I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)

  • jcs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    7 days ago

    Linux has been ready for some time within various educational programs, but maybe you are referring to relatively early education curriculum in public schools? The general anecdotes I’ve heard from teachers within a variety of grade levels in the USA (mostly elementary and high school levels, but some doctoral engineering/scientific as well) convey that the largest hurdles to overcome are:

    1. Teaching the teachers. Teachers are usually very smart and capable, but are often chronically overworked, overstressed, and underpaid for their labor. They have limited mental bandwidth in learning new tech workflows while having the added obligation of teaching these workflows to students which may be at an attention/interest deficit.
    2. Challenging the status quo at the administrative level. Schools often receive incentives, grants, steep discounts, etc, for installing certain types of hardware or software packages. The software baselines of some schools are restricted at the district level; many public libraries are restricted by the city/county. Perhaps the best approach here is to install Linux as a “secondary” option (similar to how a smaller number of e.g. Macs may be installed in a computer lab comprised mostly of Windows computers) until it’s more widely adopted.
    3. Advocating for equivalent Linux support for popular proprietary software. This is especially true for the creative design community, such as graphic design and professional music production. Adobe is usually the target of criticism here; Linux does not currently hold enough market share to capture Adobe’s attention while their patrons usually have unwavering brand loyalty or are unwilling to make any tooling/workflow compromises as to maintain their livelihood.
    4. FOSS-friendly awareness campaigns. Showing people that they can remain productive while not being at the mercy of Big Tech. Not using public funds for private industry.
    5. Feature parity case studies compared to proprietary options.
    6. Overcoming the stereotype that Linux is only for techy people, shrouded by gatekeepers, or subject to drama/infighting.
  • Avieshek@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    I was thinking of Pop!_OS but also heard about NixOS that could be even run on Mid-2012 MacBook Pro.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      2·
      6 days ago

      I have run both EndeavourOS and Chimera Linux on both 2009 and 2013 MacBook Pros. You would be amazed how well they run.

  • Dimi Fisher@lemmy.world
    218·
    7 days ago

    Man seriously aren’t you happy with the 2% of users that use Linux right now?, I m telling you for certain, if Linux bites a larger piece of that pie Microsoft is munching for decades, their coders will unleash an influx of any kind of viruses to show how “shitty” Linux are, I really feel safe to be on that 2%, let people find their own way.

    • Avieshek@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      7 days ago

      These are the type of fans that the original Linus creator Linus Trovalds himself called toxic and the reason behind hampering Linux growth to average users.

      • Dimi Fisher@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 days ago

        And by the way I m not a fan of anything, I just want to do my job quietly and without too much hustle, I hope I am understood

    • lambda_notation@lemmy.ml
      1·
      7 days ago

      Is the linux kernel and gnu userland a bastion of security? Of course not, but it is still magnitude orders better than M$ counterparts for a multitude of reasons. Not even M$ runs windows as a baseplate on Azure. It is a net positive for humanity if more people and orgs ran linux based operating systems.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
    35·
    8 days ago

    Woohoo, some hacker kid is about to install Sober and Prism and will be the hero for everyone.

    My kid’s elementary school has a computer club handling all the PCs. The other day they were surprised to hear that the PCs they were playing GCompris, Ktuberling, Pingus, Super Tux, Tuxpaint and Tux Kart on are running Linux.

    • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      25·
      8 days ago

      another example of: one of the best ways to teach children is to trick them.
      try to force them to use linux and the terminal? booooring, hell no….
      give them linux computers without games?
      they’re 1337 haxors in two weeks… with skills that will help them for life….
      especially if they ever get locked in a building with velociraptors….

      • grillgamesh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        14·
        8 days ago

        that’s how I learned firewalls and networking lmao

        couldn’t access my games, so I found ways around the firewalls and network blocks, just to play on coolmathgames lmao

        • corvi@lemm.ee
          11·
          8 days ago

          Same. School firewall blocked based on host names, so we all learned a lot about the hosts file so we could manually set all of the IPs Minecraft needed to authenticate.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
        4·
        8 days ago

        Or they’ll install portable versions of Minecraft so many times they’ll decide to learn how to remove -rubbishfiles from root

        • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          4·
          8 days ago

          my dad gave me permission to break the family computer as much as i wanted, and he would just take it to work and reinstall everything from an image….
          now i can fix computer problems

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
          4·
          8 days ago

          I prefer removing the -french language pack on every install. The command comes with a typo though, so you need to fix that for it by adding /* at the end

      • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        This is how (at least elder) millennials learned everything they know about technology. It’s the only way imo

      • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        Hmm I was clearly too well behaved. Most of my knowledge of computers came through wanting to program them to do cool stuff, not bypass restrictions. The cheatiest thing I can remember doing is copying a cool puzzle game from the school computer onto a flash drive so I could play it at home, so I guess I did it backwards?

        • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          6·
          8 days ago

          my dad told me like 5 dos commands, gave me permission to do whatever or break whatever on the home computer his work provided, told me there was some games on there but he didn’t know where… and i figured out the rest pretty much… whenever i broke it he’d just take it to work and bring it back fixed.
          this was back in the wild wild west, where the hospital IT had one master hard drive image, and people threw random games and programs on there…
          i was always surprised how ok he was with me breaking it weekly, but looking back on it i think he was proud…
          i was really lucky in that i had free reign on yearly updated computers, starting on dos when i had just learned how to read, and growing up with that through all the versions of windows…
          i mean, i hate microsoft and all, but i just think it’s crazy all of these people have super computers in their pockets and are afraid of the terminal….
          it’d be hard to start a kid on the terminal first now, when they can use a touch screen in the crib….
          my first computer didn’t even have pictures, but the next one did…

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      5·
      8 days ago

      That’s one of the great things about switching to Linux … it forces you to learn something new and for kids that is a very good thing.

      All those kids in the school that OP described were getting stagnant in a settled environment of living in Windows … now that they have Linux in front of them, they will go on to learn how to subvert the system under Linux. It’s not a bad thing in my opinion, it will create a whole crop of kids who now know how to fool around with Windows AND Linux.

      I wish someone would have introduced me to Linux when I was kid.

      • Ace120C@sopuli.xyzOP
        3·
        8 days ago

        yeah, that’s hopefully what I hope to happen, perhaps raising a generation of kids on linux will help linux to grow in marketshare!

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      2·
      8 days ago

      For what it’s worth, the school computers in my school weren’t running Linux and they had Tuxpaint installed. Even proprietary OS users benefit from FOSS.

  • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
    34·
    7 days ago

    I’ve actually been using linux with older customers for years. It solves several problems. First, it lets them get more life out of their older machines. Second, its free. Third, the kind of malware that targets linux systems isnt really a factor for little old man on facebook. Finally, when scammers call, they cant establish credibility with my customers. They get in, remote access barely works thanks to wayland not liking their tools yet. The entire system looks different and the commands are different so they dont understand how it works but the customer does. So the scam falls apart where they try to prove they know what they are talking about because they cant use the terminal properly. It always ends the same way. My customers get suspicious and say “I’m going to call my computer guy” and the hang up.

    This trick has been successful for years and my users are very happy not to have to deal with microsoft’s bullshit. The fact that it confuses the hell out of scammers is just a nice bonus.

    • Ace120C@sopuli.xyzOP
      13·
      7 days ago

      its always funny to see scammers struggle with bash, I remember seeing a video about that and its so funny

  • Alaknár@lemm.ee
    367·
    7 days ago

    I love Linux. I’m running Linux and love the experience.

    But…

    i7-4970 i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em

    What in the world are you talking about, man??

    Even ignoring the silliness of the “bloat” - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.

    I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons

    So… No, you didn’t stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google “linux roblox how to” and 20 minutes later they’re good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?

    does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

    Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It’s completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that’s SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you’d be dealing with.

      • Alaknár@lemm.ee
        131·
        7 days ago

        Yeah, I guess I sound a bit aggressive. That wasn’t the intention. I just get an allergic reaction when I see the “Linux is just better than Windows now!” stuff. It is - in some scenarios. In others it’s worse. Someone who wants to do IT (and it kinda’ sounds like OP’s heading there) needs to understand that.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
      9·
      7 days ago

      There are many ways to skin the cat for centralized login in Linux, including using Samba-AD or just LDAP.

      Patching is IMO less fun. Landscape can work for Ubuntu but it’s finicky, and I haven’t really found anything satisfactory (FOSS) for patch management if multiple Debian systems. Setting up “unattended-upgrades” does tend to handle most of it but that doesn’t give centralized control or visibility.

      • Alaknár@lemm.ee
        3·
        7 days ago

        It’s honestly extremely surprising to me that there aren’t still any proper FOSS solutions that handle this. Is it because it’s super difficult to do? I’ve no idea, but it’s definitely something that’s preventing a lot of businesses to switch over.

        • phx@lemmy.ca
          3·
          6 days ago

          A lot of people use automation systems etc. They work, but don’t provide the same GUI/reports you might see from RHS or Windows patching systems.

          I too was surprised at how sparse or apparently kludged-together the pickings were.

    • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      7 days ago

      SCCM is on life support. Microsoft wants everyone to use autopilot now and many places cant or wont use cloud shit. I actually worked for a place that couldn’t use it for legal reasons.

      We set up a FOG server and that was that. Fuck the cloud.

