:-) One very good point made: "cut & past" is "cut & past" no matter what OS or Office program MS,OOo,Pages.............
Steve On 11 Dec 2009, at 11:01, Mark Rogers wrote: > Richard Forth wrote: >> Intersting to find out, but does anyone know what demand there is for >> unix / linux skills iin the workplace? I know this may be off topic >> but then the whole thread has shifted into getting linux into schools, >> so I just wondered, wouldnt it be good to feel fully armed with all >> the basics of computing including some awareness of unix and linux >> before leaving school? > > I'd say this is very much on topic, personally! > > I work in a web development environment so command-line Linux skills are > very useful. Nor surprisingly all out web servers run Linux (and I'd say > at the lower end there will be very little exposure to "real unix" these > days, just Linux in various flavours, although the skills are very much > transferable). I'm the only one in the office using a desktop Linux > day-to-day but everyone here knows the basics of connecting to a server > via SSH and running a handful of commands from there. Also, everyone > here knows how to use a LiveCD to test a machine is functional if > Windows is fubar. > > That said, it really isn't hard to work out how to use an Ubuntu desktop > machine, is it? It might seem scary because it's unknown, but most > adults sat in front of one will recognise the need to click on the menu > to access applications and would know what Firefox does (it's in the > Internet menu labelled "Firefox Web Browser" so that's a pretty strong > clue!). Having opened it and faced with a Google search I doubt anyone > would be thinking "I don't know what to do now!" if they are remotely > familiar with Windows. Similarly OpenOffice etc if they're sensible > labelled. > > The thing is to get people to try it with an open mind. The skills they > have from Windows are very much transferable. (End users shouldn't have > to mess around setting up the O/S from scratch, but if they ever do then > Ubuntu is *much* easier to install to a working state than Windows is, > not least because by the time you've installed Windows you've not got a > machine you can use for much - you need to install Office etc before you > can be productive.) The hardest thing to grasp is usually that you are > allowed to copy the install CD and give it to other people (and that > it's encouraged, not frowned upon). > >> I say this beacuse I have no recollection of linux in my school years, >> we had BBC's and the odd apple macintosh (which I supppose is as close >> to unix as I got) > > In school for me it was all BBCs apart from a single RM380Z, which we > booted from a floppy a couple of times just to see something different > (it was the first time I was aware of the concept of "booting"). > > But therein lies the point: we were shown it just so we knew something > else was out there. That's a good thing and should be encouraged. > > At uni it was BBCs and PCs (I don't recall what O/S were on the PCs, > this will have been 1990-ish), but I learned useful skills like FTP etc > at a commandline level. When I came home from uni I signed up with > Compuserve then Demon Internet, using DOS based services (you could > install a TCP/IP stack on Windows but it wasn't fast enough to cope > without losing too many packets). > >> The thing is unless you have parents who are into FOSS then all you >> are fed is MS, and you begin to beleive by the time you leave school >> that MS is the only operating system as the famous quote "I'm a PC", >> yeah well so am I but I run Linux on my PC thanks all the same. :D > > MS are trying to make the PC=Windows argument, which they may or may not > achieve (they probably hope to go after anyone selling a PC that is not > Windows on the grounds that PC and Windows PC have become synonymous, > which I hope would fail). The Mac runs on a similar architecture now as > well, of-course. > > -- > Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 > Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG > > > _______________________________________________ > Peterboro mailing list > Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro > _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
