Von Fugal wrote:
I second that BYU is pretty Open Source in that they are very OS friendly. They have tons of linux boxen and a few classes that teach the n00bs a bit about them. As far as requiring a lot of open source though, not so much. As you say, there's a lot of squeeking by with Windows that goes on.
We have Frank Sorenson to thank, in large measure, for this. He pushed really hard to roll out linux in the CS Dept. At the time the department was about 2/3 windows workstations and the remainder split between aging HPUX and Crappy Solaris 8 Dell machines. I worked with him on rolling out some test linux machines. We installed 5 machines in a lab upstairs out of the way. It was interesting to watch as people discovered them and started to use them. People really wanted to use those over the solaris machines. (Of course a lot of people discovered I had installed KDE on the Solaris machines and that made them happy too.) I think we used RedHat 6.2 back then.
I also think, though, that OSS has really come of age in the last 5-6 years. Back when all we had were HPUX and the old bert machine (what OS was that again? VAX?) Linux just wasn't possible for the CS department's needs.
Plus we've now got a bunch of young professors that used Linux when they were doing their dissertations, and they've brought this experience with them.
<snip> /me is in 312 right now, and still needs to install visual studio, drags feet
Why do you have to install Visual Studio? Can't you design and develop your code using C# and Mono and then build it with Visual Studio in the lab?
As far as thinking we must have Visual Studio experience, I disagree completely. I think that starting at first principles in a Linux environment, learning gcc, make, vim, etc, all serve one very well, even when you're forced to enter the Windows world. Most Linux guys I know can easily move to Windows for work, etc. Their *nix skills serve them well and are adaptable to Windows. Dave, Byron, and probably many others program for Windows on a regular basis, even though their backgrounds are in Linux and Unix. We learn techniques and tools on unix to make our code portable, and easily taken to any new OS out there. Contrast that with Windows refugees who struggle mightily to develop anything in Linux, to say nothing of porting code from Windows to any other OS.
Most of us who program in Linux at some point or another get some experience in the lower-level stuff. Low-level calls, etc. System programming. Very few Windows developers could say they are system programmers. The best Windows system programmer I know (who actually wrote code for the Windows NT *kernel*, not just win32) is a Linux expert, in terms of administration, software development, and even kernel development.
But the department has to look good for the accreditors. So we deal with Visual Studio and having to develop on Windows.
Michael
Von Fugal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
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