Your school and Linux.

[dragos240]

What does your school think about Linux? School meaning, the tech people, the administration (principal), and teachers. Me? My high school is fine with it, seeing as it's website uses centos, the samba server running debian, and the grading program running under debian. Soon I will get an internship with the tech office. They use Linux for work, so at least some people know what I'm talking about. My situation may not be the one your in. So I ask again, what does your school think about Linux?

[lukjad]

They differ, but mostly they think it's a joke or mostly useless as a desktop.

[dragos240]

That sucks. At least my school is open minded.

[Old Marcus]

My college uses SuSe Enterprise for it's servers, which is good, but XP for all the terminals. It does however have Firefox, GIMP and Openoffice installed alongside IE, MS Office and PS (in some rooms), mainly for cost reasons. A fair few classmates dabble around with linux, although not many use it as their main system that I know of.

[dragos240]

That's good.

[schauerlich]

My high school's tech department basically consisted of one guy who went around and fixed computers. He was really smart, but mostly a Windows guy. He had some basic knowledge of Unix, and didn't have a particularly strong opinion on it that I heard. The rest of the computers teachers weren't techies at all, and just knew enough to teach the courses they needed to teach (on OS X).

My university's CS department, however, uses Linux extensively. The main servers that students are allowed to use run Fedora, as do the computer labs in the engineering buildings.

[RiceMonster]

It's used for the IT programs at my College (mostly networking but often for programming as well). It isn't really used on desktops though. Mostly in VMs and on the servers the students have access to. They use RHEL.

[lukjad]

That sucks. At least my school is open minded.
I worked on them. At least one now is impressed by Ubuntu.

[dragos240]

I worked on them. At least one now is impressed by Ubuntu.

It's always good to spread Linux. Good job.

[lukjad]

:D Thanks.

[ZankerH]

Mathematics/Computer science uni here, most of the professors use GNU/Linux for their presentations, and all courses use cross-platform software - we're allowed to hand in our work in OpenDocument, dvi or PDF, the uni provides cross-platform Mathematica licences, and in the programming classes, the assistants mostly used debian and vim.

In my case, it's the students that are the close-minded ones - most of them bring laptops with windows, and many of them had trouble grasping the concept of free and Free software.

[dragos240]

That doesn't supprise me.

[kavon89]

Yea, in my university, some IT and programming classes are taught on Linux machines either running RHEL or Fedora. Personal machines running Linux are also well supported.

Just found out there's a teaching lab with some monstrous hardware all running RHEL. Each system has two dual-core 3Ghz opterons with 16GB ram. :o

[NoaHall]

Yea, in my university, some IT and programming classes are taught on Linux machines either running RHEL or Fedora. Personal machines running Linux are also well supported.

Just found out there's a teaching lab with some monstrous hardware all running RHEL. Each system has two dual-core 3Ghz opterons with 16GB ram. :o

Not really monstrous. I have that much ram.

[dragos240]

yea, in my university, some it and programming classes are taught on linux machines either running rhel or fedora. Personal machines running linux are also well supported.

Just found out there's a teaching lab with some monstrous hardware all running rhel. Each system has two dual-core 3ghz opterons with 16gb ram. :o

16 gb !?!?!??!?!!??!?!???!!!!?????

[kavon89]

Not really monstrous. I have that much ram.

Ha, well I think it is since my laptop can only support 4GB and I've never seen it get past 50%! However, do you have two cpus? :P

[SomeGuyDude]

University of Pittsburgh was pretty good with Linux as of a few years ago, at least with Ubuntu. In Arch you had to run some goofy script to make it work with the cable, although the wireless worked just fine.

[NoaHall]

Ha, well I think it is since my laptop can only support 4GB and I've never seen it get past 50%! However, do you have two cpus? :P

Not anymore :) Used to, when I had a server.

[kavon89]

Not anymore :) Used to, when I had a server.

Not to derail the thread too much, but is it hard to build a multi-socket system? (how does the heatsink work?) I've always wanted to put 1k down on 2 or 4 cpu system so it'd last me a couple decades.

[ZankerH]

I've always wanted to put 1k down on 2 or 4 cpu system so it'd last me a couple decades.

Don't count on that. Think of it this way: What would you be able to do today with a top-of-the-line system from 1989? Because that's what you'll be able to do in ten years with today's top-of-the-line system - see Moore's Law.

