[HN Gopher] Schools should be using open source software
___________________________________________________________________
Schools should be using open source software
Author : bradley_taunt
Score : 189 points
Date : 2022-05-30 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tdarb.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tdarb.org)
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| Gotta love the authoritarianism of the open source evangelists.
|
| "Schools should only be allowed to use and teach with open source
| software."
|
| So that's be freedom for thee but not for me. Good to know.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Public schools are part of the government, and the government
| should absolutely be held to higher standards than its
| citizens.
| digisign wrote:
| Yes, freedom to line BillG's pockets, rather than contribute to
| society.
| enumjorge wrote:
| With open source you typically trade polish and easy-of-use for
| customizability and transparency. I feel like that's the opposite
| of what school staff need, who are typically overworked and want
| simplicity above anything else. They need technology that is as
| transparent as possible, and open source software is typically
| not that.
| mcdonje wrote:
| Not only schools, but any public entity. Taxpayer dollars should
| be respected. That means embracing lower cost options, supporting
| open source projects, and pushing for right to repair.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I don't know. The purpose of schools is to teach kids, not
| advocate for particular popular campaigns/crusades.
| digisign wrote:
| It's not to advocate for corporate earnings either.
| parmezan wrote:
| Truth is people don't care what operating system they get as long
| as it 'just works'. LibreOffice is IMO too ugly and unusable to
| use for tech illiterates.
|
| Windows 10 and defender does a bloody good job of blocking lots
| of malware. Think of tools like mimikatz. You don't see Ubuntu
| blocking a mimikatz-like binaries.
|
| Firefox is slower compared to Chrome. People care about speed.
| Firefox is also not privacy friendly. Lots of telemetry to
| mozilla/google.
|
| You are out of touch and have embraced the cult that is Linux,
| Open Source. I don't understand why the algorithm pushes your
| post to the top.
| easrng wrote:
| Firefox is not slower than Chrome. Some things are faster in
| Firefox (optimized JS, starting workers) and some are faster in
| Chrome (WASM).
| cityzen wrote:
| I am beyond livid that my kids have to use this Google classroom
| bullshit. I have zero doubts they are building profiles on our
| kids no matter what the lying liars at the top say.
|
| I keep telling my wife, "I still cannot believe that a
| multinational ADVERTISING company is being used to "teach" kids".
| It is so incredibly stupid when you look at it for what it is.
|
| I hope Larry and Sergey are loving this monster they created.
| sQEjOG4eEBcsVwU wrote:
| I definitely agree with this, and my only real "complaint" is
| that this applies to not just schools, but everywhere.
|
| For schools, I'd definitely love to see open _hardware_ , if not
| just to give the kids a chance to understand the chips that run
| the software as well.
| t43562 wrote:
| I live in the land of Raspberry Pi but the local school wants
| iPads and windows laptops. What can you do? A lot of people just
| aren't interested in computers and if there's one little
| disadvantage they are happy enough to not have anything. The
| stupid educational websites they like don't all work perfectly
| with RPi so "bzzzt". Next.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I think this is so obvious that even Microsoft is wondering how
| they have pulled it of so long. Now to avoid people leaving
| Microsoft have included WSL and it works pretty well. Soon with
| GUI too...
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Why have these become the "standard"
| of text manipulation and processing?
|
| I hate to break this to you, but because (especially for
| PowerPoint) these are legitimately among the best options, at the
| very least, distinctly better than any open-source office
| offerings. Maybe the author is unaware of how well these programs
| do in their roles because they've been actively avoiding any
| situation that would call for the use of these or similar
| programs... the use of a plain text document, not even a lightly-
| formatted HTML document, makes me think that they actively go out
| of their way to avoid using a word processor.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I need a term for this common conceptual error that I see folks
| in the software space make... One that I've made many times. It's
| like the inverse of smartest person in the room syndrome... It's
| the reasoning error where you believe that most people, or even
| the median person, is its competent at a skill you care
| passionately about as you are, because you've been doing it so
| long you forgotten how legitimately hard it is.
|
| Most schools do not have the financial resources to hire a system
| administrator who can maintain an open-source architecture or the
| technical shops in house to maintain one themselves. From their
| point of view, the freedom and flexibility granted by an open
| source framework is a cost, not a benefit. It means there's no
| right answer to how to do it, so when they screw up (and they
| inevitably will screw up regardless of what infrastructure they
| use), they don't have a standard, closed source architecture to
| point to to shift blame.
|
| From their point of view, closed source versus open source is
| irrelevant because the two are equivalently opaque to them.
|
| Given all of that, there is probably meat on the bones for a
| company that chooses to use a fully open source stack to build
| solutions for schools, and the schools willing to invest in the
| resources to do the work in the house will be able to grow from
| that open source solution to when they maintain. But that does
| put the company who goes that road at the disadvantage of every
| customer being a potential competitor in the future...
| robocat wrote:
| It is the other end of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Read the
| paper: "unskilled and unaware" and " _skilled_ and unaware"
| were the surprising discoveries.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You're right! I had forgotten. Thank you for bringing this to
| my attention.
| makecheck wrote:
| Like any organization, things have to be reliable and some open-
| source doesn't really have the support model figured out.
|
| And if cost is an issue, that is more an indictment of how
| schools are funded: if there doesn't seem to be room in the
| budget for buying software and/or support, why is that the
| budget?
| webmaven wrote:
| Some time ago, I had the opportunity to speak frankly with the
| then CTO of the NYC department of education, and pitched them on
| the idea of replacing Windows with Linux, or at least MS Office
| with OpenOffice, touting both the Free-as-in-Speech and Free-as-
| in-Beer benefits, as well as the lower hardware costs.
|
| What they told me was that similar pitches from vendors like
| RedHat were useful to them in that they invariably prompted
| Microsoft to offer a deal, IIRC, somewhere around
| 1$/month/computer (annually, about the cost of a new keyboard;
| which they had to buy a lot of), and that they had to replace the
| computer hardware often enough due to wear and tear (students are
| _very_ hard on computers) that the hardware savings would be
| illusory.
|
| If I were to try and make a similar pitch today I might try
| calculating in the cost of electricity, but there is simply no
| way Microsoft is going to let itself be undercut on price for the
| software per-se for those big marquee accounts.
|
| Of course when taking competitive bids like that, you really
| should price in the eventual switching costs when comparing bids,
| but hardly anyone does that correctly in the public OR private
| sector, and sunk-cost fallacies tends to overwhelm the decision
| making process.
| jms429 wrote:
| I was an IT manager in a school (not any more), and was asked by
| a parent why I wasn't using Linux everywhere.
|
| Our Microsoft licensing cost PS1000 per year, and our MSP cost
| about PS10,000 for remote support and a weekly onsite.
|
| Using Linux, our licensing cost would have gone, and maybe we'd
| have gotten another year or two from desktop hardware, but our
| support costs would have increased massively - I couldn't find a
| local msp who'd do desktop Linux support the same way we were
| getting. not to mention all the training for teachers, and the
| nightmare of finding replacements for things like smart notebook,
| custom assessment software, and windows only curriculum software.
|
| Biggest headache would have been the teachers. Some of them found
| windows 10 too difficult to use, and pushing them onto Linux
| would have needed a full time techie on hand.
|
| _linux is better_ is not always the case.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's Free software, there's no earthly reason that every school
| should be individually figuring out how to support Linux. Open
| a state office of Linux support and stock it full of developers
| and techs. Create a federal network of those to work on large
| projects.
|
| We need to shed the consumer mentality when it comes to FOSS.
| It gives us bizarre expectations of it, and we impose
| unnecessary limitations on ourselves without thinking. It's
| ours, and we can do what we want with it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Just use https://www.skolelinux.de/en/
| pessimizer wrote:
| There are endless options. School systems have thousands of
| employees and administrators; if they can't figure out how
| to support what are generally wonderfully crafted, complex
| pieces of software handed to them on a plate, they're not
| really fit for purpose. We're outsourcing institutional
| self-sufficiency to Microsoft and Google.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| It's a great idea and the only thing that makes sense, but if
| you do that you'll get an uproar that government is
| infringing upon private enterprise and distorting the market
| and all that.
| wtch98 wrote:
| enchiridion wrote:
| Towns choose to continue using lead pipes all the time and
| pay for water treatment that makes them safe.
| uthinter wrote:
| This is a very poor analogy. The benefit Linux is offering is
| marginal and even in terms of cost which can be recuperated
| or rather offset by hiring more professionals .
| Kwpolska wrote:
| What, exactly, makes Windows so bad you compare it to a
| "lead-laced watter supply"?
