I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.
so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)
Little side note
those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task
The i7-4790K is still quite powerful, so I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the problem, at all. Perhaps they’re running on an HDD, have little RAM, or you got the CPU wrong.
You can see the CPU and RAM by launching System Info from tbf start menu, and see if it’s running on an SSD or HDD by launching Disks from the menu.
Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school’s IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.
When I was in high school, computers had Deep Freeze setup, because kids would constantly break the OS and download malware. It’s a software that resets the C drive to a known state on every reboot. You might consider using something similar on classroom workstations.
Also, it might be worth learning about network booting, automating the Linux installer and ansible to install things on every machine at once and automate configuration work.
That’s an awesome story. If all your doing is browsing the Web or using applications that can easily and stably run on linux or have drop in replacements then linux would definitely be totally viable. On the other hand if you need to install specific proprietary applications and you have to rely on wine then maybe not.
luckily its just VSCode, so I didnt have to install something thats too hard!
Bill Gates is responsible for Common Core which has enshitified the education systems of many states. Anything the schools do to stop giving money to Microsoft is a good move.
Roblox in the trash AHAHAHAHA
Beautiful effort!!
yeah! was funny to me too!
Why did you pick Mint?
Mint’s a great choice for beginners, especially for those used to windows
this, people who are afraid of new things won’t pick something thats too different to windows
It takes one technology inclined person to set it up, it’s just takes another one to find a workaround, now the success of Linux in preventing gamers from doing their think depends on whether the second person decides to make the workaround known
yes but they will have to learn the OS, thats also a good thing
Focus on lessons instead of slacking, eh?
workstation013 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.yes (they need to be in the wheel group)
You that’s wild man doing gods (Richard Stallman) work here man.
Great initiative nonetheless. Compared to 8 this much more secure and for programming it’s a great choice too. Bringing more life out of some old PCs, saving a school money, and forcing some kids to get creative in order to play Roblox.
As for is it ready fr this application, programming, it has been for a while. For general, especially web based, applications it absolutely is. Of course, there are quite few things were it’s just not but for the most part Linux is a great choice.
thanks, gotta push GNU/Linux a bit higher in marketshare huh xd
Nice work, you did a good thing 😊
thank you!
Linux Mint is probably the perfect educational OS to switch to like that. I’m assuming most people are coming from Windows, are mouse+gui only, and are not used to being their own admin and installing all the basics like Firefox and libreoffice.
But it’s still Linux, so the user friendliness doesn’t mean you are locked out from going on tech or customization deep dives. Daily terminal user here, still love me some mint.
exactly! that’s why I picked it xd
I’m a noon to Linux but I still love using terminal to download apps and stuff because it just looks cool. ASCII makes me feel like I know my way around computers but I’m just installing Firefox lol
Lol a kid can google how to install games on linux, just need one to do it and teach the others, I used to bring games on a usb to play on macs through wine through the school lan, eventually I put them in some random folder on the school network, it didnt delete it til like the last day of school my senior year, wed copy the games to our computers and delete them at the end of class.
But then the accidentally had to learn Linux, win win
You overestimate the technical competence and attention span of the current generation of kids - they barely know how to use a mouse.
IMO if any kid these days manages to do enough work to figure out how to do anything on Linux, they’re probably well ahead of the pack and deserve to play their game as a reward 😅
this tbh, thank you for saying what I had in mind lol
One of them will, and the others will ape it.
Repeat this process enough times and more and more of them will get a bit better.
It’s sort of like education; except the students are a bit better motivated.
But if you left tomorrow would they be able to admin them?
good question however principal said he wanna keep linux on them forever, perhaps he will learn it and admin them himself, thats my guess
They will just wipe these computers
I don’t think they will bother. They will end up in a landfill, and the school will buy new Windows computers.
Before I read the text, I was going to ask,
“Umm did they know you were doing it?” It would be funny if you just did it without asking leaving them wondering, “How the hell did this happen?”
You know it’s bad when Shadow IT starts migrating your inventories.
It’s like the elf that helps the shoemaker at night.
