[K12OSN] LTSP Teacher Forum

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 05:06:00AM -0500, Jay Pfaffman wrote:
> I'm starting to develop an
> argument that teaching teachers to use proprietary software when OSS
> alternatives are available is irresponsible.  The trick is to do it
> without sounding like a lunatic.

What, muttering randomly and throwing stray cats doesn't work? :)

(Sorry, Simpsons reference)


> It's especially difficult because 10 years ago when I started using
> LInux on my desktop, I was a lunatic.  I'm almost surprised to find
> out that now I'm sane.  When my mom's computer was infected with some
> unwanted piece of software that kept her antivirus software from
> running, I moved her over to Fedora.  It's taken a while to get her
> system tweaked, but I think we're about there.  And this time I know
> that I won't have to re-do it in 3 months.  I really don't understand
> how anyone uses Windows.

My dad's Linux box has had three issues so far:

(1) "What brand printer should I get?"  (obviously wasn't urgent, since he
    hasn't bought one)

(2) "I can't log in"  (/var was full with some logs that weren't rotating;
    oops!)

(3) "I can't dial into my ISP"  (he switched to a different phone service
    and suddenly needed to start adding area code, if I recall correctly)


Admittedly, my dad doesn't do /too/ much with his PC, but compared to what
kids get taught in K12, it's pretty on-par.  (It replaced his aging Mac
for email, word processing, and web browsing/online purchasing.)

-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com                               Have I been helpful?
http://newbreedsoftware.com/    http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=billkendrick