[jms429]

I was an IT manager in a school (not any more), and was asked by a parent why I wasn’t using Linux everywhere.

Our Microsoft licensing cost £1000 per year, and our MSP cost about £10,000 for remote support and a weekly onsite.

Using Linux, our licensing cost would have gone, and maybe we’d have gotten another year or two from desktop hardware, but our support costs would have increased massively - I couldn’t find a local msp who’d do desktop Linux support the same way we were getting. not to mention all the training for teachers, and the nightmare of finding replacements for things like smart notebook, custom assessment software, and windows only curriculum software.

Biggest headache would have been the teachers. Some of them found windows 10 too difficult to use, and pushing them onto Linux would have needed a full time techie on hand.

linux is better is not always the case.

[pessimizer]

It's Free software, there's no earthly reason that every school should be individually figuring out how to support Linux. Open a state office of Linux support and stock it full of developers and techs. Create a federal network of those to work on large projects.

We need to shed the consumer mentality when it comes to FOSS. It gives us bizarre expectations of it, and we impose unnecessary limitations on ourselves without thinking. It's ours, and we can do what we want with it.

[Swenrekcah]

It’s a great idea and the only thing that makes sense, but if you do that you’ll get an uproar that government is infringing upon private enterprise and distorting the market and all that.

[scarface74]

So let’s just spend more money on it and create more bureaucracy.

Do you think that maybe the FOSS community isn’t offering consumers what they need?

[kwhitefoot]

Just use https://www.skolelinux.de/en/

[digisign]

> not to mention all the training for teachers, and the nightmare of finding ... windows-only ... software

This was the traditional argument against moving away from MS products.

Suddenly, most of these folks moved to Google products a few years back. Somehow these points didn't factor in. Why do you think that is?

[zinekeller]

Probably because of

> I couldn’t find a local msp who’d do desktop Linux support the same way we were getting.

You could find competent third-party GWorkspace support, plus unless you fully moved to ChromeOS, you will still support Windows in one way or another (although students usually gets Chromebooks, try moving a teacher using a 15-year old application that still works on latest versions of Windows). RHEL is geared towards enterprise but not education sectors, and I'm not aware of a commercial support which specialty is in the education sector.

[gadflyinyoureye]

Tech changed. Most of the google suite exists within the browser. While the teachers had to learn new tools, they didn’t have to learn a new OS. Even if the OS learning was trivial, it could still make for a hard transition. It was foreign. It was scary.

Google is Google. They’ve been using it for years. They’re ok with the browser. Less emotional load.

[baisq]

Because Google products are good and work exactly the same on any kind of computer or phone (i.e. no differences between distros or hardware)

[scarface74]

Because Google manages most of the complexity.

[npteljes]

That's the point everyone should consider in the Windows/Linux debate. Windows/Office is not the de facto standard because they are superior technology - they won because Microsoft produced good enough software, employed every business trick in the book while also pioneering some, and because they covered the bases OP pointed out. Service and user experience is not only a very important part to provide, but often the part that makes or breaks the product.

That said, what schools teach is just some legislation away. I believe regulation could make it happen even now, if the regulators wanted so. But, of course, regulators are people too and therefore, yet again, it's not up to the technology itself to be better.

[ed25519FUUU]

I think you’re missing OPs main point that any money saved from switching to open source would be eaten away and reversed dramatically with support costs.

Can you get unlimited remote support and a weekly on-site tech for $10k a year? No way.

[bobthepanda]

The problem with regulating what kind of tech you should use is that it can be surprisingly hard to change or update after the fact.

South Korea mandated usage of ActiveX in the 1990s as one of the first countries to push into online shopping, and it took until 2020 to get rid of it (and Internet Explorer) altogether.

[whywhywhywhy]

Is Office even the de facto outside of the accounting industries reliance on Excel?

Are most schools and offices not running Google Docs these days for the word processing/presentation side of things?

[dgb23]

For this to work we would need a specialized, simplified, "just works" distribution with a well defined set of hardware support and software packages. Slow moving, standardized, minimal configuration capabilities and with laser focus on security, "non-technical" and educational UX and documentation.

Companies and institutions could build on that foundation to provide support and integration. It could enable a kind of specialized market for IT in education that can be relied on.

Sounds like a monumental effort. But doable. Are there any attempts at this?

[pragmatic]

Cromebooks have filled this niche for better or worse.

[ssivark]

I would imagine that Debian (with the benefit of community+repository size and inertia) or Fedora (with the benefit of community+repository size, and something adjacent to commercial support) might be the best bet for such a distribution. Rolling anything different is likely to fragment avenues for support. IMHO, even Linux Mint / Pop OS feel too niche. Rolling a custom distro is almost surely a bad idea.

[eternityforest]

Mint already provides a distro like that. I think the missing part is application software.

[anticensor]

Turkish government attempted twice and mostly failed: https://www.pardus.org.tr

[jjtheblunt]

Would it work if that distribution were Win11, since it's got WSL2 ?

[jandrese]

My school district has all of the machines on their domain.

Linux still doesn't have anything remotely as capable as Active Directory.