Planned obsolescence is the name of the game. Buy cheap, buy often.

[Jguy]

My schools used Novell and Windows Server 2000 (I'm long out of school, so they might (and probably) have upgraded.

I had talked breifly with our IT lady at the school (I actually used to stay after school and help her out) about Linux and said it wasn't feasable as our school wasn't concerned about expanding students minds.

Oh well. My work is heading down the same road. Stuck using Winblows at work sucks. :P

[dragos240]

By the way. Are 'towers', desktop computers?

[NoaHall]

Not to derail the thread too much, but is it hard to build a multi-socket system? (how does the heatsink work?) I've always wanted to put 1k down on 2 or 4 cpu system so it'd last me a couple decades.

It's not worth it if you aren't going to run a server :) You'd be better off OCing or just buying a quad core CPU. You have two separate heatsinks(or mine did, not sure about newer ones).

Oh, and to the thread - we shall see. Our computers have OO.o and Firefox installed (or at least my account does, as I told the teacher that I used Linux, and therefore I don't use MS products at home), and I'll be informing my computing class on Monday about Linux and things.

[kavon89]

Don't count on that. Think of it this way: What would you be able to do today with a top-of-the-line system from 1989? Because that's what you'll be able to do in ten years with today's top-of-the-line system - see Moore's Law.

Point taken.

[Dark_Stang]

The majority of my school is Windows based. I'd have to say there are a few thousand Windows machines that the school owns. There are also several Mac labs at my school. Some of the Mac labs are triple booting OSX, Windows, and Linux. A lot of the servers run Linux, and there are several virtualization labs that are running Linux on all the machines. There are also a handful of Solaris machines floating around.

The students are encouraged to use whatever OS they want. Network wise, any operating system that supports WPA2 or a Cisco VPN will work just fine. Windows and Mac are officially supported by school's in house ITS department. Linux is unofficially supported by the heads of the ITS department, several computer science students, and some professors.

[NoaHall]

By the way. Are 'towers', desktop computers?

Yep.

[lukeiamyourfather]

When I was in high school (graduated in 2003) they were still using Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98 for the most part. Not that people were particular about using Windows, but nobody knew anything about Linux to even test it. Last semester before I graduated they started putting OpenOffice.org on some of the machines to test but that's about it. If I was in high school now I imagine they would be open to trying it in a few classrooms.

In college there were real needs to use Linux on the campus and especially in my degree, file servers, web servers, computer graphics workstations, etc. The network there was entirely Windows and asking the IT department for anything besides Windows XP was met with fierce opposition. It was very frustrating to say the least. I was really surprised to see that because it was part of a well known university system with over 10,000 students on that campus in many fields of study.

[Chronon]

I have no idea what kind of Linux my school uses. They used to have VMS on one server a while back. All of them seem to run some kind of Linux these days (at least the ones maintained by the Computing Center -- individuals can run whatever they like, of course).

Running uname on my shell account returns this:

[username@shell ~]$ uname -a
Linux shell 2.6.9-89.0.9.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Aug 19 08:06:10 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[username@shell ~]$

[hanzomon4]

I go to an art school and I'm sure you're already thinking that it's drowning in Apples. It is, but we have linux systems in strange places. The digital animation lab is full of Kubuntu boxes, shocked me when I first saw it. We also have a Virtual Reality thing that is run by OpenSuse and a Lambda printer that's run by a Tru64 Unix. The render servers for the Animation department are mostly headless but I do recall seeing one interface to it. I couldn't get to it at the time but I'll be sure to check it out eventually. Our servers I'm not sure, I know in the Photo Department they use Windows server. My Art Tech teacher uses Ubuntu and I use Ubuntu for most things except photo and video. I did use it for my micro controller class but the Arduino software stopped working, I can't get programs to upload.

So yeah, we got it all... I'm sure an Amiga is or has been in some department

[Tmi]

At my university it depends on which department. The building where the computer science department is has about half of all the computer labs as linux labs running debian.

When I started studying back in 2003 there were several Solaris labs in different buildnings, but those have either been replaced by debian or by windows since a few years back.
Back then we also had a mandatory computer exercise during the first week of studies in order to get an introduction to *nix. It was mostly basic terminal commands and getting familiar with the desktop (which was fluxbox :)).
We also got (not mandatory) introductory labs on using LaTeX and such.

