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Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

thevarguy.com

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Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#1

Post by jtnl »

Canonical’s recent efforts to promote desktop Ubuntu on the workstations of large organizations have focused primarily on the business world. But perhaps the company’s greatest prospects lie in the education channel. That’s where 220,000 Ubuntu-based PCs are now running in Andalusia, Spain. Here are the details, and what they say about desktop Linux’s viability in the education market. ...

Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain
thevarguy.com

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#3

Post by calinet6 »

oliwarner wrote: post #2

If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu computers"... I'd have about £19. But seriously it's nice to see some governments want to break their dependency on Microsoft.

Dependency on anyone, really. Good for the governments sure, but even better for the kids.

It almost doesn't matter—they don't need anything but a browser these days.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#4

Post by icebraining »

oliwarner wrote: post #2

If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu computers"... I'd have about £19. But seriously it's nice to see some governments want to break their dependency on Microsoft.

This is not new, though. What they're installing is not pure Ubuntu, but Guadalinex, which is a distro created by the Andalusian government in 2003, and which apparently moved from a Debian to an Ubuntu base since then.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#5

Post by cs702 »

Migrating to Linux on the desktop -- and Ubuntu in particular -- can make a lot of financial sense for all the national and regional governments, school systems, and other governmental bodies which are currently budget-constrained around the planet. While migration can be costly, painful, and disruptive in the short run, the long-term cost savings appear to be substantial.[1]

PS. This is not a new initiative, but a well-established project that recently reached a new milestone: 220,000 is the number of school PCs already running a local flavor of Ubuntu in Andalusia, Spain.

--

[1] For instance, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787539

--

Edits: reordered and expanded sentences to present my views in a more organized manner.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#6

Post by bjarkijonasson »

As someone who is currently in a school that uses only free and/or open source software I have to say that this is a terrible idea.

The biggest problem is the teachers, they are not as tech-savvy as the kids and introducing them to a completely new operating system has done nothing but slow them down and cause problems. They are having trouble distributing learning material because they are not familiar with the file formats (and most of the students here are using windows, so compatibility is a problem).

There have also been problems with the personal storage spaces students have on the computer network, people are sometimes unable to log in or unable to access their files. It's been a mess.

I'm all for supporting ubuntu, in fact I've been using an ubuntu variant on my laptop for a few years now without any trouble, but using Ubuntu (or any other OS that isn't Windows or OS X) in a school environment just to cut costs is a recipe for disaster.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#7

Post by bjarkijonasson »

bjarkijonasson wrote: post #6

As someone who is currently in a school that uses only free and/or open source software I have to say that this is a terrible idea. The biggest problem is the teachers, they are not as tech-savvy as the kids and introducing them to a completely new operating system has done nothing but slow them down and cause problems. They are having trouble distributing learning material because they are not familiar with the file…

also, it doesn't save the school any money anyway since they have to hire Network Admins and other IT people with Linux experience

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#8

Post by oliwarner »

calinet6 wrote: post #3
oliwarner wrote: post #2

If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu computers"... I'd have about £19. But seriously it's nice to see some governments want to break their dependency on Microsoft.

Dependency on anyone, really. Good for the governments sure, but even better for the kids. It almost doesn't matter—they don't need anything but a browser these days.

> they don't need anything but a browser these days

Sure, assuming you only want the next generation of young adults to be able to look things up on Google and use Facebook.

When my school tried to teach me how to use MS Word (I was 13) I laughed. I already knew everything there was to know about it.

Of course none of this was innate, nor did I know it just because I was young. Eight years earlier when I was having my first play with computers (much to their detriment) and I would play, yes play with word processors. I didn't have anything to write but I learned WordPerfect. I learned MS Word. Hell, I learned most of MS Office and several versions in-between my first encounter and my Year 9 ICT training.

The newest generation is growing up on touch devices. It's great for the arts, I suspect but it's the end of kids who'll just load up a Word processor just to see how it works. They'll need to be taught.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#9

Post by lumberjack »

bjarkijonasson wrote: post #6

As someone who is currently in a school that uses only free and/or open source software I have to say that this is a terrible idea. The biggest problem is the teachers, they are not as tech-savvy as the kids and introducing them to a completely new operating system has done nothing but slow them down and cause problems. They are having trouble distributing learning material because they are not familiar with the file…

I had the same exact experience, albeit it was not a change from proprietary to free software but rather: The government decided, (partly because there was an EU fund to waste and some rankings to compete in) that old simple tech like blackboards and slide projectors were to be replaced by newer technologies like interactive boards and digital projectors. The teachers' work flow was massively disrupted. They were still using their old notes, partly because there aren't any multimedia counterparts. They just have to go through more steps to get everything setup and running. Besides, that the technology itself was premature, buggy and probably flawed by design even. I'm all for technological progress but I absolutely hate when people push for worst technology just because it is build from contemporary digital technology.

Re: Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain

#10

Post by javierhonduco »

As a spaniard *nix lover who has finished high school recently, I'd like to point out something... 0K, there are lots of installations, but being honest, among the students is very impopular, almost all of them have always been using Window$ at home... Also there are a few teachers that even know what Linux of whatever different to Microsoft's software is. That shoudn't be like that IMHO. Lots of economical (among others) resources are throwed to the bin. Let's say in college more people use linux, mainly in engineerings, and with specific topics like parallel computing, etc... It's a real pity that most people are so hooked up to Windows, but, what is worse is that Spain's administrations, too. The don't even know what open source is. Culture. Is what matters. [Edit]. I also forgot that the only "investment" all our Governments have done is not trying the students and teachers to know GNU/Linux, but wasting OUR money in modifiying the popular Ubuntu distro and also installing it in lots of computers, what is totally pointless.
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