      • Alaknár@lemm.ee
        5·
        7 days ago

        Just FYI - SCCM is not the Autopilot equivalent, it’s the Intune equivalent. Intune’s Autopilot is, kind of, what Task Sequence is in SCCM.

        As far as “life support” goes - it’s full featured. Security updates are still coming in, not much else they can add feature-wise in there.

        As for the cloud - everything has its uses. Cloud is great if you don’t want to deal with all the bare-metal stuff. It allows one person to do the work of four, with the trade-off being that you lose some of the fine-tuning, control, or optimisation. As the saying goes: “the ‘s’ in 'Intune” stands for ‘speed’".

        Don’t fuck the cloud. Just use it when it’s better than on-prem.

        • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          7 days ago

          The cloud has one plus in modern infrastructure. It gives you someone else to blame for shit breaking. My old boss told worded it best. “I want just one throat to choke”

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    241·
    7 days ago

    Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)

    Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.

  • Xatolos@reddthat.com
    192·
    7 days ago

    so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

    No, not for elementary/HS. You have to understand that schools aren’t regular users. They will have 2 top priorities:

    1. Hardware vender support. There isn’t any vendor that can/does support the volume and pricing that a school will do. While some major vendors are starting to offer Linux pre-installed, they aren’t apart of their educational vendor options.
    2. They need to have a “drag and drop” security suite. Schools don’t have large/well skilled IT department, so they rely on security suites that “tick off all the boxes”. This allows them an excuse is suddenly little Timmy has porn on their school computers. (This is one of those reasons ChromeOS is becoming so popular. They can issue a device, have the student only have a Google Workspace for Education account, and then walk away. Easy and simple. And yes, there are many websites that can tell you how to get around it, but then the school gets to turn around and claim the student “hacked” it and is in violation of rules X, Y, and Z to which the parent can also be held responsible.)

    Until these two issues are solved, Linux won’t be ready for the public education sector. (When the parent issues the device, all rules are gone since it’s up to the parent what limits to place, and all the school will say is that the device must be able to run programs X, Y, and Z.)

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      7 days ago

      Schools in India already use Ubuntu. To be fair we benefit from having some local manufacturing assembling. There’s usually no security beyond whatever linux offers by default.

    • Littux@lemmy.world
      7·
      7 days ago

      Every government school here uses Linux. And there’s no security (password is “password” even for root account). The only reason it works is because everyone has common sense on what they shouldn’t do. The worst any kid could do is visit a “bad” site on a browser because no one knows how to do anything else.

      Even the exam software assumes you don’t know how things in Linux works:

      • The scores and answers are stored in simple non-encrypted SQLite3 databases at a directory in /usr/share.
      • During the exam, the panel for launching applications is hidden, so you can’t cheat on questions like “What does this tool do in GIMP?” by opening GIMP. But you can just do Ctrl + Alt + T to launch the Terminal and Alt + Tab to switch to it.

      I easily qualified for a State level competition where the education minister visited and had big news agencies visiting that made up a lot of nonsense. You can probably guess what the average student will be like from this

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
      4·
      7 days ago

      Linux is kind of sort is already in elementary and high school use. Schools in my state are often issuing Chromebooks to students for use. They are cheap, easy to manage and get support for, and can do the things students need to do. And the only ones really using all those old Macs that infest schools are the teachers. Though in my local school, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades are using iPads but switch to Chromebooks in 5th grade.

      One can complain about google being evil all you want, but they do offer all the free tools schools and teachers and students need for their lessons.And if COVID taught schools anything it was that we could teach classes online if necessary-- no more snow days.

    • pulido@lemmings.world
      3·
      8 days ago

      Principal*

      Not being pedantic, just thought I’d let you and others know there are multiple ways to spell this word.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        8 days ago

        I will be pedantic. There is only one way to spell each word; principal and principle are different words (though they share a root).

    • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      They’re often having to juggle with very low budgets, old equipment, low skill and zero support. And that’s before you add children…

      I don’t doubt they jumped at the chance of someone helping out.

  • Biyoo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    16·
    7 days ago

    And if they learn about wine and lutris and manage to install Roblox, they’ll probably get more out of it than by listening to the class in the first place !

    I learned so much by circumventing the school security stuff. I probably wouldn’t be in IT if not for the parental control limitations and school network blocks

    • vandsjov@feddit.dk
      8·
      7 days ago

      Back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days, they tried to lock it down with whatever software they had. We found a way around it. Even the DOS based menu system, we managed to copy the menu software out with its configuration file. Then we experimented with the “encrypted” password in the configuration file and found out that if we removed it, the system would allow you to do anything but that also meant we could create our own password and look at the “encrypted” password. We quickly found out that it was just shifting the ASCII table. We then “decrypted” the school password. Such 12 your old hackers 😆