How to Sell Linux to Schools

Ken and JaseP.....yes, fully agree..But there is another aspect that continues to "niggle" at my perception of the "Linux in Schools" problem. Ultimately, I think that the contents of the school curricula are driven by the needs of the school product users, ie. the employers.

If business begins to demand that employees have some knowledge of Linux, I think schools will be forced to accomodate this need. And there is slow but general acceptance of the security, stability and low cost of Linux in the business server area. Also, you need only to think of the New York and London stock exchanges to see how the world of commerce is slowly switching to Linux. The LSE move to reject the much slower and unstable Win platform and replace it with a Linux based platform was so important that there were even hints of some type of sabotage to force a return to Windows when some major glitches during in the swap-over. I can't remember the figures but the use of Linux dramatically increased the rate of transactions of the LSE and other stock exchanges will have to follow if they wish to remain competitive.

There are lots of straws in the wind that suggest that such a business need is being slowly established. Things like internet servers, Android, HP and WebOS, embedded systems on tv's/videoplayers etc. We often tend to think only in terms of the baseline computer desktop running Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu or "summat", and even there huge advances are being made: for instance in the French police, Brazil, S Africa and others too numerous to mention. There's also other noises being made like the recent move by the UK govt. to insist that FOSS software must now be considered fully in software tenders for govt. use; and of course, Putin has now mandated that Russia is to move completely to Linux - that will be one to watch. Each of these is a tiny step true, but they are steps forward even if it so blankety blank frustratingly slow, but the demand for Linux trainees will increase steadily, and ultimately it has to affect the school curricula. Part of the problem is that educational curricula developers are notoriously conservative and they are Microsoft trained. It is an enormous blockage in the system.

I think the final proof that FOSS/Linux is slowly winning the war is that Microsoft seems to be establishing new income policies: litigation and royalties. Just in case the use of WinOS and Office diminish. I also note a side news item on Groklaw in that Microsoft is actually "trying on" a situation somewhere round the world in which they are saying that it is a sort of piracy if only Linux is installed on a computer without a licence and if their software is pre-installed then there will be licence. Right - confused ? So am I, but it actually happened. The unilateral steps by HP to include WebOS on all HP computers is a classic instance of how a big company is beginning to view Microsoft absolute dominance as an encumbrance not a plus.

Oh look......I don't think Linux in schools will suddenly and dramatically happen for most cases, but if you marvellous people don't continue to erode Microsoft's dominance and put Linux in front of young people, it never will. And Linux will come to the desktop, of that I am convinced, even if Australian governments remain followers and keep their heads firmly............ummmm.......in the sand. What eventually reaches the school desktops may be called by any name other than Linux (I mean to say, Linux is so hard to use and only meant for geeks), but Android is proving conclusively that anyone can use Linux.....And smartphones reach most of the youngsters today.

I remain quietly confident !!!!!!!!!

I have been working in schools in the north of Canada for the last 14 years. Most of them do not even have an IT department except the computer teacher. That makes a much more fertile ground for GNU/Linux. The last place where I worked had only half its XP machines running when I arrived. When I left it had twice as many PCs and 95% of them ran GNU/Linux. These were all machines that would have been pitiful with 7 and were sad with XP.

Selling points for GNU/Linux in schools:

1)New software without having to upgrade hardware. Using old machines as X-terminals works. They get better than new performance from a new GNU/Linux terminal server with the big files cached and RAID/huge RAM.

2)Local services - WordPress, PHPbb, Wikimedia, Gallery, etc are all excellent for what schools do. It is much more efficient for schools to build local content than to buy it or have each teacher buying separately. Students can grow with their content from Early Years to graduation. The information contributed by teachers and staff accumulates and remains useful instead of filling filing boxes. Content is SAFEr than random stuff from the web. Search with Swish-e or Google Desktop are wonderful tools to combine with all the content hundreds of students, teachers, cameras and scanners can contribute.

3)No slowing down, malware, re-re-reboots, etc. In the last school, not a single teacher or student preferred "7" although many accepted XP as "normal". That changed when they saw the snap of GNU/Linux on the same hardware. 2X faster boots. 5X faster logins.

4)The flexibility of sending software home, cloning systems, or installing new applications instantly from a huge repository like Debian's is appealing to schools who normally have to go under the "petty cash" radar or through a multi-year proposal, budget, purchase order process. With GNU/Linux one can identify a package and install it on most systems without a reboot or licensing or budgetary issues.

The big school divisions do have a weakness, their budgets. Invariably will come budget-crunches. That is the best time to ask that a division should migrate to FLOSS, to keep older hardware running like new or better on FLOSS. 90%+ of their budgets go to teachers' salaries. In a crunch there usually is no alternative but to cut teachers. It is hardest to justify shipping big bucks to M$ at a time like that. The usual response of IT is to freeze new acquisitions. The choice of getting better than new performance from older hardware instead of the steady deterioration of XP is powerful. The way around IT blockage is either through grassroots/taxpayers' revolt or getting the attention of board members who are elected and are supposed to be responsive to taxpayers. Demanding the amount going to non-free software licences be a line-item is a good first step. Assuming that other OS is free has to go. They cannot pinch pennies on other line-items and ignore licensing. Another approach is to insist on competitive bidding on services rather than particular products. ie. budget/procure personal computers systems rather than "7" PCs. Even then M$ will provide school divisions considering GNU/Linux free licences (see EDGI). Respond with all software included with GNU/Linux, particularly on servers of which M$ has little to offer and side by side performance tests. FLOSS can win on flexibility and performance.