| [deleted]
| temp8964 wrote:
| Also many comments here forget people have both work computer
| and personal computers. Most people are familiar with the
| Windows eco system from their personal computer. Forcing them
| to learn a different system is just unrealistic.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, it separates school from home. It isn't like Debian
| stable with a MATE desktop could confuse anyone.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I don't know, 25 years ago most people didn't even have a
| personnal computer at home yet they were forced to learn to
| use desktops from windows, os2, solaris cde, mac os or
| sometimes just an arcane text based terminal. Not so long ago
| people were still working mostly with a fullscreen curse
| based window from a telnet client.
| npteljes wrote:
| That's the point everyone should consider in the Windows/Linux
| debate. Windows/Office is not the de facto standard because
| they are superior technology - they won because Microsoft
| produced good enough software, employed every business trick in
| the book while also pioneering some, and because they covered
| the bases OP pointed out. Service and user experience is not
| only a very important part to provide, but often the part that
| makes or breaks the product.
|
| That said, what schools teach is just some legislation away. I
| believe regulation could make it happen even now, if the
| regulators wanted so. But, of course, regulators are people too
| and therefore, yet again, it's not up to the technology itself
| to be better.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I think you're missing OPs main point that any money saved
| from switching to open source would be eaten away and
| reversed dramatically with _support costs_.
|
| Can you get unlimited remote support and a weekly on-site
| tech for $10k a year? No way.
| npteljes wrote:
| I'm not missing that at all, I'm saying two things, that
| for one, Microsoft does this support thing well enough and
| two, legislation doesn't have to take the easier way, if
| they'd say that schools must teach X, the market would
| figure it out somehow. It would probably even be a worse
| experience as it is currently, but that never stopped any
| legislator.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes, just like the "market" figured out how to increase
| privacy after the GDPR and not just a shit ton of cookie
| pop ups.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem with regulating what kind of tech you should use
| is that it can be surprisingly hard to change or update after
| the fact.
|
| South Korea mandated usage of ActiveX in the 1990s as one of
| the first countries to push into online shopping, and it took
| until 2020 to get rid of it (and Internet Explorer)
| altogether.
| digisign wrote:
| It's unlikely mandating open standards would result in that
| flavor of lock-in.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Far point regarding support, but I've found that Linux is often
| actually a lot more friendly for non technical people than
| windows a long as you don't step beyond what is possible in the
| UI.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| You've never had to support Linux if you think this. Hardware
| support is absolutely all over the board. It works but often
| requires tinkering, which is a support nightmare when you
| have hundreds of potentially thousands of users.
| enriquto wrote:
| Sounds like a sweet reason for laptop vendors to provide
| the best linux hardware support once schools mandate free
| software!
| nicoburns wrote:
| Presumably if you did this for a school you'd have
| standardised hardware that you control.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| What were the use cases you've found success at? I've only
| found Linux (Ubuntu etc) to be a smooth and stable experience
| when not installing things beyond what's included by default.
| Have tried some variant of Linux every other year for the
| past 20. Turns into dependency hell and arcane incantations.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It might be that you're thwarted by trying to install it on
| bleeding edge machines. I've run Debian stable on my home
| servers and Debian testing on my workstations for years.
| Nothing ever goes wrong, it's boring. Debian stable is rock
| solid.
| blagie wrote:
| It's actually more friendly in the command line too. I've
| done support on both.
|
| Anything reaching a high level of complexity basically falls
| apart on Windows. I can tell someone on Unix: "Type exactly
| X" into the command prompt.
|
| If I want someone to get there editing the registry, using
| the Window terminal and/or modifying complex system settings
| through a GUI which changes seemingly every week, it's
| basically a dead-end.
|
| Kids learn terminals fine too.
| dgb23 wrote:
| For this to work we would need a specialized, simplified, "just
| works" distribution with a well defined set of hardware support
| and software packages. Slow moving, standardized, minimal
| configuration capabilities and with laser focus on security,
| "non-technical" and educational UX and documentation.
|
| Companies and institutions could build on that foundation to
| provide support and integration. It could enable a kind of
| specialized market for IT in education that can be relied on.
|
| Sounds like a monumental effort. But doable. Are there any
| attempts at this?
| ssivark wrote:
| I would imagine that Debian (with the benefit of
| community+repository size and inertia) or Fedora (with the
| benefit of community+repository size, and something adjacent
| to commercial support) might be the best bet for such a
| distribution. Rolling anything different is likely to
| fragment avenues for support. IMHO, even Linux Mint / Pop OS
| feel too niche. Rolling a custom distro is almost surely a
| bad idea.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| https://www.skolelinux.de/en/
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Would it work if that distribution were Win11, since it's got
| WSL2 ?
| anticensor wrote:
| Turkish government attempted twice and mostly failed:
| https://www.pardus.org.tr
| pragmatic wrote:
| Cromebooks have filled this niche for better or worse.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've heard this is why schools are switching to Chromebooks now
| - massively reduced support costs.
| GordonS wrote:
| Wow, I guess this was a small school? Was it "only" Microsoft
| Office licenses, or was other software included too?
| jms429 wrote:
| At the time, MS educational licensing was cheap as hell, we
| paid a set price per teacher and that then included windows &
| office for everyone.p, including free licenses for the kids
| to download office at home. I'm sure it's changed now.
| bombcar wrote:
| Microsoft knows the value of having people used to their
| software.
|
| You can get absolutely insane educational discounts.
| newsclues wrote:
| That value needs to be understood and exploited by the OSS
| competition to Microsoft.
| grammers wrote:
| Agreed. Once kids learned it at school, they are reluctant
| to switch - just listen what people say about teachers...
| That's Microsoft's strategy.
| selykg wrote:
| Non-profit here. Getting an E5 license is simply a no
| brainer. It's insane.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's not a matter of better, but a matter of society: no single
| surveillance capitalism software must be allowed for children
| nor public institutions in general, by law. States who allow
| that are already in a deep threat, and no, I'm not joking.
|
| Beside that: Microsoft have invested big money on desktops,
| their own way, it's normal you find better support around, and
| that's because schools do not teach anything IT related as they
| MUST, witch means for users, not against them...
| hnusersarelame wrote:
| alaricus wrote:
| digisign wrote:
| > not to mention all the training for teachers, and the
| nightmare of finding ... windows-only ... software
|
| This was the traditional argument against moving away from MS
| products.
|
| Suddenly, most of these folks moved to Google products a few
| years back. Somehow these points didn't factor in. Why do you
| think that is?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Tech changed. Most of the google suite exists within the
| browser. While the teachers had to learn new tools, they
| didn't have to learn a new OS. Even if the OS learn was
| trivial, it could still make for a hard transition. It was
| foreign. It was scary.
|
| Google is Google. They've been using it for years. They're ok
| with the browser. Less emotional load.
| baisq wrote:
| Because Google products are good and work exactly the same on
| any kind of computer or phone (i.e. no differences between
| distros or hardware)
| zinekeller wrote:
| Probably because of
|
| > I couldn't find a local msp who'd do desktop Linux support
| the same way we were getting.
|
| You could find competent third-party GWorkspace support, plus
| unless you fully moved to ChromeOS, you will still support
| Windows in one way or another (although students usually gets
| Chromebooks, try moving a teacher using a 15-year old
| application that still works on latest versions of Windows).
| RHEL is geared towards enterprise but not education sectors,
| and I'm not aware of a _commercial_ support which specialty
| is in the education sector.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Because Google manages most of the complexity.
| digisign wrote:
| They do manage a lot of things, but not the two things OP
| mentioned and I copied.
| jandrese wrote:
| My school district has all of the machines on their domain.
|
| Linux still doesn't have anything remotely as capable as Active
| Directory.
| Maursault wrote:
| Active Directory is an implementation of LDAP and uses
| Kerberos, both OSS. So, in effect, Linux has something
| _exactly as capable_ as Active Directory.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Spoken like someone who has never in their lives tried to
| do any of the things AD does in Linux.
| [deleted]
| sekh60 wrote:
| FreeIPA combined with something like ansible will do it.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Can you find someone to install it, configure it, maintain
| it and update it, and support it (including on-site once a
| week) for less than $10K a year?
|
| Microsoft is losing money to have schools run this
| software.
| chucky_z wrote:
| FreeIPA is a Redhat upstream thing (389 Server or
| something?) so yea I'd imagine Redhat would probably work
| with a school district for wicked good pricing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Do Microsoft do that work directly?
| scarface74 wrote:
| No, but you can throw a rock and find cheap good enough
| managed service providers that can do it -- ie Microsoft
| partners. MS has been building out the network for
| decades.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Linux still doesn't have anything remotely as capable as
| Active Directory.
|
| I legitimately want more people to talk about this and to
| share their experiences. Do people run OpenLDAP? Something
| like FreeIPA? Maybe 389 Server?