As far as I know they don't have that stuff anymore so most students don't get the proper intoduction to it and thus choses the windows labs instead for all their work.

One would like to think that stuff like Linux should flourish on a technical university, but unfortunately it seems most students still are afraid to touch it.

Oh well, more available computers for me :)

[doorknob60]

Mine, well I think they just don't know about it. They use Windows Server and XP pro for the clients (until a few years ago they're gradually switching all the clients to OS X). Honestly I prefer the XP ones since I can do more stuff on them (Project64, etc. lol)

[xuCGC002]

I'm sad that I went from a middle school with a Red Hat-based server and Linux-friendly network to a strict Server 2003-based high school that only allows users of Internet Explorer to get into the proxy server. Also they require that you install LanSchool (Windows-only) on your computer if you plan to use it on their network.

[kavon89]

Running uname on my shell account returns this:

[username@shell ~]$ uname -a
Linux shell 2.6.9-89.0.9.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Aug 19 08:06:10 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[username@shell ~]$


I'd guess it's RHEL, and that kernel is from 2004.

EDIT: It definitely is RHEL 4.8

[dragos240]

I'd guess it's RHEL, and that kernel is from 2004.
:o

[gletob]

Well I know of one Comp Sci/ Math teacher that's a linux fan. Bt other than him and a few of my friends, no one knows a thing about linux. And the IT have it in their head's that the current ancient ScriptLogic setup (That later had Cisco Clean Access and Sophos integrated poorly) is doing everything just fine. And it's not.

I'm still wondering what reason they have for running new ethernet cabling, I looked at the old cable they had ripped out and it was CAT 5 UTP just like the new is. And in every room. Anyone got an explanation for that?

[kavon89]

I'm still wondering what reason they have for running new ethernet cabling, I looked at the old cable they had ripped out and it was CAT 5 UTP just like the new is. And in every room. Anyone got an explanation for that?

If they weren't just upgrading to Cat6, then maybe this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable#Low-end_cable_problem).

[aust77]

Lot of people at my school think Ubuntu is a joke, and they either run Windows or Mac.

[t0p]

I'm still wondering what reason they have for running new ethernet cabling, I looked at the old cable they had ripped out and it was CAT 5 UTP just like the new is. And in every room. Anyone got an explanation for that?

I expect someone said it needed replacing so he could make a profit by providing the replacement cable. Pretty standard practice with a certain breed of contractor.

I wish I could come across a skip (dumpster) full of cat5 cabling. My home could do with being hardwire networked throughout.

[Nemain]

We have CentOS on our computers (about 40 computers, computer linguistics program) and I'd guess the website's on some kind of Linux server thing :D As for the other computers I do not know, but I'd guess it's XP. Never really been that far away from our computers ;)

[fela]

don't go to school, I'm home educated :P

I don't use computers for my education really, apart from stuff like writing up my AS Spanish homework and stuff like that. Well, of course I also use computers for my computer education but that goes without saying - except I educate myself on that front, with Linux's help for sure!

[Marlonsm]

Mine doesn't really care about Linux, recently they've bought some new computers that came with Linux installed (some low-quality distro called Satux), the first thing they've done was to install Windows XP (yes, an almost-one-decade-old OS in new computers), and they even forgot to change the resolution of the screens, so that shiny new 22" are using 1024x768.

[Chronon]

I'd guess it's RHEL, and that kernel is from 2004.

EDIT: It definitely is RHEL 4.8

Thanks for the info.

They are running 2.6.18 on a different cluster which has Mathematica, Matlab, SPSS, etc.

There's no real reason to upgrade the server frequently if things are working.

[kavon89]

Thanks for the info.

They are running 2.6.18 on a different cluster which has Mathematica, Matlab, SPSS, etc.

There's no real reason to upgrade the server frequently if things are working.

2.6.18 was released with RHEL 5 and is most likely the only distro still using that kernel too. I agree with keeping the older yet fully maintained kernel for a production environment such as RHEL.

[PacSci]

My school doesn't have much of a Linux presence. There is one course about Linux - NOS 120, "Linux/Unix Single User". "This course develops the necessary skills for students to develop both GUI and command line skills for using and customizing a Linux workstation. Topics include Linux file system and access permissions, GNOME Interface, VI editor, X Window System expression pattern matching [sic - probably something got chopped out here], I/O redirection, network and printing utilities. Upon completion, students should be able to customize and use Linux systems for command line requirements and desktop productivity roles." Unsurprisingly, it's taught by an adjunct.

