I partly dispute that. When it comes to Maths and Sciences subjects by having Linux you have the high end tools to display to students some of the software they will end up using if the go on. So they don’t think that Sciences and Maths are doing missives amounts of paperwork all the time because there are automated tools. It also gives the teach more ways to display what they are talking about that can make the difference between a student getting it and not getting it.

Yes those old 9x or otherwise deprecated machines due to the advantages Linux machines can provide to many subjects should not be left not converted.

Not saying get rid of windows from schools here. But schools need wake up particular professions will be using Linux and since they do there tools are only the best on Linux.

Linux is used in high end business yet when you get in schools you find them Windows only. There is kinda a major disconnect here.

The place where GNU/Linux shines brightest in education is in computer science/technology. The flexibility of the licence permits students to practise installations without regard to budgets or EULAs. That’s priceless. There are many schools that have official policies prohibiting students from installing anything. With GNU/Linux, that’s just silly. Students can install an OS and configure desktops and servers easily in a class and really learn about networking, software, and hardware. Without that flexibility those are forbidden fruit. It’s very expensive to have to use a separate LAN for a lab to maintain a stable of paid licences that are only used briefly and not for production and to record all those damned “certificates of authenticity” and to allow “phoning home”.

In other areas, GNU/Linux is not as bountiful in education but at least GNU/Linux gets out of the way and lets students and teachers use the hardware to its best capability. For example, I was in a school that had recently replaced the units in the lab. A huge stack of Lose ’98 machines were piled up in storage getting in the way and Lose ’98 was forbidden to be on the LAN because it could bypass “security” on an XP/2003 LAN. I put them to work as clusters of thin clients and thick clients in the high school classrooms and used GNU/Linux under the radar to shift work from the lab to classrooms where students could now use IT any time they needed it without regard to the schedule of the lab. As it turned out the high school students only needed the lab rarely so it was freed up for elementaries. All of that benefit stemmed from the GPL because no licences had to be requisitioned, budgetted and approved.

Math and Linux work does overlap. Particularly if you are on a tight budget Octave replaces Matlab. Sage that is a nicer front end gets nasty windows version is Linux in a vmware virtual machine you can gets how that performs. Badly yet Sage works great on a true decent sized Linux server its designed to provide by web to many users. So a Linux server in the school at a min kinda has a place.

Foreign languages this is something were Linux can be good due to the fact you can change between countries on the fly without any issues. So they can now be doing there class work using software in the Foreign Language so getting more prac at using it. MS breaking stuff by region has been a problem doing this with Windows.

Chemistry Linux again does very well http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~noel/linux4chemistry/

Sport, draw, paint not so much. But then again a windows computer is not much use in those subjects either.

iLia really for education there are areas where Linux is truly great and it truly sux. Interesting point is they are mostly mirrors of each other. What windows is good at Linux sux and What Linux is good at Windows sux.

So really best education will come by having the means to use the right OS for the right class.

Maths, Chemistry most sciences in fact Linux since you will have some very powerful tools due to sciences using supercomputers to crunch numbers. That can make the class way more interesting having a dynamic display instead of a static.

Language due to Linux not having regional locking. Of course some of commercial software you have could be windows.

iLia so really a school running not running Linux at all the students are getting a second rate education. Teachers really did not have all the tool options they should have had. Of course you can claim the same of a school running just Linux.

iLia remember using Linux students can go as far as having stuff to send to a cloud or to send to a super for processing. Its even possible using Linux clustering of crap to give your school a temporary cluster. These clusters can be used for 3d animation work and other advanced stuff as well the school cannot afford todo just with the windows solution.

iLia Linux gives the schools options they would not afford. Price matlab for instance that Octave replaces. Students using Octave can use Octave or Matlab. So Students could be skilled in using one of the high end tools by the end of highschool.

Items like Octave are normally not as stable on Windows mostly because they are more well tested on Linux and other supercomputer OSs.

It is just works, you don’t need to tweak it to make work well.

GNU/Linux on the other hand empowers students to install stuff, create web pages and web applications and databases…

You wanna say that it is impossible on Windows? I did all of it, with no problems.

And why you decided that all students want to develop web-applications? Many students want to learn foreign languages, math, chemistry, do sports, draw, paint, sing.

Why to push system administrating on them?

Correct. It was designed as the successor to Windows 2000 and introduced 10 years ago. Why is it still such an obsession with you, Mr. Pogson?

Have you ever seen a later version of Windows? There have been 2 and a third is almost here.

I give away used computers with Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian at times to those less fortunate.

Students should be learning “REAL” computer science, sadly they are taught how to create M$ documents basically.

The whole affair may be more a reflection of the community of one school than anything about IT. Why are new ideas attacked? Isn’t teaching students to think, create and solve problems one of the objectives of the school. Cannot the school “eat its own dogfood”?

XP certainly was not designed for education but the extreme flexibility of GNU/Linux means it can be adapted for any use. The school where I rolled out GNU/Linux “cold turkey” over the summer loved it with very little massaging of student/teacher sentiments. They got IT that worked fantastically well compared to what they had been using which was XP on a small number of PCs. The benefits of faster systems on five times as many seats was obvious to all and on top of that we gave them local databases on which to build/collaborate.

If only his zeal could be channeled into something more worthwhile such as helping the poor.

Most want simply to get to a useful level of being able to use the applications available to them and being able to satisfy the competency tests for would be employers.

Computer science at such an esoteric level has no place in general education, particularly at the high school level.