|
| What's the most popular or maybe easiest to use *nix solution
| for managing lots of accounts and devices, policy etc.? What
| about solutions for just managing accounts/login information
| or integrating with self-hosted software of all sorts?
| Spivak wrote:
| Honestly, the best domain server for Linux is active
| directory and if you have but a single Windows machine in
| your school it's mandatory anyway so unless you're managing
| massive fleets to warrant the FreeIPA bridge sssd-ad is
| more than good enough.
| notesinthefield wrote:
| Every edu ive worked with using Linux rolls an ubuntu
| derivative which has for six LTS versions supported easy AD
| integration. Smaller subsets just use Ansible + AWX but
| they are typically just manging the basics.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Now that almost everything is accessed by a web browser...
| what do you even need Active Directory for? Like printers or
| something?
| jandrese wrote:
| For locking down the machines so the kids don't mess them
| up. For pushing policy down when they need to change
| something. All of the stuff that's routine for an AD
| administrator.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Don't know why we just don't give people a laptop and a
| login for the web services they need. If they can run a
| laptop at home just fine why does it need to be any more
| locked down than that for school work? And what policies
| do you need to just run a web browser? It's not the NSA.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| So, your entire tech support will be inundated with
| undoing scams and ransomware perpetrated by malicious
| search ads, for one.
|
| Chrome is outright terrifying to have on a computer if
| you don't push down about four pages of enterprise
| policies to lock it down.
|
| The idea of letting employees have administrative access
| to PCs that sensitive corporate data or childrens'
| personal info is on is downright terrifying.
| [deleted]
| Spivak wrote:
| But letting them access that same data on their personal
| computers and laptops is fine?
|
| If banks can let you access your account information on
| non-bank owned machines and parents can access their kids
| personal info from their phones I think we can manage a
| fleet of untrusted endpoints.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Many tens of billions of dollars are stolen via those
| untrusted endpoints every year, mostly targeting at risk
| groups like senior citizens.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yes, because the school district is not legally liable
| for parents doing stupid things outside of school
| grounds, but it _is_ legally liable for its employees '
| conduct.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Group Policy is low key the most powerful thing in tech.
| Secure all the clients? Yes. Personalize all the clients?
| Yes. Install software? Sure. Disable unsafe browser
| features in third party browsers? Also yes!
|
| Group policy is such an insanely convenient configure-once-
| apply-everywhere system, I'm still not sure why anyone
| would run a corporate network without it. Modern MDM
| solutions don't even come close to the extensive level of
| customization you can do with a GPO.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Now that almost everything is accessed by a web
| browser... what do you even need Active Directory for?
|
| What about signing in with your firstname.lastname account,
| with the particular web app talking with the AD server
| through something like LDAP?
|
| Thus, your credentials for all of the integrated software
| should be managed centrally, in the particular AD server or
| a similar solution.
|
| Or maybe even SSO with something like Kerberos or an
| alternative?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| There a tons of free SSO services, such as Google.
|
| And why do you need to control people's laptop login?
| That can be local.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > And why do you need to control people's laptop login?
| That can be local.
|
| Some organizations might want to ensure that your account
| follows certain policies in regards to the password
| expiry dates or how "secure" they are.
|
| Furthermore, if you leave an organization, they might
| want to remove all of your access credentials to all of
| the linked platforms/devices in one fell swoop.
|
| While you are in the organization, they might want to
| allow you to use certain pieces of software (say, GitLab,
| Nextcloud, Mattermost, anything that talks LDAP) by
| giving you a particular group membership, such as
| everything for PROJECT_X/CLASS_X and so on.
|
| Similarly, when a certain platform requires user
| credentials, they might also want to explicitly allow
| this platform to integrate with their account management
| software, by giving it certain credentials to talk to the
| AD server, which can later be revoked.
|
| Oh, and password resets are also nice to centralize, in
| case you ever screw up.
|
| Sometimes their hand might also be forced due to
| compliance reasons: imagine Google basically owning your
| company and information about all of the accounts/devices
| due to them having the actual data.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| The argument is that because so much is now cloud
| services in the browser, it makes centralised AD far less
| holistic hence better assess the cloud services settings
| for compliance. There is some truth and risk in that, go
| reset the password of those 3 services not supporting
| SSO. Reality about security is to deal with the admin
| trouble, MS isn't removing processes, education, trust,
| and their costs, it likes to give the impression that it
| does hence asking you money for removing the difficult
| invonvenience of actual security needs
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| The only compelling point was reducing hardware costs. Even then,
| it showed how out of touch this guy is.
|
| Having a school system transition to raspberry pi's sounds like a
| capped nightmare.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| This person is totally out of touch with reality.
|
| I do agree, however, that public entities should lean on open-
| source software where possible. It's our tax money that's paying
| for all those licenses. I see no point in govt agencies requiring
| windows licenses when most of the work can be done through the
| Office suite in a web browser.
| na85 wrote:
| >I see no point in govt agencies requiring windows licenses
| when most of the work can be done through the Office suite in a
| web browser.
|
| The point is there's someone to sue when things go wrong. I'm
| not being facetious.
|
| If government runs Gentoo and it turns out there's a decades-
| old bug in polkit that gets chained with an 0day that results
| in everyone's social security numbers getting leaked, who's
| responsible?
|
| If that happens with Microsoft they can in theory sue, and more
| importantly they can blame Microsoft in the media.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There are critical security vulnerabilities in Microsoft
| products all the time. When was the last time Microsoft lost
| a lawsuit over one?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You can tell this person is out of touch and doesn't actually
| have any experience of the systems they're complaining about,
| because they think people are still using IE and Word over Chrome
| and Google Docs.
| djaychela wrote:
| Not that long ago (5 years) I was teaching in a school that
| still used Internet explorer. I commented to the it guy that I
| used Firefox. His response was "I'm not having that rubbish on
| my network".
|
| A lot of school IT staff I've met in the UK are not at the
| cutting edge. Many of them are older, have an out of date skill
| set, and don't get regular training - there's just not the
| budget for it, and many schools would baulk at paying market
| rates for talented, up to date support staff / management.
| drcongo wrote:
| My kids' last school still sends Word docs out as email
| attachments. I raised with them the fact that this is not a
| portable document format, was regularly unreadable on my Mac,
| and discriminates against the poorer families. Turned out the
| head mistress' brother works for Microsoft so this didn't go
| down well.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| >unreadable on my Mac
|
| >discriminates against poorer families
|
| I agree just funny.
|
| I'd argue PDF is equally problematic as it is often designed
| for A4 paper format, and this not easily readable on mobile
| devices, which poorer families are more likely to have as
| main computing device.
| drcongo wrote:
| PDF is, it's true, also appalling. What I was actually
| asking the school to do was just write the shit they put in
| Word docs in the actual email. There was absolutely no need
| for it to be in an attached document, it was just words and
| pictures.
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| I worked for a time as a substitute teacher in a school system
| where the kids were given individual Chromebooks beginning in
| middle school. Many staff expressed concerns over the privacy
| implications of having a cloud-tied indenty from such a young
| age.
|
| This was also a school who won an award for it's cyber
| security. More than once I found full student rosters with
| username/password printed out sitting on the teacher's desk.
|
| I suppose this is a different rant than school's should use
| FOSS. I don't think schools should impose a digital footprint
| on their very young as students.
|
| I have no children and no longer work in education.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I mean, you're both assuming you know the local education
| systems of the author, and Microsoft is still very much taught
| in plenty of schools, and also... Chrome/Docs has the same
| problems, but even worse.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Chrome/Docs has the same problems, but even worse
|
| Well exactly - if you want to tackle this 'problem' then
| first you have to understand why LibreOffice isn't a
| replacement (because you need to replace Google Docs not
| Word.)
| jeffbee wrote:
| The author doesn't even bother making a case for what these
| "problems" might be.
| alaricus wrote:
| It would not suprise me if a lot of schools still run Windows
| XP.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| I can count on one hand the number of teachers that I had in high
| school that would be able to maintain the use of open source
| software for their classrooms.. one did (eclipse for CS AP) and
| the other was the web design prof who had a decent understanding
| of computers.
|
| The rest of the teachers and actually many of the students too
| were not technically inclined enough to be able to deal with the
| issues that can come up in open source software, and that
| would've for sure overwhelmed the like two IT dudes who were
| already busy regularly having to fix projectors and SmartBoard
| problems
| u801e wrote:
| After reading through the post, I think that more, if not almost
| all, posts should be in plain text.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Just wondering about the line length. Would piping the OA
| through `fmt` not help readability?
