[seul-edu] Re: M$ Audits (long) [was Re: MS targeting...]

[Michael Shigorin <mike@lic145.kiev.ua>]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 09:16:16AM -0400, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
> hardware and becoming the premier Linux vendor (after all, their latest 
> incarnation is just the Mac GUI on top of UNIX/Linux, distributed on 
They build on top of Mach+FreeBSD.  Pretty dumb solution as to me
-- they've spent too much effort tossing glossy covers on a
bulldozer and the result isn't that great, people say MacOS9
forever (at least here).

> It seems to me, from what I have seen thus far in education, that the 
> majority of use is a web browser, email client, and M$ productivity 
...definitely counter-productivity as to me...

> software (Word, Excel, etc.).  The productivity software is the real 
Well, so I'd recommend:
(no-problem-with-400MHz/64M)
OpenOffice+Mozilla. Web, email, office, uniform, compatible.
Somewhat slow.

(old-hardware-but-has-its-166MHz/32M)
OO and Mozilla run here too, but if performance is more important
than M$-compliance and uniformity, I'd recommend trying Gnumeric
(well, it would cope with xls), LyX (no-.doc -- but I can't
recommend AbiWord for wholeheartedly), Galeon or Skipstone as a
browser, and Balsa/Sylpheed as a mail client.

(definitely-old-486s)
Would better go as X-terminals (for said LTSP, for example).
Note that OO is not best-fitting for networked operation, so look
at the previous items to select from.  Well, not only from :-)

> Imagine a school system that decides to go Linux and what they would 
> face!  Even if they were completely self contained (i.e., Star Office for 
> everyone in the district and the municipality itself), they couldn't afford 
> the UNIX/Linux talent to keep the whole thing running.  Forgive me for 
Why, crews work ;)  And talented children are *always* around.
Give them some kind of reward for overall uptime/accesibility --
and they'll crunch wonders out of the network and hardware :-)
Surely, that should be combinated with some form of
responsibility.  BTW such process trains by far the most valuable
skills school can give its little techies -- by giving real
problems and real victories.

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/