Do college students use Linux?

[SZF2001]

In this day and age, a lot of people are going to end up on one computer or another, I suppose. Rather it be a laptop or desktop, kids need to study.

Here is my question - are there a bunch of college kids running Linux, or is the general average Joe still going to be using Windows? No offense to them, of course, they are just sticking to what they know.

I was just curious about the subject - it would be neat to meet other people using Ubuntu or Mandrake, maybe Fedora, you know. I bet there are some classes I could take, too...

[reckless2k2]

there was a post recently out about this. it seems only IT related schools are using and or supporting linux. most schools across the country are not supporting it and therefore the students are not using it.

[Allysan]

I'm the only one I know currently running Linux exclusively. I've got both a desktop and a laptop, and the desktop serves as my "leisure" computer as well as a sort of small file server, while the laptop is my schoolwork computer. I've got a shared partition on the desktop and the only things I have left to do are to get 3d acceleration and remote desktop working (it never seems to want to load for some odd reason).

[tubasoldier]

there was a post recently out about this. it seems only IT related schools are using and or supporting linux. most schools across the country are not supporting it and therefore the students are not using it.

Boise State University has a Linux install fest every semester. Fedora Linux is supported and used. But anyone is free to install whatever they want.

[SomeGuyDude]

One thing stopping me from using Linux was that the University of Pittsburgh did not support the OS, so there was no easy way to get the thing online. You had to use xsupplicant and that was just torture.

For the 2007/2008 year, the school scrapped the old company that they used for network authentication and went with one that made it remarkably easy to login using Linux. Presto Change-o, now I'm using it here at the university.

There's a (very) small Facebook group of Linux users here, although there is an enormous Ubuntu global group.

[Griff]

I go to University of Florida and I use linux as do a lot of people (by a lot I mean a few in computer science/ computer engineering). We have a few labs that run only linux (suse) and others that run SunOS. And of course there are mac and windows labs everywhere.

[HotShotDJ]

I'm a graduate student and I use Linux. No Windows partition.

[gnp421]

I'm in my final year of college, I'm getting a degree in Electronics Engineering with a concentration in Computer/Digital Systems. I also just got hired to maintin the Solaris machines at my campus. The campus is Mostly windows based and almost everyone uses it. There are the occassional linux users but mostly windows. Mac users has increased and the school recently upgraded the cisco clean access program. I can connect to my schools WPA2 encrypted wireless simply using my login name and password. Everything is done with Domain user accounts so no biggie.I also talked to alot of people and most companies in teh field use windows but make you ssh and launch an xterm window from a linux server.

[ericesque]

I've been writing my final two college papers in Ubuntu for the last two weeks

I saw a thread earlier that had a poll for what age linux users are out there. The largest range was 18-24 or something like that. Prime college years there.

[tchotchke]

There's a large-ish linux following in my college, probably because it is a tech school. but windows is still the norm of course.