Re: gEDA-user: Why use gEDA?

[Peter Baxendale <peter.baxendale@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry to start yet another Windows/Other OS war - it wasn't my
intention. And don't take me for a Windows advocate. I agree with most
of the points made by various people here. I've been arguing strongly
here for diversity in operating systems, both for educational and
security reasons, for some time. I don't want either Microsoft only or
Linux only, we need a variety. I strongly believe the same applies
outside university as well. Personally, I dumped Windows years ago and
have never looked back. Since then, several other members of staff here
have switched away from Windows. This is not for cost reasons, since our
site licence gives us a lot of free (for the end user, not the
University) Microsoft software. We'll get there, but not this year and
probably not next, so meanwhile I have to live with the reality of
almost all teaching on Windows boxes. Given this, I'd still like to use
gEDA so I need to look at ways to run it on Windows boxes.

> How about setting up a server, with remote X display on the 
> windows boxes?
> 

We've done this and are evaluating it for next year. Performance looks
very good for one user but we need to see what happens with a class of
20 or so (can't afford a new server at the moment). But for firewall and
performance reasons this is unlikely to work for those who want to run
the software at home on their own PCs.

> They need to learn to deal with more than one system.  Faculty 
> need to learn this too.  They need to learn it early.
> 
I agree entirely.

> They can't run commercial windows software at home because of 
> cost and licensing.  If you run all windows stuff, they need to 
> come into the lab for work that should not take lab time.
> 
Theoretically yes. But there are many student deals, particularly from
Microsoft (eg MDA giving them free access to all the software
development tools, about 30 UKpounds for the entire Office suite - all
to run at home on their own PC). Secondly, a surprising number of them
have copies of expensive packages of their own. I assume they have rich
parents, but I don't like to ask.

We use many other engineering software packages which are prohibitively
expensive and for which there are no equivalents with less restrictive
licensing, so there's no alternative to the students doing the work in
the department. It's just not practical to run our entire engineering
course on free software (it's general engineering, which covers
everything from civil to IC design for half of the course).

> The real benefit is that if they want to run it at home, they 
> are only blocked by their own unwillingness to do it.
> 
Quite right, but if they see the pain barrier as too high then they
won't do it, and I'd like them to do it, so I'd like to lower the
barrier a bit for them. Maybe if they see how good open source software
can be it might open their minds to other possibilities.


-- 
Peter Baxendale
School of Engineering
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
tel 0191 33 42492
fax 0191 33 42408



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