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posted by janrinok on Tuesday May 26 2015, @12:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the life-is-easier-with-FOSS dept.

The European Union's interoperability page reports:

Using open source in school greatly reduces the time needed to troubleshoot PCs, [as indicated by] the case of the Colegio Agustinos de León (Augustinian College of León, Spain). In 2013, the school switched to using Ubuntu Linux for its desktop PCs in [classrooms] and offices. For teachers and staff, the amount of technical issues decreased by 63 per cent and in the school's computer labs by 90 per cent, says Fernando Lanero, computer science teacher and head of the school's IT department.

[...] "One year after we changed PC operating system, I have objective data on Ubuntu Linux", Lanero tells Muy Linux [English Translation], a Spanish Linux news site. By switching to Linux, incidents such as computer viruses, system degradation, and many diverse technical issues disappeared instantly.

The change also helps the school save money, he adds. Not having to purchase [licenses] for proprietary operating systems, office suites, and anti-virus tools has already saved about €35,000 in the 2014-2015 school year, Lanero says. "Obviously it is much more interesting to invest that money in education."

[...] The biggest hurdle for the IT department was the use of electronic whiteboards. The school uses 30 of such whiteboards, and their manufacturer [Hitachi] does not support the use of Linux. Lanero got the Spanish Linux community involved, and "after their hard work, Ubuntu Linux now includes support for the whiteboards, so now everything is working as it should".

[...] Issues [with proprietary document formats] were temporarily resolved by using a cloud-based proprietary office solution, says Lanero, giving the IT department time to complete the switch to open standards-based office solutions. The school now mostly uses the LibreOffice suite of office tools.

[...] "Across the country, schools have contacted me to hear about the performance and learn how to undertake similar migrations."

As I always say, simply avoid manufacturers with lousy support and FOSS is just the ticket.


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by SDRefugee on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:46PM

    by SDRefugee (4477) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @03:46PM (#188081)

    Agree... I'm a retired tech, supported windows since WFWG, been a big fan of Linux since 1994 or so, and now that I'm retired, I've pretty much given up on Windows, and run Linux on all my home machines. (Disclaimer: Am trying out Windows 10 preview as I'm *sure* I'm gonna be asked about it once it goes live...) My BIG gripe about Linux man pages are the fact that the vast majority of them are simply a list of the command line switches the program responds to... Which is just peachy if you use the program all the time and you've just forgotten one or more obscure, not-frequently used switches.. But.. say you've NEVER used the program before, you'd REALLY like a few choice *examples* of the invocation/use of the app... Not very many man pages have these, so your only course of action is to google for a tutorial on said app..... That being said, as far as I'm concerned, Linux trumps Windows hands-down....

    --
    America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 26 2015, @05:55PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @05:55PM (#188167)

    Not very many man pages have these, so your only course of action is to google for a tutorial on said app.

    Not all man pages are wonderful, and I'm sure most would welcome any contributions in editing. However, man pages really are there mostly to be reference tomes, to exhaustively list every command-line option available. For command-line programs, they're extremely useful that way. However, now that we have the internet, there's no shortage of tutorials for various things online, and in fact for any GUI program you certainly would not want a man-page tutorial, you'd want a webpage tutorial so you can see screenshots.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:39PM (#188221)

    In the same comment, the insightful AC mentioned going online to get help.

    I visit the forums of several distros fairly regularly.
    It's rare that I see a problem that the assembled masses can't solve|hasn't solved.
    Indeed, I an often irritated that the poster of the question didn't follow directions and search to find 1 of the dozens of times his question has already been asked and answered.

    In addition, a bootable ISO makes it possible to get online--even if you have completely torched your Linux install.

    Contrary to any claims that answers to Linux problems are difficult to find, I say that they are no more problematic and are often easier to solve than the payware OS that is usually held up as "the standard".

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:15PM (#188243)

      I missed where you had re-inserted the brand up in the text.

      -- gewg_