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Thread: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

  1. #1
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    Question District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Ubuntu Community,

    I'm in education and I'm trying to sell the district on running a test computer lab with Ubuntu...would anyone know a good link for statistics on savings educational institutions can see when they make the switch?

    Think I have the go ahead for the lab...will find out Tuesday...

    ego-

  2. #2
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    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Savings will depend on whether it is a new lab, or an upgrade of existing hardware / software. It also depends on discounts received on MS software. For example, my department have just purchased a server which I pre-specified Linux on. We bought it with Windows installed, since the RedHat option cost more, and institutional discounts are not applicable to custom orders (i.e. without OS). So IT will re-install a new OS on delivery.

    There are lots of case studies out there about school computer labs (I think there is an old thread in the community cafe with links), but they are generally biased towards installation during required upgrades from unsupported / legacy MS OS (except those published by MS).

    However, I don't know of anyone outside of government who have published actual numbers of savings achieved with genuine economic study.

    These studies can be quite complex, with estimated costs of migrating custom software, retraining, IT support, future upgrades, in addition to licensing etc.

    Good luck! Let us know what you find, and whether your bid is successful.

  3. #3
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    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    One place for you to start looking would be this Wikipedia article on Linux adopters:

    http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...Linux_adopters

  4. #4
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    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    The real costs are likely to be unassociated with hardware or software. Will having an Ubuntu lab require hiring someone to manage it? Who will use it? Will they need training? Who will pay for that? How will the lab be integrated into the rest of the district's computing infrastructure? If teachers have a presentation they made on a Mac that they want to use on Ubuntu, how will they go about doing so? Will they need help?

    If I were you, I'd try to keep close tabs on these kinds of issues and their associated costs. You could probably write a good article on this subject a year from now.

    I work with a nonprofit health care agency that radically expanded its Microsoft infrastructure over the past few years because MS pricing to organizations like that is dirt-cheap. I suspect educational institutions are treated rather similarly. The pure cost savings of replacing proprietary MS software with free open-source alternatives may not be that great for an educational organization.
    Last edited by SeijiSensei; February 17th, 2013 at 02:25 PM.
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  5. #5
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    Talking Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Wow...

    Yeah, I didn't realize the complexity...thought you just loaded ubuntu and ran with it...most of our district computer techs told me they run linux at home...that is a pretty good deal we have in-house people...

    I'll let you all know how it works out Tuesday.

    ego-

  6. #6
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    Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Hi.

    Nobody here has mentioned LTSP Linux Term Server. One decently powerful computer will run a full lab of old junk, including graphics etc. We've done it now for 6 or 7 years. The cost savings were in terms of hardware as the thin clints have always been old junk that nobody else wanted, and setup and maintenence time on the lab is much much less since there is only one computer to maintain, not 20.

    Costs for sofware is $0 and the lab has run everything from digital photo to computer drawing (cad / DDP) to web design and electronics.

    There is also a savings in electricity as we don't need the hard drives. And it saves money in that it's harder for the kids to mess up the system as compared to 20 individual windows boxes.

    I'm experimenting just now using a $35 rasberry pi as a thin client, and it seems to work very well. That uses only ~5watts, and can be easily mounted on the back of a monitor.

  7. #7
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    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Ask a Microsoft education account salesman. They have some impressive case studies. Of course you have to consider the source.
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  8. #8
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    Re: District Administrator for an ISD. Any stats on Ubuntu savings for education?

    Heres a link worth reading and found many more like this.
    http://www.geekosystem.com/ubuntu-free-computer-la/
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