Last year, I did a little experiment where I plunked a PC with Xubuntu Linux on it in our high school library, locked down to just OpenOffice, Firefox and printing. I put a sticker on it with a guest login and password, and instructions on how to save to and open from a flash drive, and just walked away. By the end of that period, kids were using it to do research on the web, and type and print reports. Left it there the rest of the year, and had zero problems with it. The kids don't give operating systems a second thought. They just see it as an appliance, and as long as the desktop metaphor is reasonably similar to what they've used in the past, they have no problem at all with it.
Adults are another story. And with Xubuntu's light system requirements, that might be a good way to put old PCs to use. --- Timothy A. Limbert Technology Coordinator Newell-Fonda CSD 712-272-3324 --- iChat/AIM: tlimbert65 MSN: limbert65 Twitter: limbert65 Skype: limbert_65 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Murray Gafkjen Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 10:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [info-tech] Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4?: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Is-it-Windows-7-or-KDE-4-/0,139 023769,339294810,00.htm More fuel for the open source gang, sure would be tempting to switch but having teachers change, that's another story. I think the kids would be more willing. If KD4 could work within its typical framework (smaller OS, quicker, needs less memory), this would be interesting to test with a few groups of students. One could ask for volunteers from the students to see who would be interested. (The bigger hassle would be keeping these Gateway laptops alive) I think LightSpeed is even working on a client for such... Have a good Friday and enjoy the video from DownUnder. Murray Gafkjen Clay Central Everly --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus on the server aea8.k12.ia.us] --------------------------------------------------------- Archived messages from this list can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --------------------------------------------------------- --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus on the server aea8.k12.ia.us] --------------------------------------------------------- Archived messages from this list can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ ---------------------------------------------------------