Beyond that, it's mostly Windows in classrooms, labs and library, though people in Photography and Design use Macs. Once my CIS 110 (intro computer course) teacher said that Linux is for nerds, an occurrence that my Mac-fan sister frequently reminds me of.

Occasionally, I pop in my tweaked Xubuntu Live CD when I need to get some real work done on some of the worse Windows boxen.

[aldld]

Most of my school has never even heard of Linux :(

[praveesh]

When I was in school, we studied windows. But at the time of my juniors, inspired by Mr Stallmann , the government changed the policy , and every where in the state, linux is being taught (custom debian) .

In my college, in the centralised computer centre, debian is being used. And for the study of c programming , linux terminal, gcc compiler etc are used

But Iam not sure what the teachers and others think about linux . I think many don't have good impression about linux due the ugly look of the Gnome in computer centre (it's debian stable and is not the latest stable version) . Atleast my friends don't have . When I get time, I go there and try to make them beautiful.

[note32]

i asked some of my teachers they replied "whats linux?"

[Tipped OuT]

Most of my school has never even heard of Linux :(


i asked some of my teachers they replied "whats linux?"

Same for me.

When my teacher asked if anyone knew what a browser was, some one responded, "Yeah, it's that Google thing".

[jrusso2]

I have not been in university for 11 years.

[The Funkbomb]

In my high school, it was either windows or mac. A lot of the computer labs had old macs since they were mainly used for typing papers. Some labs had newer XP machines. The Graphics arts had nicer macs for running photoshop and illustrator. I think the cad lab had windows machines but I can't remember.

I recently went back to the school for a job and I saw all the new computers. Looks like they switched over to a lot of Win machines.

[socool274]

There is not a single Linux or Unix computer in my entire school DISTRICT. This is highly disappointing. Most of the people I tell to switch to Linux have never even heard of it. Most of the people that have say "If no one uses Linux, how can it be better than Windows?" This annoys me highly, because, as almost anyone who has ever used Linux knows that Linux competes with Windows. I am very sad that my school district has no idea that Linux even exists.

[JDShu]

My secondary school used to use Acorn computers before finally upgrading to Windows PCs computers in 2000. Now apparently its allowing some student group to roll out ubuntu onto some of them.

My university had dual boot computers for the engineering students. Most CS courses there expected you to use the gcc compiler.

[note32]

Same for me.

When my teacher asked if anyone knew what a browser was, some one responded, "Yeah, it's that Google thing".


LOL:lolflag:

[dragos240]

LOL:lolflag:

Unfortunately. That's the way things work. Most people don't know what a browser is. It's sad really. Most people don't know what an operating system is. I asked my teacher that. She said "My operating system is outlook or word, depending on what I'm doing."

[RiceMonster]

Unfortunately. That's the way things work. Most people don't know what a browser is. It's sad really. Most people don't know what an operating system is. I asked my teacher that. She said "My operating system is outlook or word, depending on what I'm doing."

Whatever. She doesn't need to know what an OS is, so it's not like it matters.

[dearingj]

I don't know what most of my school thinks of Linux, but I do know that one of my teachers has a server at the school which he is allowed to administer, and it runs Ubuntu Server Edition :)
The same teacher also runs Ubuntu Desktop at home, and has a virtual machine running Fedora.

[dragos240]

I don't know what most of my school thinks of Linux, but I do know that one of my teachers has a server at the school which he is allowed to administer, and it runs Ubuntu Server Edition :)
The same teacher also runs Ubuntu Desktop at home, and has a virtual machine running Fedora.

He/she is smart.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

I'm an undergrad and my school loves linux, mac, and windows, but mostly linux. :popcorn:

[dragos240]

I'm an undergrad and my school loves linux, mac, and windows, but mostly linux. :popcorn:

My school has about 3 macs, many windows, and all the servers run linux. This year, new linux computers will be bought.

[kavon89]

Most people don't know what a browser is. It's sad really.

I can't even tell you how many times people have asked me to "download the internet" for them.

I've already accepted the fact that the general population's computer awareness is very low and many Linux promoters are blind to this.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

I can't even tell you how many times people have asked me to "download the internet" for them.
Download the internet. Hahaha. That shouldn't be so funny but it is so incredibly ignorant and sad.

