational setting.

well the company I work for has RH 9 on all the desktops, we used
Wordperfect until they stopped supporting Linux and have changed to Open
Office suite....  took some getting used to and there was some weeping and
wailing but doubt anyone would change back,  also we have profit sharing
so we all like to help the bottom line...haven't had a M$ product here in
3 years now.

Bob

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Chris Spencer | 5 Nov 2003 18:40
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Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems for educational use?

So what are your plans when RH9 support ends?  

Migrate to Fedora and hope that there is something to Fedora Legacy?
(BTW, I like fedora.  It seems quite stable to me)

Migrate to another free OS such as Debian or a BSD variant.  (Both have
compelling cases to be migrated to)

or purchase RHEL-WS/RHWS?  ($179/computer/year is a non-trivial cost)

-Chris

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 11:25, Access Systems wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 charles.macdonald <at> hrdc-drhc.gc.ca wrote:
> 
> > I heard a quote the other day that indicated that someone from redhat did not think that his product was the
best desktop for consumer use, I am wondering where it (and the fedora system which is apparently to be the
successor)  would fit in in an educational setting.
> 
> well the company I work for has RH 9 on all the desktops, we used
> Wordperfect until they stopped supporting Linux and have changed to Open
> Office suite....  took some getting used to and there was some weeping and
> wailing but doubt anyone would change back,  also we have profit sharing
> so we all like to help the bottom line...haven't had a M$ product here in
> 3 years now.
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
(Continue reading)

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Jeremy Hogan | 5 Nov 2003 19:44
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Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems for educational use?

I would consider the classroom and lab environment a controlled setting,
with staffing for support (in many cases). You can set policy as to how
and where to get bits, have content filtering and firewalling.

The desktop != workstation in our strategy. The article you are likely
referring to chose the quotes the author thought made for sexy press.
And he was right, what was lost is the inferred "ready for Red Hat to
commit support and life cycle resources and service agreements" and also
lost the context of our roadmap which puts our desktop offering 12
months out.

Technically, of course, Linux is far superior to windows. But having
suffered through rolling 3000 people from Windows 95 to 98,  The
majority of which use computers because they have to. It's no picnic
when things look and feel and operate mostly the same, but in the case
of a corporate workstation the user has to adapt to what the IT folks
say to run, and for the IT folks having it hard for the user to double
click an attachment that grinds the e-mail system to a halt is a bonus. 
As for home users, they are a nice combination of very fickle and
stubborn. They want to and will install whatever they can et their hands
on. They want the option of sticking with exactly that if they wish, and
won't even go for clones that are functionally equivalent.

So for many many people, if you grant that the desktop market is a MS
market, Linux is not ready. It's not dumb enough on the top, despite
being smarter underneath. Too much hardware doesn't work out of the box,
mime types act differently for different programs, there's not enough
standards compliance within many distributions, let alone between them.

The last thing I'll mention, before it starts to sound like RH doesn't
(Continue reading)

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Jeremy Hogan | 5 Nov 2003 19:46
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Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems for educational use?

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 12:25, Access Systems wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 charles.macdonald <at> hrdc-drhc.gc.ca wrote:
> 
> > I heard a quote the other day that indicated that someone from redhat did not think that his product was the
best desktop for consumer use, I am wondering where it (and the fedora system which is apparently to be the
successor)  would fit in in an educational setting.
> 
> well the company I work for has RH 9 on all the desktops, we used
> Wordperfect until they stopped supporting Linux and have changed to Open
> Office suite....  took some getting used to and there was some weeping and
> wailing but doubt anyone would change back,  also we have profit sharing
> so we all like to help the bottom line...haven't had a M$ product here in
> 3 years now.

Bob brings up the very point of confusion I think the article turns on.
The quote treats "desktop" as a single user, entertainment and mild
productivity OS, and would consider this a workstation deployment, an
awful lot of people treat them interchangeably, or use one to refer to
the software and GUI environment and th other to the hardware it may run
on.

--jeremy

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Brian E. Adams | 5 Nov 2003 20:01

RE: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for me?

 
-----Original Message-----
From: open-source-now-list-admin <at> redhat.com
[mailto:open-source-now-list-admin <at> redhat.com] On Behalf Of Jeremy Hogan
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 12:44 PM
To: open-source-now-list <at> redhat.com
Subject: Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational
use?

I would consider the classroom and lab environment a controlled setting,
with staffing for support (in many cases). You can set policy as to how
and where to get bits, have content filtering and firewalling.

The desktop != workstation in our strategy. The article you are likely
referring to chose the quotes the author thought made for sexy press.
And he was right, what was lost is the inferred "ready for Red Hat to
commit support and life cycle resources and service agreements" and also
lost the context of our roadmap which puts our desktop offering 12
months out.

