The Governments and Schools moving to Linux Thread

[aysiu]

I thought I'd start a thread for any time I or someone else reads a news article about a government or school moving to Linux desktops (servers is old news) or workstations.

Might as well start with this one:
District to save money by switching computers to Linux

Bexley City Schools in Ohio, moving from Windows ME to Linux (unspecified distro) because the cost to switch to XP is too much.

If you have other stories about other schools or governments moving (throw in some corporations or small businesses, too--why not?), please post them in this thread and give a link to the news story.

Thanks!

[aysiu]

Here's another one from Mark Shuttleworth's home country:
Ten more Cape schools get Linux labs

The two corporates have joined with the province's Dinaledi team in an effort to improve maths and science results in the ten schools by deploying the Shuttleworth Foundation's tuXlab service.

I'd never heard of tuXlab before. Sounds interesting.

[SunnyRabbiera]

well this was to be expected, most school PC's are out of date and macs being the vway they are, Linux has a good chance of being the OS of choice of schools.

[izanbardprince]

Looks like the state of Indiana is starting to roll out Linux systems with Ubuntu in public schools.

This is probably the first time I've seen my state government do something sensible to save money, now maybe they can quit taxing me to license a hojillion copies of Windows.

[Polygon]

my school actually uses mac os X rather then windows... of course its safer and all the kids who believe they are "hackers" have fun trying to run "virus.exe" on these computers. its really quite funny.

The only problem i have with these is:

because the home folder's for our accounts are on a network server, even basic stuff can be a tad slow since it has to transfer / download stuff from the server before it can use it. This gives a lot of students the impression that "macs suck and are slow"... when its just because the home folders are on a network. Id imagine that similiar attitudes will appear in schools rolling out linux until they all get used to the idea and realized that it does not "suck".

but my school could defenitly save a lot of money by switching to linux. Just by ditching microsoft office with word and powerpoint, and not paying for mac os x licences and upgrades would be a ton. The only problem is that the graphic design students might "require" photoshop or illustrator...

[aysiu]

The only problem is that the graphic design students might "require" photoshop or illustrator...

I don't know why you put that in quotation marks. My wife is a graphic design student, and I can assure you she does require Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Adobe Flash (the maker, not the player).

GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, and F4L would not cut it for her. Sorry.

Those apps may be great for home users like me, but you can't graphic design for a living using those apps.

[openix]

Think I read somewhere that Adobe are possibly going to start porting their apps to Linux later this year - wont be free but at least Linux becomes an option to designers if that happens.

[adam.tropics]

Our local council changed a few years ago. Not sure about schools in the area though. Fair enough, it's Red Hat, but it's still a good move. Regardless of the politics, paid Linux will help businesses get used to the idea of Linux, as rightly or wrongly, the invoice instills confidence that they have a worthwhile product! This will change over time though I imagine.

[mips]

Here's another one from Mark Shuttleworth's home country:
Ten more Cape schools get Linux labs

I'd never heard of tuXlab before. Sounds interesting.

There are quiet a few people/organisations rolling out linux to schools in South Africa. I cannot remember them all, even some of the guys in the loco team are involved in this.

There has also been rumours/press about the Government adopting OSS but it is still early days. There a link to an article about this in the loco team forum.

[aysiu]

Russian Schools to Switch to Linux After Microsoft Piracy Case
The good news is that they're using Linux. Here's the bad news:

Teachers are not that happy about it. Apparently not many of them know much about Linux and there are no specialists around to teach them.

Microsoft Windows ousted at California school district
There's only good news on this front, apparently:

Ultimately, moving to Linux has enabled the Windsor School District to build out technology capabilities that wouldn't have been possible with Windows.

"[The students] are able to do more because Linux cost less," Carver said. "Our new computer lab [at Brooks] was set to cost $35,000 and ended up costing us $16,000 with Linux [on thin clients]."

And the kids love it too. "The kids think Linux is cool because it's new, but what they're really doing is stepping into the 21st century," Carver said.