[Tipped OuT]

I can't even tell you how many times people have asked me to "download the internet" for them.

I've already accepted the fact that the general population's computer awareness is very low and many Linux promoters are blind to this.

Yeah, I heard things like that before too. It really irrates me though, sometimes I just want to say:

"You idiot, you can't download the Internet you dumba55..."

lol You get the picture.

[Windows Nerd]

My school uses Windows exclusively on their workstations. I never can seem to figure out who actually does the IT work to ask. Most of my teachers use either OS X or Windows. My science teacher may possibly use Linux because she complains every time she has to use PowerPoint. Or when there is a computer problem.

Scott

[Tipped OuT]

My school uses Windows exclusively on their workstations. I never can seem to figure out who actually does the IT work to ask. Most of my teachers use either OS X or Windows. My science teacher may possibly use Linux because she complains every time she has to use PowerPoint. Or when there is a computer problem.

Scott

Sorry to be off topic, but I love your signature. :D

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

At my school, the pc's dual boot linux or windows. The macs just boot macOS, but the files saved on any computer (pc/mac) are available on any other computer throughout campus. Also we can ftp our files etc.

[Tipped OuT]

At my school, the pc's dual boot linux or windows. The macs just boot macOS, but the files saved on any computer (pc/mac) are available on any other computer throughout campus. Also we can ftp our files etc.

Wow, better then my schools.

All the schools I've been to still use a crippled Windows XP for everything.

[praveesh]

My school has about 3 macs, many windows, and all the servers run linux. This year, new linux computers will be bought.

In my college , there are more than 50 debian computers. No mac

[dragos240]

Wow, better then my schools.

All the schools I've been to still use a crippled Windows XP for everything.

Most of ours too. All the others run 98. No kidding.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

In my college , there are more than 50 debian computers. No mac
Ours use Ubuntu. I think they are trying to transition people to linux as painlessly as possible. It worked for me. My introduction to Linux happened earlier this year as a result of a CS class.

[RiceMonster]

Wow, better then my schools.

All the schools I've been to still use a crippled Windows XP for everything.

My highschool computers were really bad. They were XP and they tried to disable pretty much everything. First they had a program blacklist, so certain programs such as firefox couldn't be run, then they switched to a whitelist, so only allowed programs would run. They disabled changing the wallpaper, and even right clicking on the taskbar. It was fun and easy to get around everything though. You could access restricted network drives by making shortcuts to them, you could change your wallpaper by previewing the image, then selecting "set as background" and you could launch executables not on the whitelist by renaming them something like "explorer.exe". It was horrible.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

Highschool was epic. We played half-life and Unreal Tournament (the originals) all the time in the computer labs. LAN parties ftw. We weren't supposed to do that but we had some cool teachers that "sponsored" us. We all used cracked cd keys (but I subsequently bought those games, so I don't feel guilty) :lolflag:

[Tipped OuT]

My highschool computers were really bad. They were XP and they tried to disable pretty much everything. First they had a program blacklist, so certain programs such as firefox couldn't be run, then they switched to a whitelist, so only allowed programs would run. They disabled changing the wallpaper, and even right clicking on the taskbar. It was fun and easy to get around everything though. You could access restricted network drives by making shortcuts to them, you could change your wallpaper by previewing the image, then selecting "set as background" and you could launch executables not on the whitelist by renaming them something like "explorer.exe". It was horrible.

Thanks, I'm going to try that tomorrow. :p

[dragos240]

Highschool was epic. We played half-life and Unreal Tournament (the originals) all the time in the computer labs. LAN parties ftw. We weren't supposed to do that but we had some cool teachers that "sponsored" us. We all used cracked cd keys (but I subsequently bought those games, so I don't feel guilty) :lolflag:

Awesome. Gotta try that.

[RiceMonster]

Thanks, I'm going to try that tomorrow. :p

That'd be funny if those tricks I did years ago still worked today at different school boards.

[Windows Nerd]

Sorry to be off topic, but I love your signature. :D

Thanks!

Edit: Feel free to use it, seeing as you like it so much!

[praveesh]

Ours use Ubuntu. I think they are trying to transition people to linux as painlessly as possible. It worked for me. My introduction to Linux happened earlier this year as a result of a CS class.

Those ones are with firefox 2 . Some websites display incorrectly . They might be prefering stability . If those were windows, I could install the latest ones, but in these ones , there's root password

[Tipped OuT]

Thanks!

