

Ubuntu Reaches 220,000 PCs in Schools in Spain - jtnl
http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/09/10/ubuntu-reaches-220000-pcs-in-schools-in-spain/
Canonical’s recent efforts to promote desktop Ubuntu on the workstations of large organizations have focused primarily on the business world. But perhaps the company’s greatest prospects lie in the education channel. That’s where 220,000 Ubuntu-based PCs are now running in Andalusia, Spain. Here are the details, and what they say about desktop Linux’s viability in the education market. ...
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cs702
Migrating to Linux on the desktop -- and Ubuntu in particular -- can make a
lot of financial sense for all the national and regional governments, school
systems, and other governmental bodies which are currently budget-constrained
around the planet. While migration can be costly, painful, and disruptive in
the short run, the long-term cost savings appear to be substantial.[1]

PS. This is not a new initiative, but a well-established project that recently
reached a new milestone: 220,000 is the number of school PCs _already_ running
a local flavor of Ubuntu in Andalusia, Spain.

\--

[1] For instance, see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787539>

\--

Edits: reordered and expanded sentences to present my views in a more
organized manner.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
It's hard to know if it makes sense or not without the actual number.

Microsoft gives 90% discounts to EDU...

~~~
chrismonsanto
At my university, pretty much every Microsoft product is available for free
through MSDN Academic Alliance. Pretty handy if you want to play around with
Visual Studio or if you custom-built a computer that doesn't come with
Windows. I don't know if the university has to pay for this or not, but it
saves the money of the students at least!

------
bjarkijonasson
As someone who is currently in a school that uses only free and/or open source
software I have to say that this is a terrible idea.

The biggest problem is the teachers, they are not as tech-savvy as the kids
and introducing them to a completely new operating system has done nothing but
slow them down and cause problems. They are having trouble distributing
learning material because they are not familiar with the file formats (and
most of the students here are using windows, so compatibility is a problem).

There have also been problems with the personal storage spaces students have
on the computer network, people are sometimes unable to log in or unable to
access their files. It's been a mess.

I'm all for supporting ubuntu, in fact I've been using an ubuntu variant on my
laptop for a few years now without any trouble, but using Ubuntu (or any other
OS that isn't Windows or OS X) in a school environment just to cut costs is a
recipe for disaster.

~~~
bjarkijonasson
also, it doesn't save the school any money anyway since they have to hire
Network Admins and other IT people with Linux experience

~~~
Adirael
Network admins are network admins. And IT people with Linux experience doesn't
have to be expensier than Windows IT people. IT people here study both,
salaries are shitty everywhere.

My high school (2005 IIRC) had guadalinex [1] on all computers, with a 2:1
student to computer ratio and no in house IT. Students basically use Firefox,
OpenOffice and some other apps for math and psychics, there's not a lot that
can go wrong and nothing is so important that you need a person always on
site.

[1] <http://www.guadalinex.org/>

------
JVIDEL
Linux always had this "hardcore PC dude" image that made it look like you
needed a PhD to use it, but with Ubuntu the fact is 95% of PC users can switch
painlessly and even have a better overall experience.

The other 5% are those that need certain specific apps that have no real
equivalent on Linux, but as more users switch developers will port those apps,
just look at Valve.

But one problem that is more complex than most people think are governments:
those that get the most from free software are governments from poor and
developing countries, but when you go there you find that most of those
governments use Windows and even bought the classmate netbooks from Wintel
instead of the OLPC or even regular netbooks with other Linux distros.

Now, this might not be the case with every country but there are reports of
corruption in the process. Can't say if Microsoft or Intel are actually paying
bribes, but there's proof of middlemen and officials from governments of those
countries choosing Windows above Linux because that way they can easily
inflate the cost and get a bigger cut from the government contract.

It's no different from public works going way out of budget: most of the time
is because someone is stealing money.

~~~
Jare
Painlessly? Better experience? Let's see my most recent clean Ubuntu install,
from a couple months ago, on a freshly bought HP laptop:

\- Terrible WiFi performance. Had to find some other drivers and then edit
some file to add some magic names to some sort of blacklist so the drivers I
found could actually be used. I have no idea how I even found all this.

\- Graphics drivers appear to be software only. Find something called the
closed source ATI drivers (Catalyst panel included). After installing, Chrome
still refuses to run WebGL, and has all sorts of crazy bugs rendering normal
web pages.

\- Mouse and keyboard apparently freeze after 20 minutes or so.

