October 9th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
This is old news by now, but still a handy reference. Mark Pilgrim has listed his most-valued applications for Ubuntu Linux.
Pilgrim was a Mac developer and blogger until he decided to switch fulltime to Ubuntu. (Not sure if he stuck with it or not, though.)
I plan to remain dual-platform, focusing on both Mac OS X and Linux (Ubuntu, in particular). I use Windows when required, but never by choice. Aside from the occasional (and ever more rare) application only written for it, Windows has no advantages and some major disadvantages when compared to Linux and Mac. (Viruses, high price, awkward UI, etc.)
In any case, the list of applications Pilgrim prefers is informative and very interesting (and many of them are cross-platform).
Posted in GNU/Linux, Mac, Open Source | Comments Off on “Ubuntu Essentials”
October 3rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Linux @ BHSN is a new blog covering the move to Linux at one of Indiana’s high schools.
Introducing his blog, Simón Ruiz writes:
“Bloomington High School North was approached by the State last year and offered an Indiana ACCESS grant in order to outfit 4 English classrooms with computers to be powered by Linux. They paid for the computers and the desks, and we paid to wire the classrooms with electricity and data. For the last half of last year, then, we had 4 classrooms equipped with computers.
The teachers were impressed enough with it that they banded together and submitted a grant proposal to the same program and we’re in the middle, right now, of being outfitted with another 5 classrooms, bringing the total to 9 classrooms and 279 Linux workstations (30 students and 1 teacher per room).”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on Blog Chronicling Indiana School’s Move to Linux
September 26th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Ars Technica writes Fewer Windows in Kerala schools:
“Kerala, a state in India best known for its high literacy rates, relatively liberal politics, and disdain for big business, is pushing Linux into the classroom in order to promote choice and diminish the influence of Microsoft. Citing concerns about the long-term consequences of perpetuating Microsoft’s high level of dominance in the desktop software market, Kerala’s Education Minister M.A. Baby affirmed his support for free and open source software, saying: “ideologically I support Linux and Free and Open Operating Systems for IT enabled-education in schools.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
September 25th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
VAR Business writes, “Hoosier Daddy? In Indiana Schools, It’s Linux.”
“Mike Huffman, special assistant for technology at the Indiana Department of Education, said schools in the state have added Linux workstations for 22,000 students over the past year under the Affordable Classroom Computers for Every Secondary Student (ACCESS) program. And that could expand quickly with several new updated Linux distributions, such as Novell SUSE, Red Hat and Ubuntu.
This year, Huffman expects Linux desktop deployments to grow from 24 high schools to 80 high schools, driven by lower costs, higher functionality and early successes…
“We have a million kids in the state of Indiana,” he continued. “If we were to pay $100 for software on each machine, each year, that’s $100 million for software. That’s well beyond our ability. That’s why open source is so attractive. We can cut those costs down to $5 [on each computer] per year.”
For students and teachers, it doesn’t matter which platform they are using. They’re learning a curriculum, not an OS and software stack.
In education, open source can do the same job with equal effectiveness as Microsoft’s products, at (using the numbers from above) only 5% of the cost! That’s more than just saving money, that’s making possible things that otherwise could only be imagined.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
September 22nd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Schools in the Philippines are about to receive over 12,000 Linux and OpenOffice.org-based PCs:
“The largest deployment to date is the third phase of the government’s PCs for Public Schools Program launched last month, which is deploying some 12,000 personal computers worth P600 million to 1,200 public high schools, Lallana said.
Unlike the first two phases of the program that used the proprietary Windows operating system and Microsoft Office, the computers in phase 3 will be bundled with free and open source Fedora Linux and OpenOffice.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on 12,000 FOSS PCs for Schools in the Philippines
August 23rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Sys-Con’s Linux magazine reports New York School Districts Select Linux Desktops:
“Students in upstate New York have moved one step closer to having a computer at every desk thanks to a pilot program using Linux desktops from Novell on Intel-based computers. Designed to increase student engagement and awareness among students that they are part of a connected global community, the pilot program is aimed at delivering an Internet-connected computer to every student.