Edit: Feel free to use it, seeing as you like it so much!

Thanks, but no thanks. Signatures are something that make each user unique, if we all have the same signatures, it's kind of boring.

[Redundant Username]

I wonder if I'm the only one on campus who uses or has heard of Linux.

[Tipped OuT]

I wonder if I'm the only one on campus who uses or has heard of Linux.

Most likely. Although there may be a chance of someone knowing about Linux, just one.

[Redache]

I'm in a University that is so pro open source they do Open Source orientated Comp Sci degrees (They tend to focus more on app development). There's also a freedom toaster and a Sun Room.

They also advocate that everyone at least try a Linux/Unix/BSD Distribution and we have modules that focus on learning to use bash(under Open Solaris mainly).

[phrostbyte]

The IT dept at the University I went to were full of Linux fanatics. I being a Linux fanatic myself, easily clicked with the rest of the team on my interview, so I got highly difficult to obtain student employment there. I was one of the lucky few CS students who actually had 2 years of relevant employment experience before graduating. :P

The job was awesome, they gave me a lot freedom to tinker with expensive hardware, doing stuff like setting up virtualization and networking Linux workstations together with domain services. :)

[Windows Nerd]

Thanks, but no thanks. Signatures are something that make each user unique, if we all have the same signatures, it's kind of boring.
Okay :)

[beastrace91]

They differ, but mostly they think it's a joke or mostly useless as a desktop.

Thats about the response I get :/ - That or my teacher has no idea what Linux is (in fact both my teachers who saw me working on my laptop this term asked me if I was running OSX - because hey if its not Windows must be Apple)

~Jeff

[bigbrovar]

My school has to be the must free and open source linux powered school you can ever find anywhere.

Servers
4 main servers all powered by ubuntu 8.04 LTS
6 other smaller servers powered by ubuntu

Lab Computers
We have tree main computer labs 2 are run Ubuntu 8.04 (customized in house)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3083/2704979774_c435460f1e_d.jpg

while the remaining one is powered by windows xp where we install tools and apps which don't run on linux but which is needed by the students.

Non Academic Staffs


All our administrative staffs terminals and laptops run Ubuntu 8.04 (customized in house) at first it was hard for them to get used to but within days they adjusted and most of them even run ubuntu on their personal system.

Students laptops
All our students are given free laptops which is loaded with ubuntu 9.04 (heavily customized in house) Infact our fresh men each was given a dell xps m1330 which came preloaded with ubuntu.

As the system administrator for the school ubuntu here has been a huge success story. we directly deal with noobs and end users who have never heard about linux before and there are able to make the transition with very little foss. The entire IT department uses foss from backup server, to helpdesk, inventory, ldap, NFS, Cloning server, jabber server, drupal, wiki. and Although we are a school focussed on science and technology we find that 99% of the time there is a foss software which replaces your (x) proprietary tool. IT department spends close to zero budget on software (beside the matlab which is the only software we paid for) and the school is doing very good. so yeah Foss indeed can power a university

http://aust.edu.ng/sites/default/files/ah101-01_1.jpg

http://aust.edu.ng/content/computer-labs

[openfly]

I went to a school called manhattan college. ( waste of time that was )

In my freshman year, I was physically removed from the network. Why? Apparently running an ftp server on my system in my dorm was cause for this... ( I was using it to get files from my desktop in the dorm at public lab machines... laptops were crazy expensive around this time and not widely used. ) I dropped a cable down an open window into a friends dorm and was back on that night. I firewalled the NOC subnets from my system and they were never the wiser. At one point I even had a GRE tunnel to a non nocstaff endpoint in the network.

So, began an odyssey. In the four years I was at that college, I had my accounts terminated twice, once "by accident"... for four weeks up through and including during registration time. I was barred from entering some lab areas, and I was basically considered public enemy number 1 by most of the IT staff who weren't friends...

That being said, several of the IT staff were friends. I once convinced a network admin to shut down a dorms network segment so I could get enough bandwidth to DL a recent kernel release.

I also ended up joining a multimillion dollar grant project and deploying out own T1s to our local lab environment and remote environments. I wrote code for a fairly robust DAM solution that the same people who chronically banned me from the network had to support for about 5 years AFTER I left. I helped deploy their distance learning environment. And, I got the school involved in an Internet 2 demo team. I also deployed one of their labs as a dual boot environment so that we could offer tutorial classes on linux to students who were interested... our unix programming classes were fairly old school unix programming classes... done via terminals.

