Do high school students use Ubuntu?

[rmcellig]

I was just curious in this PC/Mac dominated world of ours whether there are any high school students out there that use Ubuntu as their main operating system and if so, are there any obstacles that they run into and are able to resolve them like for example compatibility issues?

[Thewhistlingwind]

You can waive most OO.o compiler errors with "I'm too poor to afford MS office.". (Which is true.) The few I get anyway.

So far there have been no obstacles, I know that won't last forever though.

I think that right now it's more important to have cross platform applications than killer apps. The former make the platform usable, the latter accelerate popularity.

OO.o wouldn't be as useful if there wasn't a (good) windows version.

[Frogs Hair]

MS has a monopoly on the public schools here . I'm sure there is students using Ubuntu/other Linux on their own equipment.

[Tea4all]

My high school uses almost all Macs. I run on Ubuntu at home though. I use Google Docs for my projects. I luck out on the school's internet being down sometimes for would-be-late projects.

[XubuRoxMySox]

Abiword lets me save all my work in ".doc" format if I need to, and I can always "print to pdf" as well, and that work looks identical on any 'puter regardless of the OS.

-Robin

[doorknob60]

I use Arch and don't have any problems. I just use either OpenOffice or Google Docs for all my stuff and that gets the job done just fine.

[RoflHaxBbq]

I'm a high school student.
I don't use Ubuntu, though. I use Debian.

[NightwishFan]

I'm a high school student.
I don't use Ubuntu, though. I use Debian.
Nice.

I started using Linux full time at the very edge of my schooling so it did not have time to be useful to me. I would probably have been able to accomplish all of it using open source though.

[kroy23]

My high school runs windows machines. At home I have a dual boot for windows 7 and ubuntu on my laptop which has greatly increased convenience, I would think, for many people to start making a transition. However, as many school tutorials for applets like winplot and nuCalc are given by high school teachers (math in this case) for how to properly use and display when writing a math portfolio for the International Baccalaureate program, I find it easier to stick with windows for many of these apps. I like to code and do much lab work on my ubuntu workspace however.

[-gabe-noob-]

I started using Ubuntu as my primary OS in 7th grade (Or 8th grade I forget) I'm now a senior in High School

There are some noticeable hiccups in terms of document cross compatabillity especially when it comes to formatting (MLA can die) However as mentioned above, saving as PDFs pretty much helps avoid this completely

You'll find if you take any classes that are Excel heavy that OpenOffice.OrgCalc doesn't exactly cut it, I needed to acquire a version of Excel and it runs ALRIGHT through wine

As far as using it on a school laptop, I did that in middleschool, and just recently started using it again in high school once I manned up and asked the IT guy to remove the cisco blocks in place. I can say that it really boosts the functionality in school far beyond that of my windows-using counterparts. aside from some wine-incompatible programs, I never have to boot up into my windows install.

TL:DR. While it works pretty good as a primary OS in high/middle school, keep windows around for some windows specific apps.

[kaldor]

I switched to Ubuntu when I was in high school.

[Thewhistlingwind]

TL:DR. While it works pretty good as a primary OS in high/middle school, keep windows around for some windows specific apps.

That about sums it up.

Really, this sums up Linux in general. (Without going into circumstances like limiting yourself to FOSS only.)

[forrestcupp]

I'm not a high school student, and I don't have kids that are. But I have a boy in elementary school. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that though they use Windows computers, they also use some FOSS software, like Tux Paint.