[K12OSN] Any LTSP/Linux ideas?

[Joseph Bishay]

Hello William,

I'm happy to say I've been running LTSP since K12LTSP prior to version
4.2 based on Fedora Core 3 and it's been phenomenal.  I'm starting to
wonder if I've been inadvertently shielding everyone from how amazing
it is because it's just plug and play so they think a Windows network
would be the same. I mean my first machines were so old they were
scraping the bottom of the barrel and the CRT monitors had the burned
ghost image from their bank software.  What a long road it's been!

You are right that it's more than just money.  I feel there's some
sort of concern that LibreOffice isn't compatible 'enough' with MS
Office.  I know when it comes to report cards for the kids part of the
issue is that the teachers are transferring back and forth and the
report cards are losing their formatting causing everyone grief.  I
created standard templates to try to resolve this but it seems like
some of the teachers were still breaking it.

I'm not sure what else -- the idea 'kids need Word to succeed' as you
said is also being floated around.  Clearly that's no longer true.

Joseph

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 1:43 PM, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com> wrote:
>
>> > This is a school environment with about 60 desktop computers.  The
>> > question is coming from the administration -- they have been using
>> > Windows since the 3.11 days and so I believe it's just a matter of
>> > inertia.  I am also a volunteer and I'm not really sure if I'd like to
>> > continue as a volunteer if they do switch over -- the administration
>> > of it would be too much effort I fear.
>> >
>
> Joseph,
> I've been involved with K12LTSP/K12Linux since Fedora 5 (what year was
> that?) - from a primary school conversion to, today, running my wife's
> medical practice on K12Linux running Scientific Linux.
>
> Stories like mine are pretty common. In reading your post, I'm guessing
> something else is up than just considering costs, etc. The
> administration is not only used to Windows but used to the old desktop
> model of computing. Word processor, a few apps and a browser to look at
> "educational sites".
>
> This reminds me of the resistance we encountered because "everybody uses
> MS Office at work and kids will need to learn it to get jobs".  What
> people could see was only in their near experience. They'd forgotten how
> Office supplanted Word Perfect and couldn't imagine something like
> Writely/Google Docs or even how Office would change it's own interface
> significantly in future versions.
>
> Desktops still have their place but our kids are moving into a world
> where the "cloud" is their desktop - everything from Google docs to
> online apps and web sites that do much of the processing done by
> desktops in the past. Intel's Chromebooks, smart phones, smart TVs and
> tablets are examples of devices that enable users in the new
> environment.
>
> In my mind, the move to the cloud has made LTSP more, not less,
> relevant. What is important today is to have an inexpensive
> web/network-enabled device that is easily configured, supported and
> managed. LTSP does that; it does it very well. Many of the barriers we
> had to overcome in the past simply are going away. Proprietary
> technologies like Flash and Silverlight are dying or dead as the move to
> smart phones has forced providers to adapt HTML 5 whether they like it
> or not.
>
> Good luck,
> William
>
>
>
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