\- Sleep and hibernate are iffy at best, sometimes after waking up, things
will just fail or misbehave. One of the things it tends to do is think the
battery is critically low even if it's completely charged, something like it
thinks there are two batteries and ones is missing.

\- The bluetooth util finds some devices (phones mostly), but ignores my
lovely bluetooth mini-mouse. Looking at logs, it seems the Bluetooth driver
dies during boot.

\- Open text-mode vi from a terminal, move with the arrow keys, and I get
strange characters. FFS it's 2012 and THIS crap still happens? (Note: bash
works fine)

\- When I tell it to shutdown, sometimes it does nothing, sometimes it closes
the active window and does nothing else, sometimes it actually shuts down.
That's from the menu - closing the lid or hitting the power button behaves
different each time.

\- ACPI function keys: some work, some don't.

Linux has come a long way from the old days when we installed from floppies
and hand-edited clock frequencies to set up a graphics video mode, and if I
really need a fully functional Desktop Linux box, I can research the right
hardware to buy and the post-install fiddling to make it happen. But let's not
kid ourselves about the typical experience awaiting Joe PC User.

~~~
devcpp
My entire beginning programming class had to install Ubuntu and no one even
complained about it, with all the various computers in the homes of 60 novice
students. Some installed it on their laptops, no connectivity problem. We did
a lot of stuff on it, including surfing, coding and watching movies. No
software issues whatsoever.

Look, sometimes people have a lot of issues with Windows too. No OS is
perfect. But those are not very common instances. I think you are just not
lucky.

------
javierhonduco
As a spaniard *nix lover who has finished high school recently, I'd like to
point out something... 0K, there are lots of installations, but being honest,
among the students is very impopular, almost all of them have always been
using Window$ at home... Also there are a few teachers that even know what
Linux of whatever different to Microsoft's software is. That shoudn't be like
that IMHO. Lots of economical (among others) resources are throwed to the bin.
Let's say in college more people use linux, mainly in engineerings, and with
specific topics like parallel computing, etc... It's a real pity that most
people are so hooked up to Windows, but, what is worse is that Spain's
administrations, too. The don't even know what open source is. Culture. Is
what matters. [Edit]. I also forgot that the only "investment" all our
Governments have done is not trying the students and teachers to know
GNU/Linux, but wasting OUR money in modifiying the popular Ubuntu distro and
also installing it in lots of computers, what is totally pointless.

~~~
mogrim
That's an exaggeration - I live and work in Spain, and do a fair amount of
work with public administration clients, and they definitely do know about
open source software, both Linux and Open Office etc.

There's certainly a high level of ignorance amongst teachers as to what OS
they're using, but that mirrors society in general - and in most cases if you
give them a system that works, with the software they need, they'll learn it
pretty fast. I don't think they're "hooked up" to Windows in particular, I get
the feeling the word "Windows" basically means "operating system", it's a
generic word without any real tie to Microsoft.

What I do find surprising is the number of computers per school, in Andalucia
- 110 workstations per school? Seems like a lot, and knowing the local
politicians it wouldn't surprise me if 50% (or more) of them weren't
"virtual"...

------
binarymax
I just gave an old laptop loaded with ubuntu to an 8-year-old in the family.
He loves it and told me he prefers it over what he's used to. Father is having
a difficult time getting him to go outside now though!

------
oliwarner
If I had a pound for every story about "School X buying Y thousand Ubuntu
computers"... I'd have about £19.

But seriously it's nice to see some governments want to break their dependency
on Microsoft.

~~~
calinet6
Dependency on anyone, really. Good for the governments sure, but even better
for the kids.

It almost doesn't matter—they don't need anything but a browser these days.

~~~
oliwarner
> they don't need anything but a browser these days

Sure, assuming you only want the next generation of young adults to be able to
look things up on Google and use Facebook.

When my school tried to teach me how to use MS Word (I was 13) I laughed. I
already knew everything there was to know about it.

Of course none of this was innate, nor did I know it just because I was young.
Eight years earlier when I was having my first play with computers (much to
their detriment) and I would play, yes _play_ with word processors. I didn't
have anything to write but I learned WordPerfect. I learned MS Word. Hell, I
learned most of MS Office and several versions in-between my first encounter
and my Year 9 ICT training.

