At my school, there are no computers available that don’t have proprietary operating systems. We have one Solaris lab, but it’s only available to computer science students, and I’m just in regular engineering. It’s getting frustrating to have to use Windows at the library or computer labs to do my work. I used a Suse Live CD in the library today, but that might get me in trouble if I get caught. So I need to get a laptop I guess, if I don’t want to use Lamedows every day. Does anyone else’s school have any Linux computers that the public has access to? I’m just curious. They really seem bent on brainwashing people with Windoze at my college.
Hello BNG,
The school I went to did not offer any Linux computers for public use by the students. The closest thing was that Computer Science students got logins to some Linux servers. Me being a computer science student thought it was pretty good. In order to get graphics, you had to tunnel it through the SSH session.
I have heard of some college’s offering linux/unix to students. One of my co-workers mentioned that his library offered either linux or Solaris(unix), I can’t remember which. But it’s a step in the right direction.
It would be so easy! I worked in the IT Installs department at my school and they practically gave away 4-5 year old computers. Hello!!! Throw linux on them and create some lab space and you have an inexpensive computer lab. Albeit you would probably have a harder time finding someone to keep them running good. But there are tons of computer science students who would love to be junior ‘sysadmins’ and work in that lab. I know I would of. M$ would probably not give as good deal if there were non-windows labs. Oh well.
That’s a good idea that they could just use some of their older computers as a Linux lab. Unfortunately, I doubt they would ever do that, and there’s probably nothing I can say or do that would persuade them to. Our college is just very entrenched in Microsoft. I think they also get special deals from Microsoft by not having much else to offer, like you said. And I just hate having to use Windows every day. It just makes me feel…I dunno, “dirty,” for lack of a better word. I ordered a laptop on ebay, and I can’t wait for that to come in the mail so I can load up Suse on it and start using that around campus instead.
BNG22908,
It’s the key to Apple’s success. Back in the 1980’s they flooded the
schools with (relatively) inexpensive computers and support. The thinking
(which proved correct) was that students who were used to using Apples
would take that familiarity and preference with them into the workplace
when they graduated. You can’t buy advertising that is that effective.
When IBM compatible pc’s were ubiquitous in business, the Apple found it’s
niche and survived.
Yep,
My kid in high school and their school is using mac.
At my school, we have a basement floor of the math building that is mostly ‘Linux Labs’. They ran Fedora last time I knew. Also the Manufacturing/Technology building has a few rooms dedicated to to Ubuntu.
So when I boot up my openSUSE based USB hard drive, I am the envy of everyone there… :]
g
You’re lucky to have that lab there greenmachine. If we could have something like that, it would just break up the redundancy.
Conram, I noticed that, too. All throughout grade 1-12, you were hard pressed to even find a computer that didn’t run an Apple OS in any of the schools. That type of advertising didn’t work on me though. I can’t stand macs lol!
In my experience, I find that most of universities run dated Mac “Classics”. Macintosh 9 has to be one of the crappiest operating systems in existance… even Windows is superior. Don’t get me wrong: Mac OS X is quite impressive, but its precursor just doesn’t hold up. I haven’t noticed many Linux computers in the labs, but many server rooms appear to running either Linux or Solaris. Hopefully this will change in the near future…