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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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:45PM
it only works because a few core people have worked their buns off
I was afraid that the editor would put my Google translation up beside the original Spanish-language page link (and he did).
In the process, my note at the end of the summary that mentioned that the brand of the whiteboard with the LOUSY MANUFACTURER SUPPORT got truncated.
That manufacturer is Hitachi.
copying software simply is free.
I would have used the word "redistributing"--but, yeah.
It does not cost more to provide the same software to 10^8 people instead of only 10^3.
When talking about fixing a shortcoming, my way of say that is "You only have to solve the problem ONCE".
Send your solution upstream to the kernel|distro|app guys; park it on a server and let everyone know they can make copies for themselves and/or they can send copies to anyone and/or link to your page.
Folks trying to make FOSS sound difficult are being disingenuous.
This stuff goes directly to M$'s recent attempts to claim that they have released stuff as "open".
Heh. Just try to -alter- that stuff and -redistribute- it.
You'll find out in a big hurry how "open" it is when an M$ lawyer sends you a nastygram after you have tried to -share- your improvements to M$'s code.
"We will allow you to read this" is NOT "open".
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:04PM
To honour the facts, afaik MS is nowadays one of the bigger contributors to the Linux kernel. This [theinquirer.net] link is already three years old, but from what I read, they are still contributing (maybe a little less than 2012).
I could well imagine them funding Poettering and systemd ;-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:42PM
As I have mentioned previously, [soylentnews.org] most of the kLOCs that MICROS~1 has "contributed" are crap and have to be removed.
As also mentioned there, the only reason M$ "contributed" was they got caught violating GPL--otherwise their code would have remained closed and proprietary.
...and it's interesting that you mention 2012.
That was the year that OpenStack dropped Hyper-V because M$ wouldn't continue to support it,
(Also mentioned in my previous post.)
I have also recently seen an item that says M$ is trying to get back in through a side door via an OpenStack vendor with low morals concerning with whom they will associate.
Note the Mod'ing of my comment there as well.
M$ fanboys have serious problems with the truth about Redmond.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:21PM
Send your solution upstream to the kernel|distro|app guys; park it on a server and let everyone know they can make copies for themselves and/or they can send copies to anyone and/or link to your page.
Folks trying to make FOSS sound difficult are being disingenuous.
It's not completely disingenuous. The problem is, if a FOSS solution simply doesn't exist, creating one takes time and energy and expertise. How much is a function of the difficulty of the project. So if a proprietary solution already exists, it's easier to just use that. However, you're right, if enough people (or the right people) get annoyed and someone makes a FOSS solution, suddenly this problem is no longer a problem for anyone; anyone can download it for free and use it. But someone's gotta do the work first. For some projects, this isn't as hard, because interested people exist who want to tackle the project (look at, say, Inkscape). For other projects, no one wants to bother (look at, say, tax preparation software).
Someone else made a good comment: imagine how things would be if everyone, instead of spending $$$ on proprietary solutions, donated 10% of that to FOSS development.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @09:05PM
Another thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is bounties on specific bugs|desired features.
The advent of online crowdsourcing makes collective action by folks with the same gripe easier than ever.
Anyone ever see anything like that happen with proprietary software?
-- gewg_