| thorncorona wrote:
| Why? It looks absolutely garish and hard to read.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| I work in the UK post compulsory sector (18+ basic skills
| teaching, aka adult education, mostly maths), so not the primary
| age focus of the OA. A few reflections after the organisations I
| work for pivoted at a month's notice to 100% online delivery:
|
| Most of the students I see use their phones as the main Web
| access device (zoom online classes + video lessons + pdf files
| for documents and all). Touch screen/direct manipulation UI is
| were it seems to be at. Students like _drawing_ on my slides. I
| work with a teacher who makes extensive use of Google 's Jamboard
| (Please don't cancel this project!!!) to check understanding.
| Each student in an online class of 10 can have a copy of a
| problem on their own page in Jamboard and show their working.
|
| One of my employers IT dept (Microsoft shop all through, 1500+
| client PCs) was happy to make OpenOffice(*)/GIMP/Inkscape
| available on the network. Students discovered the packages
| themselves and some used them without realising that they could
| have their own copies at home for nowt.
|
| The other employer has gone Microsoft 365 total with Teams and
| all. The Web based office applications allow students to produce
| basic docs and keep the resulting files in their online storage.
| Few problems so far. Some integration with Moodle for course
| pages.
|
| A large College locally uses Google Education to provide similar
| facilities. Students who take courses from both institutions seem
| to work well with the two different systems. I think people in
| these days of mobile devices are less dependent on one UI.
|
| Addressing the OA's main point: yes I think we could use more
| open source OS and applications in schools. Chromebooks are
| almost there when you think about it. BUT I suspect the future is
| Web apps. Contrast geogebra(1) with Logo(2) (and I think there is
| room for both)
|
| (1) https://www.geogebra.org/calculator
|
| (2) https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-
| foundation/what_is_logo/logo_p...
|
| Meta: I had to use links -dump
| https://tdarb.org/posts/schools.txt | fmt | less
|
| to read the OA. Lines just too long on graphical Web browser.
| kkfx wrote:
| Schools BY LAW _must_ only use FLOSS run on their own iron or
| state-backed one, no single private company must be allowed for
| safety of students data. That 's is.
| scotty79 wrote:
| They should also cook food and prepare beverages instead of
| selling branded packaged products.
|
| But that's not what's profitable.
| hulitu wrote:
| > A great deal of push-back comes from stubborn IT
| professionals[0] determined to keep things running on Windows -
| since this is mostly what they are familiar with.
|
| No. The push back comes from management. In a university in
| Eastern europe (20 years ago) people were using what was
| available: unix on servers (sun, linux, BSD) and DOS and some
| windows 3.1 then 95 and NT on PCs. Windows was pirated like the
| majority of windows software. Then the law made SW piracy a
| felony. And as the law began to be enforced, MS came and made
| agreements with the university to distribute the MS software for
| free to students and to teach classes with Microsoft products.
| This was during the times when Linux was a "cancer" and
| "communism". The IT professionals must dance as the management
| sings.
| carlospwk wrote:
| I'd love to agree with this but almost every experience I've had
| with an open source project that has a complex GUI has been
| painful. Tried to switch from Sheets to Libre Office Calc and
| it's like going back to an incredibly buggy Excel, with a
| downgrade in UX/UI.
|
| PS. Why is this post a .txt file? I can't even click the links.
| kcplate wrote:
| I found it ironic. The reason I avoid FOSS alternatives is
| because of the UX issues. I get wanting to be small and
| unobtrusive, but at least make your links clickable.
| tgv wrote:
| > Photoshop. Illustrator. Why are these the first applications
| used for image editing and creation?
|
| Because they're bloody good (well, Photoshop is). And Gimp isn't.
|
| > Coding IDE (optional) ===> vim
|
| That's not out of touch, that's beyond the pale.
| iliketrains wrote:
| To be honest, I find Photoshop to be not so good for many use
| cases. Gimp is not ideal, but I use it much more often. Like
| alpha channel editing? Absolute nightmare in Photoshop. In gimp
| it is just another channel and I can apply curves or other
| effects directly to alpha channel. How about ability to
| save/not save color info for pixels with 100% transparency?
|
| Or saving image where Photoshop often does not remember from
| where the file was opened, or that I have to manually select a
| file type from a drop down. In gimp, just type the extension. I
| also like scripting and automating using python.
|
| On the other hand, Photoshop excels in layer effects. In gimp,
| these effects are applied and you cannot mutate the underlying
| layer (like change text with shadow and bevel).
| croes wrote:
| It's pretty useless if they are pretty good if can't afford
| them afterwards
|
| Like driving lessons in a Porsche
| npteljes wrote:
| Not really because businesses have to license it properly,
| and Adobe just lets go of the rest. Meanwhile piracy leads to
| great adoption.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| > > Photoshop. Illustrator. Why are these the first
| applications used for image editing and creation?
|
| > Because they're bloody good (well, Photoshop is). And Gimp
| isn't.
|
| Imagine you're teaching people carpentry. There is a really
| nice automatic screw gun that accepts a cartridge of screws all
| lined up automatically so each one loads in place after the
| last one. It is super easy to use and people can get straight
| to fastening beams together. But the device is very expensive,
| and they cannot be repaired if they break, and the screw
| cartridges require a monthly plan where they will send you
| screws even if you still have plenty from last month, with a
| chip to make sure the screws won't feed from last month.
|
| Now compared to a boring battery operated drill, where the user
| has to _gasp_ place each screw on the drill bit by hand, these
| fancy automatic screw feeding drills seem WAY BETTER! Surely
| the person can make better buildings with the fancy screw gun
| right? And we want them to make the best buildings possible
| right?
|
| Well the boring drill has user serviceable parts. Everything
| can be removed and replaced if needed. There are no control
| chips to stop it working. You don't have to pay every month for
| anything. And placing each screw on the bit by hand is fine,
| it's what everyone did ten years ago and those buildings are
| all still standing. Heck you're standing in one of those
| buildings right now!
|
| So maybe we should teach the students how to use tools that
| work without all this extra cost and nonsense. It's really a
| minor difference, since the point isn't to use the fanciest
| possible tool, but to teach them how to build buildings in a
| way that they can always take with them everywhere they go. And
| after they graduate school, they're not going to want to pay
| every month for one of those fancy drills!
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "Principles not products". That's what I call it. I've always
| taught that way and my students _love it_. At least the ones
| smart enough to realise they 're being given a proper ground
| up education. We do every step the hard way, breaking it down
| with a historical context, a rationale and exposure to
| several different basic tools that do that fundamental job.
| They get to see the continuum between logic and arithmetic
| operators and a full application stack. Right at the end I
| let them loose on full-blown commercial toys - and they _love
| that too_ , because they can now see the value those polished
| applications add. They can also see what is just cosmetic
| fluff and marketing patter.
|
| It's only the weaker students who are quick to "demand the
| latest shiny industry standard gizmos... because, like,
| jobs". And of course the management twonks who've been
| blinded by vendor lobbying and kickbacks. Truth is, modern
| software is so slick any fool can grab a ready-made plugin-o-
| matic that thinks for you and wipes your arse, but without
| understanding _principles_ the moment they change the GUI you
| 're completely lost.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| That's a terrible analogy for the differences between
| Photoshop and Gimp.
|
| For one thing Photoshop is a transferrable skill. Gimp will
| get you laughed out the door of most photo studios and design
| agencies.
|
| For another - too many FOSS people _just do not understand_
| that tinkering with tools is not the point for most users.
|
| If you like tinkering with tools, go tinker with tools. Most
| people have work to do, and tinkering with tools is not
| something they want to be distracted by.
|
| Photoshop is far from being my favourite product, and Adobe
| are _very_ far from being my favourite company. In fact I -
| and millions of other users - would be _delighted_ if we
| could save $$$$ a year with a free alternative.
|
| Which applies in the general case. If FOSS was a realistic
| and workable alternative, it would storm the market and _most
| people would be using it._
|
| But it isn't. Most FOSS applications are aimed at self-
| selecting technical users, and there's very limited interest
| in making tools for non-technical users.
|
| In fact IMO FOSS culture lacks the mindset and skills - and
| very possibly the empathy - to understand what general users
| want from their tools.
|
| It's been a success for developers who want to make technical
| tools for other developers. And also for infrastructure. Not
| to take anything from that, because that's both significant
| and true.
|
| But for popular non-expert applications? Simply - no.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > and very possibly the empathy
|
| Yeah, exactly this. Open Source developers don't care about
| how you work or what you want your tools to do. They care
| about what's fun and interesting to program.
