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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: 3, Informative) by danomac on Tuesday May 26 2015, @04:00PM

    by danomac (979) on Tuesday May 26 2015, @04:00PM (#188086)

    It hasn't had enough developer interest in a while, and it's been crippled by its reliance on gtk2 for almost as long.

    I just thought I'd point out they aren't stuck on gtk2... gtk is an acronym for the GIMP Toolkit, it was written specifically for GIMP.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:36AM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:36AM (#188436) Journal

    I just thought I'd point out they aren't stuck on gtk2... gtk is an acronym for the GIMP Toolkit, it was written specifically for GIMP.

    Yes, I'm aware of gtk's history, possibly better than you are -- gtk+ got the "KFC" treatment and hasn't been "the gimp toolkit" in many, many years[1] -- but you apparently didn't notice that I said gtk2 specifically. I also didn't say they were stuck on gtk, I said that the reliance on gtk2 is crippling it. First release of gtk3 was early 2011, four years ago, and there's still no support, much like the long-promised full GEGL support. At this rate, by the time gtk3 support comes everyone else will be using gtk4.

    While in theory there's nothing wrong with using a project that's in maintenance mode like that, it's a problem with gtk2, because it has a lot of odd problems that will likely never be fixed because testing and development has long since moved on to gtk3. It has problems with non-wacom input devices, for example, because it's a market that exploded around gtk3's release.

    Another example: the odd way gtk2 handles input devices also causes its share of problems that don't occur in gtk3 because of design improvements in 3 vs 2. With the last two mouses I've owned, I haven't been able to use the mousewheel at all in gimp as a side effect of this. It may be related to having a non-wacom pen display, but it's not a problem with gtk3. It's annoying enough that I've completely stopped using gimp if there's any way to do something in one of the other programs available, at least until the gtk3 port finally surfaces.

    Due to the heavy investment in gtk, it makes sense to stick with it, but sticking with gtk2 realy hurts it right now. Not just because long-standing design problems will never improve, but also because the vast majority of gtk devs use and know gtk3 now, so the developer pool is constantly dwindling.

    Meanwhile, Krita's managing to pump out new features while still working on the Qt5 port on the side. If Gimp had enough developer interest to do the same, most of my comment probably wouldn't even have been necessary. It's unfortunate, but projects can stagnate, and Gimp has long been showing signs of it.

    ---

    [1] Brief history lesson: the last gtk to be the "gimp toolkit" was the gtk1 series. By gtk2 (in 2002) it had already been rewritten and renamed to "gtk+", with development focused on more than just the needs of gimp. In fact, I looked it up and the rewrite and name-change in 1999 when gtk+ 1.2 was released. So, it hasn't been the "gimp toolkit" for 16 years; I think it's time to get over it and just go with "gtk+" like the rest of the world.

    Too bad we don't have some kind of 0-score "Outdated" mod (like Disagree is) for when people post ancient information. You don't deserve a downmod but there should be some way to flag old info.