This new program will significantly increase computing resources at school while still controlling costs. Ultimately, some 80,000 students in the Rome City School District and other schools supported by the Madison Oneida Regional Information Center could benefit. As a result, students will gain technology skills and a new research tool that will improve their learning experience…
As part of the pilot, the school will make available to students Intel processor-based laptops running Linux desktops from Novell, which include the OpenOffice 2.0 productivity suite for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets…
“Linux on the desktop offers compelling value for schools, which face permanent budget challenges,” said Susan Heystee, president of Novell Americas. “With the Linux desktop from Novell, students get all the tools they need to do their work and the IT staff get a solid, secure, easy-to-manage platform — all at a fraction of the cost of the alternatives. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing increasing interest in the education sector in Linux on the desktop.”
Desktop Linux and OpenOffice.org are getting closer and closer to me here in New York City! I am looking forward to the day when the City government and school system make the migration (and of course I’ll be glad to help in any way).
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “New York School Districts Select Linux Desktops”
August 11th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Steve Hargadon interviews educators using open source in South Africa and Indiana (USA) today:
“I started very early in order to be able to catch Hilton Theunissen in South Africa, who has led the tuXlab project to install Linux thin-client in 200 schools. Then late in the day Mike Huffman and Laura Taylor provided insight into the Indiana Affordable Classroom Computers for Every Secondary Student (ACCESS) program.
These are both fascinating interviews, and along with the interview with the folks from Atlanta Public Schools last week, they are confirming a pattern that deserves some real exploration: high-priced, high-maintenance computers have led to relatively little actual student time in front of them (35 minutes a week per student in the case of Indiana, at a cost of $100 million a year!); low-cost computer solutions provide significantly more actual time in front of computers for students, and the result is dramatic engagement by students and teachers, and significant academic success…”
You can download the audio in MP3 or ogg format from his post linked above.
Steve also runs a really great website called K12OpenSource, in which he argues the merits of open source software for educational environments. (Of which I am a strong supporter.)
(K12OpenSource uses a nice hosted wiki service called Wikispaces.)
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, Wiki | Comments Off on Steve Hargadon: Two Open Source Interviews, K12OpenSource, Wikispaces
August 3rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Register reports the One Laptop Per Child Project has collected 80% of the orders necessary to begin production:
“The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme is just one million laptops away from beginning production, as the group confirmed that Brazil, Argentina and Thailand have each placed orders for a million machines, according to DesktopLinux.com.
OLPC says it will begin production when it has orders for between five million and 10m laptops. Last week, it announced that Nigeria had signed on to the scheme, taking the total pre-ordered to four million.”
Meanwhile, java programmer John O’Conner writes in his blog (okay, almost a year ago) that he’d like to see a blogging extension for OpenOffice.org. I agree it would be handy, in particular because some competitors are touting the feature now (and because it would be helpful for the legions of computer-using folks who still prefer the desktop software paradigm over working through a browser).
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on One Laptop Per Child Update and Request for OOo Blog Extension
August 2nd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
According to Heise Online, Extremadura completely switches to Linux and OpenDocument.
Extremadura, a region in Spain, switched all of the computers in its educational systems to a customized version of Debian–and OpenOffice–in early 2003 (including 80,000 machines in all), and has been working to expand the use of FOSS ever since.
“A Linux distribution called gnuLinEx, which was developed in-house as a derivative of Debian, will be used as the operating system. In addition, freely available office applications running on Open Source licenses will be used. All of the staff in the administration are obligated to use the ISO standards ODF and PDF/A to share and archive documents. ODF was originally developed from within the Open Source community OpenOffice.org as a vendor-independent document format based on XML…
Vázquez de Miguel says that the region will “no longer be so exposed to the problems caused by forced migrations” after this switchover. Furthermore, he says the administration will have more input in the selection of software and be able to reduce support costs… In addition, the region expects free software to increase security and autonomy in addition to making public expenditures easier to calculate and track.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Heise: “Extremadura completely switches to Linux and OpenDocument”
July 28th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Register reports: “Ubuntu heads for the mainstream”
“Mark Shuttleworth, millionaire cosmonaut and self-funded Linux guru, has managed to make his Ubuntu project the Linux distribution of choice in just two years. But now the friendly brown OS with the cute drumming noises faces an awkward journey towards the commercial mainstream.
Ubuntu has had quite a ride in those two years. By many benchmarks, it’s the most popular Linux flavour there is. It’s top of the Distrowatch download chart, and it’s the distro most frequently installed on Dell PCs – according to Michael Dell himself…
Ubuntu has also started to appear pre-installed on PCs – from the Singapore-based company, Esys – which will be a crucial step in taking Ubuntu to people who don’t have the skills to install it themselves.”
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | Comments Off on The Register: “Ubuntu heads for the mainstream”