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