|
| I can't imagine forcing students to care about .rc files
| and whatever's in /etc. Not to mention the differences
| between whatever shell is installed by default and the
| various other shells that are also scripting languages,
| etc. I'm a veteran programmer in my 50s and this shit is
| too much for me to care about. I have work to do. Editing
| text files in vim or Emacs is utterly stupid for most
| users. It's not like TextEdit or Notepad don't do most of
| what students need without a bunch of cryptic crap
| involved, or that IDEs wouldn't allow students to delve
| into programming much more easily. I just don't get the
| cult of Unix. Yes, it's powerful for a large class of
| things that programmers like to do. But it's a terrible OS
| for normal users. And that won't change until the people
| making it and making tools for it grow up and think of
| someone other than themselves when they write programs.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Yeah, exactly this. Open Source developers don't care
| about how you work or what you want your tools to do.
| They care about what's fun and interesting to program.
|
| While I agree with this, it's interesting how Blender
| basically resisted losing focus on boring-but-important
| things (while keeping the fun and interesting parts).
| Probably the fact that Blender was originally planned to
| be a commercial application.
| jancsika wrote:
| > > and very possibly the empathy
|
| > Yeah, exactly this. Open Source developers don't care
| about how you work or what you want your tools to do.
| They care about what's fun and interesting to program.
|
| It's more likely that designing effective UX is just
| extremely difficult. I'm guessing it's so difficult that
| neither the user nor the FOSS developer even know how to
| define the problem in a lot of cases.
|
| E.g., go back and try to find a pre-Google era user
| asking for streamlined search capability in some Linux
| application mailing list. Something like, "I just want to
| type in the thing I'm looking for and find the thing I
| wanted." IIRC most university library search tools before
| Google had a few dozen fields to specify the _type_ of
| data you wanted to search for, and a crappy "keywords"
| field that often didn't return the desired record. So a
| student would search by first _not finding_ what they
| were after, then calling over a librarian to help them
| choose the correct fields and input strings.
|
| I'll rankly speculate that any such discussion on a pre-
| Google FOSS application user list would have consisted of
| a developer arguing that such an approach cannot work by
| providing a set of canned edge-cases with unresolvable
| ambiguities. And this response would have convinced the
| user who likely had no idea how the whole search algo
| works in the first place, or what the potential solutions
| could look like.
|
| Then Google came along. (Well, the Google that exist
| before the current one which seems to be purposely
| inserting non-relevant results that a recommendation algo
| has determined still have a decent chance of engaging the
| user.) And the FOSS mailing list response tacitly shifted
| from, "That's probably not a well-formed feature," to,
| "Patches accepted." I'm not sure what the current
| response would be, but I doubt it generates a lot of
| enthusiasm for improving the UX.
|
| Hell, even in the well-formed feature requests the
| implementation details are probably a major pain in the
| ass. For funsies-- go download the old Gimp that
| consisted entirely of toplevel windows, and try to figure
| out the most workable way of converting it a single-
| window app with subwindows. That's like some kind of
| demented detention punishment for FOSS devs who break the
| CoC. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
| digisign wrote:
| With this logic we'd demand students learn the best
| proprietary calculator-hardware instead of arithmetic.
|
| No, this is not the point of school.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > For one thing Photoshop is a transferable skill. Gimp
| will get you laughed out the door of most photo studios and
| design agencies.
|
| This is pretty much a self-perpetuating cycle and what
| happens when you have something close to a monopoly.
|
| Everyone uses Photoshop, almost nobody uses GIMP. Everyone
| uses Chrome, almost nobody uses Firefox. Everyone uses
| Windows, almost nobody uses Linux and so on...
|
| Thankfully, in the server space, *nix reigns supreme and
| FOSS has a larger foothold, though thanks to the above, the
| "year of the Linux desktop" may as well never come.
|
| > Most FOSS applications are aimed at self-selecting
| technical users, and there's very limited interest in
| making tools for non-technical users. In fact IMO FOSS
| culture lacks the mindset and skills - and very possibly
| the empathy - to understand what general users want from
| their tools.
|
| I'd say that it's also a matter of prioritizing what's
| necessary to get things done and simply not having the
| resources for the rest: UX, marketing, branding,
| integrations and so on.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >This is pretty much a self-perpetuating cycle and what
| happens when you have something close to a monopoly.
|
| That's simply not true. While having high market share
| does give you a short-term advantage, if a better
| alternative exists you'll bleed market share over time.
| Look at what happened to Netscape, then Internet
| Explorer, then Firefox. It'll happen to Chromium
| eventually too.
|
| Open-source alternatives to popular desktop software
| packages have existed for decades, and the reason they
| haven't snatched market share away from the main packages
| is because they don't work well.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > That's simply not true. While having high market share
| does give you a short-term advantage, if a better
| alternative exists you'll bleed market share over time.
| Look at what happened to Netscape, then Internet
| Explorer, then Firefox. It'll happen to Chromium
| eventually too.
|
| The time frames at play shouldn't be forgotten about
| here, nor should the magnitude of the effect.
|
| Most developers universally hated IE from IE 6 (2001) to
| IE 11, which might still be supported until 2030:
|
| > Microsoft is committed to support Internet Explorer
| that way to 2030 at least, with one year's notice before
| it is discontinued.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_11
|
| And yet, it still had to be supported and for some
| systems still needs to be. For whatever stupid reason,
| many were locked into using it and had little choice.
| Sure, eventually it could be tossed aside by most sane
| enterprises, but if developers had been given proper
| reign over what to choose to use, then it would have been
| ditched a few years after the release of IE 6 (Firefox
| came out around 2002).
|
| The average Joe/Jane doesn't really care about the
| browsers, though. They might not even recognize what a
| browser really is, merely know that they can use that one
| icon to access the Internet. Thus, the choice is made for
| them. Similarly, most laptops and desktop computers come
| with Windows preinstalled due to manufacturer deals, much
| like how most Android variations come with adware and
| other garbage. Nobody wants it, but nobody (at a certain
| price point), has any alternatives.
|
| If you don't know that there's a choice to make, someone
| else will make it for you.
|
| And i'd posit that there isn't as much of a difference
| between being technologically illiterate in Windows and
| being technologically illiterate in *nix.
|
| > Open-source alternatives to popular desktop software
| packages have existed for decades, and the reason they
| haven't snatched market share away from the main packages
| is because they don't work well.
|
| This is fair, though, especially because most FOSS
| software is basically developed below the poverty line:
| https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html
|
| Nobody's going to have good UX or fancy onboarding if
| they can barely find enough resources to keep the project
| going and fix all of the bugs, as well as handle the
| technological churn of keeping dependencies up to date
| etc.
|
| Outside of the ravings of FOSS enthusiasts and niche
| circumstances (e.g. servers), open source software will
| generally find it hard to compete with commercial
| offerings, most of the time, especially when it comes to
| software for the common folk.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Similarly, most laptops and desktop computers come with
| Windows preinstalled due to manufacturer deals, much like
| how most Android variations come with adware and other
| garbage. Nobody wants it, but nobody (at a certain price
| point), has any alternatives.
|
| I hear this a lot, but I don't think it's the primary
| reason why Desktop Linux has negligible market share
| (neither does Linus, FWIW). Plenty of people build their
| own PCs, or have a custom PC built for them by a
| friend/independent shop, and even amongst these
| enthusiasts Linux use is rare.
|
| The main problem, at least in my experience as a user, is
| the fact that Desktop Linux is janky to use. Unless you
| have the time and patience to learn about all the
| subsystems and fix the issues that keep cropping up,
| you're going to want to just spend the money on an OS
| that "just works". OSX is obviously the best in this
| regard, but modern Windows with automatic driver installs
| comes pretty damn close.
|
| (As a developer, the fact that there's no universally
| agreed-upon standards make it a pain in the arse to
| support too.)
|
| >Nobody's going to have good UX or fancy onboarding if
| they can barely find enough resources to keep the project
| going and fix all of the bugs, as well as handle the
| technological churn of keeping dependencies up to date
| etc.
|
| IMO, the main issue with open-source isn't actually
| finding developers (people love working on OSS) but doing
| the kind of boring, rigorous QA that you'll see in a
| commercial firm. Nobody's going to volunteer to reproduce
| specific edge cases in a printer driver, so it sits
| broken for decades.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >The main problem, at least in my experience as a user,
| is the fact that Desktop Linux is janky to use. Unless
| you have the time and patience to learn about all the
| subsystems and fix the issues that keep cropping up,
| you're going to want to just spend the money on an OS
| that "just works". OSX is obviously the best in this
| regard, but modern Windows with automatic driver installs
| comes pretty damn close.
|
| When was the last time you used Linux, 2003?
|
| The only problem with Linux is manufacturers that don't
| advertise support of their devices and that there are way
| too many distros so you can't have one ecosystem like you
| have a windows or macos ecosystem with certified devices.
|
| But if you stick with Lenovo thinkpads, brother printers
| and bog standard everything running a Fedora linux is
| like running a macos with well supported devices.