[chrisseaton]

Now that almost everything is accessed by a web browser... what do you even need Active Directory for? Like printers or something?

[KronisLV]

> Linux still doesn't have anything remotely as capable as Active Directory.

I legitimately want more people to talk about this and to share their experiences. Do people run OpenLDAP? Something like FreeIPA? Maybe 389 Server?

What's the most popular or maybe easiest to use *nix solution for managing lots of accounts and devices, policy etc.? What about solutions for just managing accounts/login information or integrating with self-hosted software of all sorts?

[Maursault]

Active Directory is an implementation of LDAP and uses Kerberos, both OSS. So, in effect, Linux has something exactly as capable as Active Directory.

[sekh60]

FreeIPA combined with something like ansible will do it.

[AussieWog93]

I've heard this is why schools are switching to Chromebooks now - massively reduced support costs.

[thawaya3113]

> Some of them found windows 10 too difficult to use

That’s probably because Windows 10 is more confusing to use than most general audience Linux distros.

[raxxorraxor]

Some need to start with it, IT support will follow after what people use. Still, there are unresolved problems. A common school distribution would be good, also central group policies for Linux. This infrastructure is sadly often lacking for Linux and any self-made solution cannot scale beyond individual schools.

But I think using Linux would increase technical competence of pupils massively. They don't learn anything from using another iPad. They can use that better than their parents anyway because they already have phones.

[nicoburns]

Far point regarding support, but I’ve found that Linux is often actually a lot more friendly for non technical people than windows a long as you don’t step beyond what is possible in the UI.

[blagie]

It's actually more friendly in the command line too. I've done support on both.

Anything reaching a high level of complexity basically falls apart on Windows. I can tell someone on Unix: "Type exactly X" into the command prompt.

If I want someone to get there editing the registry, using the Window terminal and/or modifying complex system settings through a GUI which changes seemingly every week, it's basically a dead-end.

Kids learn terminals fine too.

[trashtester]

Linux works perfectly fine for completely non-technical people, who can do everything and anything in a browser, and who doesn't game, use a lot of different peripherals beyond maybe a printer, and upgrades their system every 15 years or so. Like my parents.

You can take away their root access, and if needed, ssh in and do remote support if needed.

Obviously, linux also work excellently for advanced users, those who can just fire up a windows VM and pass through a GPU if they want some windows functionality. (Exactly what I'm doing now. I like to run Windows on top of zfs, as since snapshots make backups/clones, etc so easy.).

For those inbetween, that do intermediate complexity tasks and don't want to struggle with the OS to do them, Windows/Mac is easier.

[the__alchemist]

What were the use cases you've found success at? I've only found Linux (Ubuntu etc) to be a smooth and stable experience when not installing things beyond what's included by default. Have tried some variant of Linux every other year for the past 20. Turns into dependency hell and arcane incantations.

[ed25519FUUU]

You’ve never had to support Linux if you think this. Hardware support is absolutely all over the board. It works but often requires tinkering, which is a support nightmare when you have hundreds of potentially thousands of users.

[hw1618]

I work for an open source agency that aims to solve a similar problem for non-profits, by re-skinning an existing open source tool to make it more usable, and only charging them for implementation rather than software fees.

I don't see why a similar solution couldn't exist for education, to pass the benefits of the open source ecosystem onto less technical users.

[temp8964]

Also many comments here forget people have both work computer and personal computers. Most people are familiar with the Windows eco system from their personal computer. Forcing them to learn a different system is just unrealistic.

[prmoustache]

I don't know, 25 years ago most people didn't even have a personnal computer at home yet they were forced to learn to use desktops from windows, os2, solaris cde, mac os or sometimes just an arcane text based terminal. Not so long ago people were still working mostly with a fullscreen curse based window from a telnet client.

[whywhywhywhy]

>Most people are familiar with the Windows eco system from their personal computer.

Think you might be shocked just how few people have a “personal computer” anymore. Most children and even most adults these days experience computing though tablets and phones.

[pessimizer]

No, it separates school from home. It isn't like Debian stable with a MATE desktop could confuse anyone.

[GordonS]

Wow, I guess this was a small school? Was it "only" Microsoft Office licenses, or was other software included too?

[bombcar]

Microsoft knows the value of having people used to their software.

You can get absolutely insane educational discounts.

[jms429]

At the time, MS educational licensing was cheap as hell, we paid a set price per teacher and that then included windows & office for everyone.p, including free licenses for the kids to download office at home. I’m sure it’s changed now.

[kkfx]

It's not a matter of better, but a matter of society: no single surveillance capitalism software must be allowed for children nor public institutions in general, by law. States who allow that are already in a deep threat, and no, I'm not joking.

Beside that: Microsoft have invested big money on desktops, their own way, it's normal you find better support around, and that's because schools do not teach anything IT related as they MUST, witch means for users, not against them...

[Kwpolska]

What, exactly, makes Windows so bad you compare it to a “lead-laced watter supply”?

[uthinter]

This is a very poor analogy. The benefit Linux is offering is marginal and even in terms of cost which can be recuperated or rather offset by hiring more professionals .

[enchiridion]

Towns choose to continue using lead pipes all the time and pay for water treatment that makes them safe.