So by the end, I had a litany of complaints from heads of IT throughout the school personally stacked against me, while most of the progress made in the schools information and technology assets was a direct result of my work along with a few other ne'er do wells.

Simply put, even if you run up against an immovable and paranoid blockage such as ignorant and entrenched IT management ... academia is a world full of doctors, and doctors live for research and grants. Find a doctor that's doing cool stuff... they are almost always either completely focused on what they do, or just plain renaissance in their approach to research... either way they will love to have someone who is willing to kick *** and take names on their behalf with them. Where one door closes, another opens.

That's been my experience in life, and most of my friends I am guessing would agree.

[tuahaa]

I'm happy to say that I converted a few of my classmates to Linux when I started bringing my Linux Laptop to school. Now I can really say "in your face" to the kid with the fancy mac book air. So far the 'conversion count' is 3- I gave them Linux Mint. They really like the desktop effects.

[Maheriano]

I did a computer science degree at a school where they give everyone a laptop for attending. They preload all the software that you need for your specific degree so for us computer science students they gave us a dual boot with (I believe) either Suse or Red Hat. I can't remember because I knew nothing about Linux at the time, I just remember the desktop was KDE and I played kfouleggs ALL THE FREAKING TIME!

But the only reason we had Linux was because we were learning C and needed a free compiler because they were too cheap to buy any licenses. So I had to boot into Linux to do my C assignments.

[XubuRoxMySox]

The county school board has a few different flavors of Linux on their servers. OpenSuse, Red hat Enterprise, and Ubuntu Server. But none of the teaching staff really knows anything about Linux, and those that do have alot of misconceptions about it. Chief of which is that it's "all command-line" and thus unsuitable for desktop use by "typical computer users."

I have showed a couple of them my oh-so-graphical and super-simple Ubuntu mixture, but I couldn't hold their attention long enough to get through, I think.

Amy and I were going to introduce Linux to the computer club, but she got swine flu (and she already had asthma) and has been hospitalized all month. I don't want to do it without her, though I'm sure she would want me to.

-Robin

[Roasted]

I work in the tech department at a large school district.

Linux is welcomed to us tech people, but at the end of the day, we have to use what works with our environment. If it's Windows, so be it. If it's Linux, great.

I personally love Ubuntu, and I use it frequently for imaging our Windows workstations using FOG (which is amazing, open source, and free for imaging Windows computers from a Linux [Ubuntu] server).

We also have Ubuntu 8.04 LTS running as a server for the library catalogging software, which so far has been running pretty solid.

Although I would love to see Linux -everywhere- in the school district, I'm a realist. A lot of the educational software that is used is Windows based, so we're kind of trapped to keep the labs running XP. I would LOVE to hear my boss say he wants to try out an Ubuntu lab, though. That would be just plain awesome.

So anyway, our tech department is open minded, but we have to use what works. If that means XP, so be it. If it means Jaunty, that's fine too.

[Tristam Green]

My college taught two classes on Linux, mainly tracked towards the Linux+ Cert. When I went there, we were dealing with Fedora Core 7, and it was a great exploration for me into learning the OS.

I would have liked to have seen them expand it, and potentially replace their Novell NetWare classes with OpenSuse classes, but I do not know if that ever came about. One can dream, though...

[BslBryan]

Mercer University - most servers run Linux, CS Labs dual boot with CentOS, several labs with Ubuntu.

[LKNT]

I have showed a couple of them my oh-so-graphical and super-simple Ubuntu mixture, but I couldn't hold their attention long enough to get through, I think.

Amy and I were going to introduce Linux to the computer club, but she got swine flu (and she already had asthma) and has been hospitalized all month. I don't want to do it without her, though I'm sure she would want me to.

-Robin

Well, in my school I just mentioned once (when I joined the school) that I use Linux, but I have no idea how much they know (if anything). That's all I ever mentioned to them about Linux. The school is a small one and there is no "computer club", or even computer teacher/administrator, there are just two windows computers sitting in one room for anyone to use. I think, except for me, no one else in the school really knows a lot about computers. I am sorry to hear of your friend, has she recovered well?

[uRock]

Necromancy = Closure.

Thread Closed.