|
| We'd nerd having all kind of hardware sold whose
| compatibility is well tested and sold under the <insert
| your favorite distro> brands.
| thorncorona wrote:
| I used PopOS as well as Fedora on my desktop for school
| for 2 years. Tried it on a Lenovo as well and that was
| pretty laughable. I lost 30% of my battery life switching
| to linux. I gave up this year and just bought the 16" M1
| Mac when it came out. Some things are absolutely
| laughable about it but for the most part it just works
| TM.
|
| For the 95% use case it's fine but the 5% where stuff
| just _breaks_ is infuriating.
|
| Office just doesn't work right, and random things subtly
| break and it's hard to fix even as a technical user. I
| don't want to navigate between a bunch of files and waste
| time editing config files for hours. Give me a UI that
| tells me how to fix my shit.
|
| Only place where I run linux now is on a virtualized
| server using Proxmox. Linux is a great server OS but it
| just doesn't work very well as a user distro.
| Spivak wrote:
| Which is what Sketch and Figma did with Adobe XD and what
| Procreate did with Photoshop digital painting features.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I don't think this is entirely true for programs that
| rely on significant network effects. Photoshop and MS
| Office are entrenched because they are so widely used and
| anything other than absolutely perfect file compatibility
| with their formats is deemed trash. MS knows this and
| that's why the Office file format is such a complicated
| bloated mess of a "standard". Since nobody else can do it
| "right" everybody keeps picking MS office...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| This makes sense if your job is to teach them about the
| tools. If it's a software engineering or IT course then yeah.
|
| If it's an English Literature course then nobody cares about
| the tool used. Moleskine, Google Docs, Word, whatever, who
| cares. Google Docs is free. Why give yourself more hassle
| than that?
| adamesque wrote:
| This isn't quite the right analogy; it's not the difference
| between a fancy tool you can't service yourself and a simple
| tool you can.
|
| It's like a world where everyone uses a particular kind of
| tool that works well and is expensive, but also... the
| standard. Everyone expects you to know how to use this tool
| to do a particular kind of common work.
|
| And then you come along and say, no, we should teach people
| how to use a _different_, cheaper tool! It doesn't work
| nearly as well, and isn't what people in the "real world"
| use, but if you spend years familiarizing yourself with a
| completely different field, you can service and maintain it
| yourself!
|
| You might not get many takers.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Ok, now imagine you only have one person who knows how to use
| the boring drill, and they have 5,000 people to teach, and
| zero budget to hire anyone else. There is no way they could
| teach everyone, so they use the automatic one.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| The thing is that Adobe sweet offers a better product than
| GIMP. It's easier to use which, like it or not, does matter.
| Upon from that, it has more capability out of the box than
| GIMP.
|
| If you care about teaching students to design good buildings,
| why waste a ton of time showing them how to place screws.
| dahart wrote:
| > maybe we should teach the students how to use tools that
| work without all this extra cost and nonsense.
|
| Maybe we oughta collectively write better open source
| software if we want to opine on what schools should do? Gimp
| doesn't have to suck, but it does. I say that with true love
| for gimp and admiration for the people who write it, and I
| can't complain about it because I'm not helping write it.
| (But that is an option, you and I could contribute to gimp.)
|
| Part of the problem is that neither of your analogies are
| relevant in practice. Gimp isn't a cheaper less automatic
| Photoshop, it's a tool that often doesn't meet professional
| workflows at all, and certainly wasn't made kid friendly.
| It's not the same tool and can't do the same things. Also my
| kids were taught both gimp and photoshop, and they hated
| gimp. (And adobe makes photoshop available to schools for
| relatively cheap, compared to retail.)
|
| The analogy about the software being serviceable is not going
| to fly in schools. Submitting patches is not something
| teachers can do. Submitting bug reports isn't either. So what
| good is a theoretical idea that the software is open? The
| only thing schools can do in practice is pay money for
| support. And money is the single biggest problem they have.
| Vague concerns about privacy and lock-in are just _way_ down
| on the list of school & teacher priorities, right? I'm
| _wildly_ in favor of having good open source software, of
| avoiding education market capture by for profit companies,
| and having insanely better privacy controls. Open source
| sounds awesome, but I think it needs to improve before we
| start demanding that people use it or teach to it.
| asiachick wrote:
| You clearly don't know photoshop. A better comparison is
| Notepad vs VIM or Notepad vs Emacs. Notepad kind of works.
| You load, save, copy/cut/paste, find, save. What else do you
| need? Vim and Emacs have a learning curve but are way more
| powerful.
|
| If you don't understand how much more powerful Vim and Emacs
| are over notepad, most people who do know the difference
| would see the flaw in your opinion that all 3 are text
| editors and one is as good as another.
|
| The same is true of Photoshop vs gIMP. Photoshop has non-
| destructive editing. gIMP does not. That alone is a huge
| force multiplier. Photoshop has non-destructive layer and
| group styles, gIMP does not have layer styles as all. That's
| just few of the 100s of features Photoshop has that gIMP
| doesn't. They're not just minor features, they're force
| multipliers and game changers. gIMP has been planning to add
| the major ones for 15yrs or so but for whatever reasons has
| not gotten there.
|
| https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-
| suppor...
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > Photoshop has non-destructive editing. gIMP does not.
| That alone is a huge force multiplier.
|
| Oh yes. I'm not using Photoshop, but some hidden-secret
| alternative developed by two brothers from Bavaria
| (PhotoLine), because I'm only doing some small-scale
| private hobbyist stuff, and an (even at the time) slightly
| older version of their software had been included for free
| in a photography-themed edition of some computer magazine.
|
| That old version didn't have non-destructive layer effects
| (although even at that time it already supported non-
| destructive scaling/rotating/shearing of layers, which was
| quite nice, and which I gather GIMP doesn't support even
| today?). As my proficiency with it grew, I started running
| more and more into the limitations of that, until I
| eventually decided that maybe I should finally just buy a
| license for the current version of the software, since of
| the features it had gained in the intervening years was
| indeed non-destructive editing.
|
| This turned out to be absolutely the right decision,
| because non-destructive layers are indeed a game changer.
| No more making lots of backup copies of layers, no more
| clumsily noting down somewhere in the layer names or
| wherever what sort of effects I had applied in case I
| needed to re-tweak something, non-destructive liquifying,
| etc. etc. Plus a few nifty other features, and still the
| same familiar UI despite the large version jump, so
| absolutely no reason to regret the upgrade.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Imagine you 're teaching people carpentry. There is a
| really nice automatic screw gun that accepts a cartridge of
| screws all lined up automatically so each one loads in place
| after the last one. It is super easy to use and people can
| get straight to fastening beams together. But the device is
| very expensive, and they cannot be repaired if they break,
| [...]_
|
| Wait, let me stop your metaphor right there. How often do you
| imagine end-user software like Photoshop or MS Office
| actually "breaks" in a way that actually requires "repair"?
|
| Imagine if you will, that most of the time that your magic
| screw gun happens to jam, that simply unplugging it and
| plugging it back in again magically cleared the problem up,
| and you could continue where you left off.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Your example is only apt when using the tool is the point of
| the learning. More realistically, the drill is supposed to be
| an entirely necessary but _incidental_ aspect of the
| learning. In this scenario, any amount of time or effort
| expended on problem solve the drill is taking time away from
| the primary learning objective.
|
| This is why teachers use Word and Google Docs. They _do not
| give a shit_ about the tool. The tool is a means to an end.
| Word and Docs are familiar. Word and Docs work.
| bombcar wrote:
| This basically exists for drywall:
| https://www.milwaukeetool.com/Products/Power-
| Tools/Fastening...
|
| And it's a different skill set for sure, but highly worth it
| - someone who knows how do use it can hang drywall by
| themselves pretty easily.
|
| If that's your job, you should definitely know how to use it
| (and how to use just the gun, and the simple drill).
| jka wrote:
| Somewhat agreed, although to be fair, the other migration paths
| do seem more reasonable:
|
| > MS Office Suite ==> LibreOffice Suite
|
| > Illustrator ==> Inkscape
|
| > IE/Edge ==> Firefox
| temp8964 wrote:
| > MS Office Suite ==> LibreOffice Suite
|
| LoL. LibreOffice Suite is terrible compared to MS Office.
| There's simply nothing on par with Excel, PowerPoint, or
| Word. Also many are forced to use Outlook because of MS
| exchange.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > LoL. LibreOffice Suite is terrible compared to MS Office.
| There's simply nothing on par with Excel, PowerPoint, or
| Word. Also many are forced to use Outlook because of MS
| exchange.
|
| You know, i'm not sure about that. For what i need it to
| do: text processing and the occasional bit of nicer
| layout/tables/images and so on, it's decent. The same goes
| for presentations and spreadsheets.