The newest generation is growing up on touch devices. It's great for the arts,
I suspect but it's the end of kids who'll just load up a Word processor just
to see how it works. They'll need to be taught.

~~~
calinet6
Ahem. Google Docs? MS Office Web Apps? Etc?

There's quite literally an app or site for almost everything on the internet.

It's great that you think your curiosity and drive for knowledge is somehow
unique in this world, but I suspect you're wrong and just have a damn-kids-
get-off-my-lawn mentality. The web has only made knowledge and possibility
_more_ accessible, not less, and it's naïve to think that it's a dumbed-down
version of the "incredible software" you grew up using.

~~~
fmoralesc
Can you script google docs? That's how I "played with my word processor" when
I was a kid (I was a bookish kid and read every manual in my computer; turns
out many were about VB scripting and the Windows API... I was _intrigued_ ). I
suspect many more did. If people had access only to web apps, they couldn't
have those kind of experiences; I think that's what the parent commenter
points to. Now, I don't actually think these kind of things are becoming
extinct, or anything like that: it's easier in many ways nowadays. But the web
by itself still has some way to go to fully provide them, also because it is
so huge. I've started to rant, so I'll end here.

~~~
icebraining
_Can you script google docs?_

Yes: <https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview>

By the way, I started programming in '99, and since I didn't have a computer
at the time, I learned JavaScript, since I could run it on IE4 on public
machines. So yes, a browser (and, I guess, Notepad) is really all you need!

Besides, since then and between PHP/Python/etc shared hosting and tools like
Codeanywhere (which can talk to S/FTP servers), a web browser is enough for
building web applications.

(Of course, the web is far from reaching the potential of desktop development,
of course. But it has come a long way already)

~~~
fmoralesc
> Yes.

Neat! I eat my thoughts (It's the kind of thing I miss by using vim for almost
everything).

EDIT: But it is a separate app...

~~~
icebraining
Not exactly:

"The script editor can be accessed directly at <http://script.google.com>, _or
by launching it from one of the Google products which support built-in access
to the script editor, such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Sites._ "

In Spreadsheets, you just need to go to Tools → Scripts → Script Editor.

------
brudgers
Because OS and application support scales in ways that reduce marginal costs,
claims that desktop rollouts of Linux ultimately entail a substantial
financial benefit are dubious. The pool of Linux expertise is smaller and thus
basic support tends to be more expensive than an OEM version of Windows. For
example, Ubuntu or Redhat support starts a $70-$100 per user per year versus
$150 or so for OEM Windows.

~~~
zby
Hmm - I don't parse that - how $70-$100 is more then $150? Or did I
misinterpret something?

~~~
brudgers
<https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/desktop/>

<http://www.ubuntu.com/business/desktop#services>

On the other hand, Windows comes with pretty good self support for the end
user out of the box via multiple professionally developed and maintained
channels.

------
jstalin
As someone who uses Ubuntu as my main desktop OS, I still find myself going
back to a Windows machine or Windows VM to use MS Office. I'm no Microsoft
fanboy, but Office is still far and above better than anything available on
linux. I've been beta testing office 2013 and I have to say, I love it.
There's no chance of moving away from it any time soon, as far as I can tell.

~~~
drats
Other than compatibility with other people I don't find MS Office has many
advantages, but I will concede it is better designed, especially when you have
to pay for it. Compatibility is the huge killer argument for Office and will
remain so for some time.

All that said, for _high school level_ essays, slides, spreadsheets, where you
are not really interfacing with government or businesses, then the argument
for OpenOffice is overwhelming. Even more so when your government can't even
afford to borrow on the open markets. I.e. no private investor in the entire
world thinks you are credibly going to pay back what you borrow. In that case
you have to go to political allies who are prepared to shoulder the costs, for
political and not economic reasons, and it might be a good idea to take the
90%-as-good free office package for your school students to contain costs.

~~~
jstalin
For high school, maybe, but even the simple charts and graphs in Excel are
visually pleasing. In openoffice, or even google docs, they're hideous and
usually unworkable.

------
publicroman
As an andalusian, am I always surprised how the government manages to set
Spain among the most important countries in open source with these kind of
measures, yet no real developing force or user community. The (software)
education quality and the very high unemployment should be a very good broth
for entrepreneurial, open source and tech-creative initiatives, but it isn't
(unless you are subsidized by the government). Such a waste of talent. I'd
better not think about it.

------
willholloway
Cost isn't the biggest benefit, the biggest benefit is exposing kids to the
operating system (Linux) that runs the majority of servers. Those servers
increasingly run our world.

It doesn't matter if the teachers are clueless, some of the curious kids will
start messing around with the command line, and a whole new world will open
for them.

------
cpplover
I hope this experience will be a success and that it may convince a lot of
government to use ubuntu like instead of MS Windows...

