Thomas Templin wrote:
So you will tell us that a school authoritive who has the coice to have an old fashioned Debian-Edu developed and offered by hobbyists or to have a brand new MS-Windows offered by professional marketing people supported by a million dollar marketing branch will choose Debian-Edu?
Pardon me, but it must be another planet you are living on.
- You know that schools are offered MS OS and Software for free more and more? - You know that MS offers free training for authoritives and admins more and more? - You know that MS gives a financial support for hardware more and more? - You know that MS offers their OS on a cheap base just in those countries where Free Software starts to have a good chance in the market?
So the cost arguments are dissapearing, they may be against free software in only a year or two if MS goes on as they start do do in the moment.
You are pointing out some important facts here, but I don't agree with your conclusion.
The cost arguments may be disappearing for licenses, training etc, but those arguments were never the most important ones anyway (MS Office is a separate issue, but you can get even that almost for free if you can live with an old version - which you can of course).
What counts is the annual operating cost for the installation. To me, this is the single most important argument for chosing Skolelinux over Windows. The major cost factor is hours spent on assisting users and user administration.
My conclusion is that we can mop the floor with Micrsoft's million dollar marketing branch and their professional marketing people if we are focusing on what really counts. Which is:
=> easy to learn and use (reducing hours spent on user assistance) => easy to operate (reducing hours spent on user administration)
There is obviously also a marketing issue involved. What can we do to be perceived as "cool" and modern rather than grumpy, geeky and old-fashioned? Firefox was able to do this, and so should we. I wouldn't mind a million dollar marketing branch to do it, though...
Halvor
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