Re: [school-discuss] Nashuatelegraph.com: Forget the apple; surprise teacher with open-source software

[Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Loss wrote:
> http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060628/COLUMNISTS03/106280090/-1/opinion

Just so all of us have good responses to the usual criticisms, this one 
from the above article:

  "Several teachers said, in fact, that the biggest obstacle to adopting
   open-source software wasn’t teachers or school board members, who
   like the idea of getting more technology for tax dollars, but school
   technical staff.

   And you can’t blame them. Bringing in another type of computer can
   effectively double a support staff’s workload, especially since
   open-source is notoriously weak in documentation. You can be sure
   staffing won’t be doubled to compensate."


The last point is not valid when the other type of computer is Linux.  I 
did a fair amount of research this past year to convince our school 
district, including looking at support issues, and documenting our own 
experiences.  Our school went from dozens of client help requests per 
semester before we switched to K12LTSP, to almost none afterwards, and 
those that did were on the teacher's Windows PCs only.  Mind you, the 
two parents who set up and maintained the Linux system were spending 
their time before that beating the Windows 95/98 student PCs into 
operation, so it's not that suddenly a lot more hours were being spent 
supporting the computers.  A local manager of the firm that does 
computer support for our school district told the IT department that 
they noticed the change right away: they hardly ever have to come to the 
school now.  And we went from less than 100 functioning student PCs to 
now almost 300, and we're still spending far less time fixing things.

The research supports it as well: a typical Linux administrator, while 
costing slightly more than a typical Windows administrator, can manage 
50-100 servers, while a Windows admin can usually only manage 10-15. 
And of course, with all the money that can be saved on licenses, more 
admins can be hired...

Regards,
Daniel