[ielillo]

When I was an undergrad, the Linux and Mac computer labs were always empty since no one knew how to use them. It was great during end of semester, since all the Windows labs were crammed with desperate students trying to finish their papers, you knew that there was always computers available in those labs.

[linguae]

I remember the same thing at Sacramento City College around 2003-05 when I was taking classes as a high school student. It was hard to reserve a PC in the library running Windows XP; sometimes there were long lines. However, the Macs in the library running Mac OS 9 were usually available. Because I grew up on System 7 in elementary school, I had no problem using Mac OS 9. In addition, the graphics communication department had a lab open to all students whenever no classes were using the lab. That lab had dozens of Power Mac G4s running Mac OS X Jaguar. That was my favorite lab on campus. But once I started taking computer science classes, we had exclusive access to labs running Windows XP that were stocked with development tools such as Visual Studio.

After high school I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where the CS department highly encouraged the use of Unix, whether it was Solaris on servers, Linux on desktops, and Mac OS X, “bougie Unix” for those who could afford MacBooks. Most CS students at Cal Poly only used Windows for games and for non-CS courses that required Windows-only software tools.

[hakfoo]

We had a cluster of about 8 X-terminals which were connected to a HP-UX box of some sort at my university. My "running Linux since 10th grade" ass had a fast-pass when everyone else had to queue on one side of the hall for a Windows machine or the other for an OS 9 Macintosh