Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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]

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:50PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:50PM (#188662) Homepage Journal

    I find GNU info pages completely useless. The navigation mechanisms are too unintuitive, and too different from everything I use regularly, even though I'm an emacs user.

    Perhaps automatic mechanisms to view GNU info pages in a mouse-based point-and-click browser could work. Anyone know of such a thing? Maybe a firefos or chrome extension?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:00PM (#188667)
  • (Score: 1) by turgid on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:16PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:16PM (#188735) Journal

    That was what passes for humour where I come from.