[Sheflug] FYI: Migrating Education Desktops to Linux

["Dawson, Alan" <DawsonA [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Any Sheffield educational establishments thinking of migrating to Linux

I just seen this post on Suse-linux-english list

http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2005-Jan/4115.html  which I
thought was useful.

In fact any Sheffield educational establishments using Linux at all ?

"Trinity is looking at a 3 - 4 year migration, we went dual boot with win98
over the summer and ironing out all the major issues with the clients took
us through to October, when they start being used for formal lessons within
the next few weeks I'm sure a whole load of other issues will crop up as
well.

Making the clients look right is also amazingly difficult, slight style
differences can cause all kinds of issues, such as single clicking on a
directory/folder to open it or clicking on the title bar causing it to shade
as opposed to go fullscreen can cause a casual user to get worried. Were
using KDE3 with Plastik to give it the windows look, but when I was setting
up the desktop due to my years of using CDE or XFCE or similar I put all the
launchers on the kicker as opposed to icons on the desktop which threw
people initially because they were so used to icons being on the desktop.

The second hardest thing is convincing people that linux != windows in any
shape or form, its something completley different, and approaching it with a
windows mindset is liable to lead to disaster.

We've also had to factor in time for the teachers to learn not only linux,
but the other apps they would be using such as OOo. Theres also a not
inconsiderable number of kids who have been using Linux for a few or more
years who are practically salivating at the chance of getting one over on
teach with their 133t sk1llz, which is yet another thing to factor in and
build safeguards against.

Finally there are the kids who have started their GCSE preperations. Its
totally unfair on them to expect them to jump to another OS when they have
much more important things on their minds. Not to mention that we couldnt
find them a suitable database client/tool in time, hopefully those who will
be starting their GCSE's in september will be able to use Base in OOo2, so
long as OOo2 is finished in time and the relevant teachers can get familar
with it. Which means that we'll be able to defenestrate ourselves (should
the bosses want that) by the earliest September 2007. "

Alan Dawson
-- 
"If you make decisions about software -- or anything -- based solely on
short-term cost and benefit, someone with a longer view can easily manoeuver
you into a trap from which it is hard to escape."
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