Dear Vague Group,
My name is Christopher Nyberg and I am a student at UVM as well as a
"foaming at the mouth" Linux advocate. In the last two years I have been
futzing around with Linux as a hobby and borderline obsession and I have
watched it as well as this group grow and evolve a great deal. While I have
used Ubuntu on several occasions I have never thought of it as the "ace in
the hole OS" for the desktop. To date I have not been able to get it
succesfully on my main tower (althought I haven't as of yet tried the latest
release) and when I last tested it on a laptop (6.06) I still had some
issues. Rather than working them out I just opted a different distro which
did work.
In regards to educating and spreading a positive image my contact with
everyone at UVM was showing them my setup of OpenSuse 10.1 and 10.2 doing
everything Windows did (I had XP as well as the Betas of Vista) and better
(to most the big turn on was Compiz and various eye candy :)). To this end
it was very much a success and I even started converting roomates and a
professor. This is my only boast for the VAGUE community but I try.
I have always been very quiet in this community but read everything that
comes through until now. Honestly I appreciate everything you are all trying
to do for Ubuntu but I would like to express my opposition to it becoming a,
more or less, Ubuntu shop.
-Christopher Nyberg
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: Would not be a memeber of a club that would have me...
I think one of the biggest things to overcome in trying to get schools to
use anything other than Windows is the community impression that students
need to learn about what's most common. It's the reason that in our labs
at
CCV we have Windows and MS Office and Visual Studio and whatnot.
Personally
I'm a fan of open source and of the Mac. But the fundamental element of
having to convince people you're teaching the students something
worthwhile
drives what's in our labs.
I guess my suggestion for primary/secondary schools would be to find ways
to
demonstrate how easy, inexpensive, robust, safe, and workable Linux is to
both students AND parents. Otherwise you could end up with the student
feeling it might be okay, and then the parent who knows nothing but that
their home PC came with Vista saying that the school isn't teaching
anything
useful because the student is learning this "Linux" thing instead of the
way
computers really work.
If you could do that, then by the time they're ready for post-secondary
schools, we might even be able to use Linux and OpenOffice in our labs
because people would be asking for it. ;-)
And on the other piece of this topic, I'd just as soon the VAGUE list not
become an Ubuntu list, so to speak. I personally prefer CentOS. Although
I
did just download the Puppy Linux someone mentioned earlier.
--
Tony Harris
Assistant CTO
Community College of Vermont
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(802) 241-3535
Dwirze skí, évárre kólex.
(One by one droplets, eventually an ocean.)
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On 8/2/07 3:37 PM, "Dan French" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
The other day I decided to jump in and help start a Vermont Ubuntu Loco.
Josh
pointed me to the VAGUE list. I am a Vermont school superintendent and
have
been using Ubuntu as my primary operating system for two years. I like
the
way LTSP has been integrated into Ubuntu.
I am concerned Vermont schools are about to make a poor choice in
investing in
Vista. I have been working to promote FOSS/Linux to Vermont
superintendents
and Vermont schools. To that end, I would appreciate your advice on how
to
promote the use of Linux in our schools.
Dan French
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Josh Sled <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
