Linux killer!

[Robin Laing]

malcolm wrote:
> I work in a school and we are thinking about Linux
> I put some test machines out - Fedora, Suse and Ubuntu
> The view of the students was Fedora was the best ..great so far
> Then we did the KDE v Gnome thing - Gnome won ... even better
> Then I asked the question  - so what do you think of Linux ?
> 'It sucks ! ' was the almost universal response ( students aged 11 to 18 )
> Why I asked .. It never falls over, XP dies all the time ... true they said
> OO is just like Office to use and doesn't munge up documents .. also 
> true they said
> It will save the school £20000 per year, so why does it suck
> 
> Because we can't watch Yahoo music videos   and that was it - Ok I did 
> point out that
> they weren't suppose to be watching them at all really but that doesn't 
> cut much ice with
> teenagers. So the problem is this - I am never going to get this off the 
> ground if I don't have
> the support of the kids. Windows Media is my Linux killer - Codeweavers 
> are OK but
> only support WMP 6.4 - I've never got gxine to work properly and the 
> Linux version of Real Player
> won't do the 'universal player' trick that the Windows one does.
> 
> Even the most angst ridden teenager admitted that 99% of Linux was 
> better than the Windows
> equivalent but not one of them wanted to use it simply because of the 
> lack of Windows Media plugins
> 
> Help .... please !
> 
> M
> 

If they are not supposed to be watching the videos on the school 
computers, then block them at the firewall as our business does.  When 
they cannot watch them on Windows it won't make any difference.

Or set up a few computers in "non-work" areas that are locked down 
with XP on them.  I would not use Libraries for the non-work computers.

The school is paying for the bandwidth and network usage so they set 
the rules.

As others have stated, get Yahoo to fix the problem.
-- 
Robin Laing