|
| The problematic bit is that the rest of the world runs on
| MS Office file formats and you'll run into problems due to
| limited compatibility sooner or later. Then again, the
| formats themselves are Eldritch abominations, so that's to
| be expected, as the same happens with OpenDocument formats
| when opened in Microsoft software.
|
| The most interesting set of problems i had were with Writer
| screwing up my bibliography, though most people prefer
| external software for that anyways: https://blog.kronis.dev
| /everything%20is%20broken/libreoffice...
|
| (that said, dear god did i hate the requirements for
| reference formatting in university, why couldn't we just
| put a link/reference and leave it at that)
|
| As for the other alternatives: in my opinion, Inkscape has
| the worst UX of them all, though can still work okay in a
| limited set of circumstances.
|
| Firefox seems like an okay browser, despite the inept
| management in the recent years.
|
| Thunderbird is a pretty cool e-mail client, by the way. It
| even includes a feed reader!
| jahewson wrote:
| I don't know if I would consider screwing up my
| bibliography to be "decent", but hey. You're right about
| file formats - and of course it runs deeper, file formats
| are just a manifestation of feature sets and models. When
| you have a model mismatch, as LibreOffice does, then
| you're sort of set up to fail, no matter how clean and
| open the file format is (or isn't).
| KronisLV wrote:
| > I don't know if I would consider screwing up my
| bibliography to be "decent", but hey.
|
| More or less the same how Word routinely messes up how
| images should be laid out in respect to the text around
| them. Though every office package does that to some
| degree. Or also how messy working with something like
| Apache POI is when you want to generate spreadsheets
| programmatically, or read them. Or how Windows keeps
| reverting diagnostics settings much like spyware would.
| Or how Linux distros have problems with sound drivers.
| Generally usable, good enough, but still with annoying
| quirks.
|
| Then again, i'm not motivated enough to use LaTeX so
| aside from a bit of complaining, i guess i just have to
| tolerate the many packages out there and their quirks.
|
| > You're right about file formats - and of course it runs
| deeper, file formats are just a manifestation of feature
| sets and models. When you have a model mismatch, as
| LibreOffice does, then you're sort of set up to fail, no
| matter how clean and open the file format is (or isn't).
|
| Hmm, i wouldn't do LibeOffice a dirty like that and
| dismiss it as some prime example of a particular bad
| architecture, nor would i agree that it's what my
| original argument was about.
|
| I cannot comment on what would be a "good" office format
| example, as the internals of either look pretty bad to
| me, consider seeing what's inside those documents
| sometime. Extract the contents of a .docx and a .odt file
| and see the XML - Microsoft's is not quite readable,
| while OpenDocument's is a tad too verbose. It would
| probably have to be XML because of the node structure,
| but neither like HTML, nor what those two office packages
| have in store.
|
| My original argument was closer to the following:
| regardless of a format being open or not, dealing with a
| domain such as word processing in any advanced capacity
| is likely to provide lots of accidental and lots of
| inherent complexity. Basically, any format that's more
| complicated than Markdown will have so many quirks and
| behavior that's specific to the implementation, that any
| other software package will be unable to reproduce it
| 1:1.
|
| Just look at how many years it took for web browsers to
| even display CSS/HTML the same (for the most part) and
| they had the opportunity to work with a bunch of
| relatively simplistic standards, whereas office document
| formats feel way less developer friendly in that regard.
| Ergo, lacking compatibility.
| jahewson wrote:
| What I'm trying to say is that when we say "file format"
| for anything non-trivial we really mean "semantic model",
| the encoded representation of that isn't so important.
|
| There's nothing bad about architecting software around
| ODF (it came first, after all) but it inevitably will
| lead to incompatibilities with OOXML. Likewise for the
| inverse. I wouldn't call these quirks as much as an
| impedance mismatch.
| wtch98 wrote:
| I don't get this. My work email is on exchange, but I
| haven't used outlook for 15 years - I access web based
| exchange from firefox on my linux laptop
| temp8964 wrote:
| Many people don't like the web version, and Outlook can
| manage multiple email accounts in one place.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Gnome evolution too.
| grayclhn wrote:
| For _school_ use the extra functionality is basically
| irrelevant. (Excel for some college level courses is an
| unfortunate exception.)
| Kwpolska wrote:
| The user interface of LibreOffice is garbage. The ribbon
| is much more discoverable than toolbars and menus (and
| no, LibreOffice's ribbon imitation isn't as good as the
| original).
|
| And if you're talking about Excel... LibreOffice Calc
| doesn't have tables (with nice styling, automatic formula
| filling, and using column names in formulas), and working
| with PivotTables requires a separate dialog box with no
| simple live preview.
| jka wrote:
| For the sake of argument I'll agree with you. Even then,
| there's a key difference between the two software stacks:
| anyone could improve LibreOffice.
|
| Could you name an issue you have with Calc that makes you
| feel it is inferior to Excel? (something more specific than
| look-and-feel, ideally, although I admit that may be a
| factor in reality)
| stoicjumbotron wrote:
| While I somewhat agree with this, another good alternative
| would be Affinity Photo[0] (and is 50% off as of this writing).
| One time buy, nice UI and UX and is also quite comparable to
| Photoshop.
|
| 0: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/#buy
| [deleted]
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a pro,
| the difference of feature set doesn't matter.
|
| On adobe, I prefer using photopea than ever having to touch
| photoshop again, that's a tell that it isn't all that great to
| since a free to use replias fits all my needs.
|
| I would concede photoshop has a better UX, on Windows and OSX
| that is true, but on its native linux home, it blends rather
| well with gtk approach to UIs and flow.
|
| IDE wise, plenty of OSS solutions on par with commercial
| products now, at least for tooling education needs.
| [deleted]
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Photoshop's AI features are light years ahead of GIMP.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but being able to use Gimp isn't going to help your
| career and being able to use Photoshop is.
| seclorum_wien wrote:
| Both programs are easy to use, though. If a company has
| Photoshop installed, use it, sure. But there is also no
| reason not to use GIMP if that is preferred, and .. you
| know .. _gets the job done_ anyway.
|
| I get art from artists to integrate into apps all the time
| that wasn't made in photoshop. Most important is they know
| what they're doing, whatever they're using...
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| > Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a
| pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.
|
| No, Gimp is quite bad when it comes to non-destructive
| editing. Even the FAQ mentions that [1]. As someone who works
| in game development, non-destructive editing, specifically
| layer effects are used _everywhere_. Especially for UI
| elements and stylizing text.
|
| [1]: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#when-will-gimp-
| suppor...
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Sure. I tried to answer contextually. If some kids get to a
| certain level, they will be using adequate tools for the
| job. I think the critic is about standard bulk licenses
| bought for kids training on multi disciplinary activities.
| In the context i would say destructive vs non destructive
| or that gimp has filters that are not gpu optimised while
| adobe does are secondary concerns. + don't have me dig to
| find a non destructive photo editor that is open source :)
| tgv wrote:
| The UX totally kills Gimp, like it hinders LibreOffice,
| especially in comparison to Excel. Let's not forget many
| pupils have little affinity with corporate IT and no interest
| in learning text editing for the heck of it. If you have to
| teach it anyway, best give them easy tools that they can
| recognize later in life, and with which they can help their
| grandparents.
|
| Given the fact that IT teachers are scarce (at least here;
| teachers for programming aren't available at all below
| advanced educational levels), I do think that simply
| foregoing teaching these skills might even be better.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > no interest in learning text editing
|
| Why is this relevant to the use of gimp ot libreoffice? I
| never had to open a text editor to use gimp or libreoffice
| (well apart than writer itself duh).
| na85 wrote:
| >Gimp is quite on par with photoshop, and unless you are a
| pro, the difference of feature set doesn't matter.
|
| It's not about the features. I agree there's more or less
| feature parity for the 90% of use cases, but gimp has bad UX.
|
| It's just clunky and frustrating to use, and there's no sugar
| coating that fact.
|
| I hate using gimp.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I don't argue the UX is lacking, i still hate using
| Photoshop even more, and would have liked, as a kid, to be
| told how to use open tools even if not as good. It surely
| would have been better than what i got: Windows 98 which
| only had MS paint in it at my high school computer room,
| and that wouldn't be the only productivity tool missing on
| any Windows machine we may find at schools even today,
| while some linux package manager is 1 click and 1 command
| away to install literally whater, for free, probably better
| security reviewed than the next commercial product.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > It's just clunky and frustrating to use, and there's no
| sugar coating that fact.
|
| Having used both as well as alternatives (like paint shop
| pro and some others), this is mostly resistance to change.
| You are used to photoshop so anything with a different
| paradigm will feel unituitive. Same with libreoffice and
| office if you don't care to understand the concepts.
