Re: [seul-edu] Re: [school-discuss] our saga continues in jefferson parish

[jeff williams <cfiaime@nconnect.net>]

On Wednesday 14 August 2002 07:46 am, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 20:16, tompoe@renonevada.net wrote:
> > Hi: What's the M$ license cost for Jefferson Parish?  If it's more than
> > $1 million, they probably want to listen to Open Source and it's
> > beautiful melody.  <grin>
>
> Not if it involves changeover costs (retraining, re-eqipping, buying Linux
> equivalents for apps). They'd be caught between Scylla and Charybdis.

Hi,

I don't know about teachers, but my university students (mostly freshmen and 
sophmores) can pick up Linux enough for basic tasks in under an hour.  Yes, 
the systems administrators need to be trained, but a surprising number 
already have Unix / Linux experience.

There are essentially no re-equipping costs associated with Linux.  Indeed, a 
good 486 runs Linux nicely.  I've even got KDE running very, very well on a 
32 mb 486DX-4/100.  Sound drivers may be a hassle, but even that tends not to 
be a problem on older machines.

As for buying Linux equivalents for applications... this is Open Source.  Yes, 
free is as in freedom, but many applications are free as in cost.  The 
educational license for StarOffice 6.0 allows a school district to equip 
every system with the software for $25.  That's not per computer, that is for 
the district.  But I would look at OpenOffice in stead.

So, the bottom line for a cut over to Linux... system administrator time.  If 
these people are salaried, there should be no increase in cost.  Teacher 
training... should be within the same training budget as currently exists.  
Re-entry of current M$ format documents... $0.00 because there are a number 
of Linux apps that read M$ file formats.

Final note.  In our computer science labs at Concordia University Wisconsin, 
we re-install Windows 2000 on at least one system (via cloning) each week 
becasue of corruption caused by multiple users on a given system.  We have 
not re-installed Linux (RH 7.1) since the original installation.  Oh, I did 
upgrade our server (a Pentium II/350 running Slackware) because some newer 
tools were not available on the older Slackware.  We really weren't planning 
on upgrading from Slackware 7.0 until next summer.

Are there costs associated with removing M$ products and replacing with Linux?  
Sure, but the savings are enormous.
-- 
jeff williams - cfiaime@nconnect.net
                jeff.williams@cuw.edu