Technically, of course, Linux is far superior to windows. But having
suffered through rolling 3000 people from Windows 95 to 98,  The
majority of which use computers because they have to. It's no picnic
when things look and feel and operate mostly the same, but in the case
of a corporate workstation the user has to adapt to what the IT folks
say to run, and for the IT folks having it hard for the user to double
click an attachment that grinds the e-mail system to a halt is a bonus. 
As for home users, they are a nice combination of very fickle and
(Continue reading)

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markjensen | 5 Nov 2003 20:55
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Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:01:58 -0600
  "Brian E. Adams" <briana <at> jeffneddie.com> wrote:
>Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for 
>me?

My definition would be that in licensing freedoms, 
up-front price, long-term maintainability and 
networking/multi-user capability, Linux has Windows 
beaten.  Hands down.

The long-term costs are constantly argued, and may each be 
valid with the *conditions stated* in each report.  You 
will find that most reports favoring a lower TCO for 
Microsoft have strange assumptions being made.

Windows has the advantage of being the dominant player, 
and beign in such a position, they wield a lot of 
power/influence over hardware and software vendors. 
 Influence that the Linux community isn't large enough to 
have at this point.  This advantage has given them the 
luxury of being pre-installed almost to the point of 
ubiquity.  The perception is that Windows is just 'how 
computers are supposed to work', and anything different 
(Linux, BSD, Mac, etc.) is somehow 'wrong' or 'inferior'.

As Linux continues to build the TREMENDOUS momentum that 
it is just now coming to see, there will be a turning 
point in popular perception.  At this point, Windows will 
be just another OS.  It may still have its place on some 
PCs.  It may not.  The only thing certain is that they
(Continue reading)

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Chris Spencer | 5 Nov 2003 21:38
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RE: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 13:01, Brian E. Adams wrote:
> Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for me?
> 

Brian,

As a Microsoft employee it may pain you to admit that indeed Linux is
consistently more complete, more stable, more flexible, and more secure
than any Microsoft OS.

You must recognize these things to be true or why would you be on this
list unless you just want to spy and try to covertly influence things in
favor of your employer.

I know that's not the case though because you have been most helpful at
times to some of the high school tech coordinators with their Linux
problems.  You have consistently shown a high level of understanding
across platforms.

Anyway, since you are asking I will be happy to point out some things
that would indicate the things I have mentioned.

First, the most complete OS.  By this I mean it includes with the core
OS more products across the spectrum of software types.  (Productivity,
Games, Communications, etc)

The stability issue is in part because Linux has the ability to update
most of the components without restarting the OS.  Hence, uptimes of
over a year are frequently recognized.
(Continue reading)

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tek | 5 Nov 2003 22:19

RE: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

> Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for me?

If you lived in a neighborhood where there were drive-by shootings every 
minute of the day one might infer that it was an unsafe place to live, 
regardless of what your yard looked like or how great your view is or 
the size of your jacuzzi.

 Sure windows is easy to use, its also easy for 
any user to hose the system so completely only reinstallation is the 
answer. Selling systems with restore disks that wipe all of the data? 
very user friendly i might add, heaven forbid they install it on a 
second computer.

Windows has over 72000 virus's for it, linux has maybe what 5?

OK, still not enough?

Who has root on my linux box other than me? hopefully nobody right?

With Microsofts latest service packs not only does microsoft have full 
rights to your box, so does any 3rd party they chose to allow access to 
it. Ahh, nice big backdoors. Dont know if this is cause of Microsofts 
wishes or Bush and Co but it is enough to keep me from running it.

Dont even get me started on the licensing issues here, but lets just sum 
it up with this. Updating MS office, everyone who didnt steal it has to 
swap disks everytime they need to update it? come on, if its installed 
and its insecure, update the damn thing, your just giving yourself 
bigger blackeyes dude.
(Continue reading)

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Jeremy Hogan | 5 Nov 2003 22:50
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RE: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 14:01, Brian E. Adams wrote:
> Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for me?

'technically...superior'
^^^^^^^^^^^^

You're not gonna get me that easy...;-)

The tech specs and performance of the Linux is now greater than that of
a Unix based system, long and widely considered the performance
workhorse of the enterprise, only running on far more architectures than
any one Unix or Windows release. My point was that we easily displace
Unix based on that, and if it was a technical superiority contest, other
OSs before Linux may have pressured Windows.  Unix power on affordable
Intel hardware? In my house? Great!

It's the ecosystem/comfort zone of the non-enterprise user wanting
something good enough for general use (as Windows is) who is not
incented to move from Windows, despite security and stability track
record. Among those people, are many using computers because they *have*
to. If you lack enthusiasm for the technology side, many things will get
you by. If you don't you need hand holding. We haven't yet had 25 years
in a single vendor environment to perfect our desktop strategy, but we
sure did nail that enterprise thing awful quick.

My feeling is the next generation, those who never had to be told what a
computer was, or convinced it could fit on one desk (or in a pocket)
will not be afraid to leave their comfort zone. Others feel they have
been pushed from it by audit threats, a chain of upgrades they don't
want to make to get the one thing they want (ie to run the new Office,
(Continue reading)

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Gmane