|
| Resistance to change is a strong thing. Objectively, macos
| and windows desktop are slow and clunky interfaces compared
| to say, gnome3. Yet many people even among linux users hate
| the later because they have been used to slow and clunky
| and don't understand smooth.
| blagie wrote:
| Sorry. gimp is crap compared to Photoshop. Gimp was on-par
| with Photoshop when it came out in the nineties. It hasn't
| improved much since.
|
| That said, gimp is free. Adobe Creative Suite is over half a
| grand a year. For most people, knowing gimp is a useful life
| / workspace skill. Only the very elite will have access to
| Photoshop. Learning Adobe tools is simply not helpful for 98%
| of the population, as a life skill (beyond the general skills
| learned with any tool).
| moralestapia wrote:
| Good products sell themselves. If GIMP were better AND free
| people would be all over it.
|
| "B-b-ut Photoshop cornered the market", wrong, plenty of new
| apps like Procreate have found success just by being a tiny
| bit innovative and delivering a quality experience.
|
| I really like OSS (and have contributed to several projects)
| but what matters in the end is the UX. There's a reason why
| Apple is a trillion dollar company.
|
| Some projects are just mediocre and stagnant while trying to
| save face by saying they are OSS, at the end of the day no
| one cares, people just move along.
|
| Other projects are so poisoned now that they barely resemble
| what they once were in their best times, i.e. Firefox and
| their self-imposed race to the bottom.
| prmoustache wrote:
| If firefox is the bottom, I don't really understand where
| do you put chrome or edge. Abysses?
|
| There is a lot to say about Mozilla management but Firefox
| the browser is really good.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Inkscape actually getting pretty good, though. That'd be a good
| start.
| [deleted]
| ankaAr wrote:
| I'm from Argentina. We have a OLPC like plan named "Conectar
| Igualdad" And the City of Buenos Aires had (or have, I don't know
| if still running) another one named "Plan Sarmiento".
|
| Both plans were the battle zone between Microsoft and open source
| software community.
|
| For the first plan, the government started a project named Huayra
| Linux, a debian derivate with a bunch of software designed here
| for the kids. For Sarmiento, it came with a debian tweaked
| installation, that was barely working because the closed source
| of the wimax chipset (it was only working for windows, and yes,
| the students had free internet in the city)
|
| The battle was so hard, that Microsoft licensed the windows
| distribution for 1 dollar each, and they got a contract where all
| the machines must to be installed with windows.
|
| Despite a lot of trials and errors, a lot of work without a
| project to learn from (maybe ceybal from uruguay is the closest
| example of a really well project) and the scale (I'm talking
| about millions of notebooks) I'm sure that open source software
| is the best from a IT perspective, from social perspective and
| with the best margin to build things that your school, your
| students, your city or country needs.
| cbracketdash wrote:
| Interestingly, many schools are now using ChromeOS, a "locked-
| down" version of linux.
|
| Alas, only Chrome and Google-based applications are allowed;
| however, it's a good step away from more expensive products.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| There needs to be a, "third way" developed that isn't, "FOSS/Open
| Source" or, "Proprietary." It's worth remembering how much of the
| revolutionary computing of the 194/5/60's was developed using
| models that tactfully combined private and public industry.
| Programs like ARPA provided funding for open ended research which
| gave us the Alta and the ARPANet (thanks Lick!) while companies
| like IBM performed an important social function in providing
| especially young engineers with cutting edge jobs during their
| golden era. There's a vivid history on this subject that's worth
| looking into.
|
| https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine
|
| If we're going to be adults about the thing-- Developing
| technology requires global or at least national stability. Global
| stability traditionally has, "required" global hegemony.
| Developing technology allows the United States and her allies to
| to remain technically ahead of competing nations which in a
| feedback loop allows for the development of further technology.
| There's a sideways argument that in truth, in some sense, that
| the technology we, "ought" (Hume) to be using in schools should
| be, "nationalized" in the same sense that the, "internet" as a
| tangible infrastructure is a, "national" resource. Imagine a kind
| of Sudbury School where children use advanced, "democracy
| computers" to, "rehearse" avid citizenship given the political
| constraints of our society. The computer could facilitate a
| social revolution in an educational setting if used in this
| manner. I really do think this is what Alan C. Kay is talking
| about when he says, "the computing revolution hasn't happened
| yet."
|
| Also HyperCard! and Project Xanadu! and Blackjack! and Hookers!
| (Exclamation point!)
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " ...children use advanced, 'democracy computers' to,
| 'rehearse' avid citizenship given the political constraints of
| our society"
|
| What does this mean?
| colesantiago wrote:
| As far as I know most industries other than the software industry
| uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc
| and not any of these open source ones.
|
| > IT departments could opt to use any one of the lightweight
| Linux distros available.
|
| Which one? That is the problem and don't get me started on tech
| support.
|
| This screams completely out of touch.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > As far as I know most industries other than the software
| industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop,
| Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones.
|
| The reason for that could have to do with schools. It could
| change if schools changed.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > As far as I know most industries other than the software
| industry uses Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop,
| Illustrator etc and not any of these open source ones.
|
| There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but this
| one (which comes up repeatedly) is not among them. It's absurd
| to argue that elementary schools should design their curriculum
| exclusively to train students for the job market.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Who said this?
|
| All I am saying is that when non tech savvy people are
| working with software there is a high likelihood that they
| will be using the above software.
|
| Even if it is for the job market, I doubt a hiring manager
| would take a look twice at LibreOffice or even GIMP in a
| candidate's CV.
|
| Unfortunately Microsoft and Adobe or any other proprietary
| software is an expectation in some industries outside of the
| software industry.
| tigerlily wrote:
| Like imagine if Microsoft just stopped supporting all their
| products though.
| alaricus wrote:
| I think you are the one out of touch. My Boomer parents only
| need help from me once a year or less with their Ubuntu
| machines. If they can do it, so can genZ students.
| xigency wrote:
| The students aren't at issue, it's the teachers. Your parents
| might as well be tech wizards compared to the the most tech
| illiterate instructor. Not to mention that the sample size is
| much larger when looking at a school or district compared to
| one household.
| alaricus wrote:
| They can learn. It's not hard.
| psadauskas wrote:
| Not just that, but any software that is funded by government
| grants should be mandatory open-source, with some possibly some
| minimal exceptions for top-secret things like ICBM guidance
| systems.
| sbuk wrote:
| This article should have been written using HTML...
| blagie wrote:
| Personally, I think the argument today is different. I see the
| kinds of data being collected about my child by school ed-tech
| vendors, and it's scary.
|
| Looking backwards in history, Nazi Germany and Soviet police
| states are good examples of why having people know too much about
| you can get you killed, depending on political system.
|
| Looking at the present, people's jobs and political careers are
| destroyed for having said things which were mainstream views a
| half-century ago. Statues are torn down of people who held
| perfectly mainstream views 150 years ago. I have no idea which of
| the things my child says and knows now will be taboo in another
| 50 years. I do know the schools are storing all of that in
| archives with a whole bunch of fly-by-night ed-tech vendors.
|
| I don't know how this is going to end, but mark my words: This
| will end badly. We have a history and a present of persecuting
| people for less, and privacy is what protects us.
| hnusersarelame wrote:
| This is dreadfully out of touch and only serves the interests of
| FOSS advocates, not the students. Give kids the tools that will
| make them successful in their educational and professional
| careers. Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > Nobody is using GIMP in the graphic design world.
|
| This statement is false. In my company it is used all the time
| for any image manipulations, by both graphic designers and
| managers. Last time I've seen photoshop was maybe in 2007 or
| so.
| kcplate wrote:
| You are the outlier then. I have been in publishing and
| advertising industry since the late eighties through many
| companies. I can't remember a time that it wasn't the defacto
| standard since at least the early 90s
| digisign wrote:
| Those are not particularly large industries.
| cube00 wrote:
| The "job market" argument no longer holds up with Google ruling
| the education roost. You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's
| Docs/Sheets used in enterprise as frequently as Microsoft's
| products.
| demopathos wrote:
| > You won't see Chromebooks or GSuite's Docs/Sheets used in
| enterprise as frequently
|
| Right now we don't see it. GSuite will completely take
| Microsoft's place in corporate environments in the next 10
| years. All my peers entering the workforce right now love
| Google docs and detest Word. It's just a matter of time for
| when that age bracket becomes the decision makers.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't have experience with Office 365, but GSuite has been
| transformative. I never want to go back to mailing files
| around. Furthermore, while you'll always have power users who
| need Excel or Word for some reason, in general, GSuite for me
| has pretty much everything I need and it's far more
| streamlined. It's very rare that I want to do something--
| other than when I need to exchange Word files--that I can't
| do with Google (and even then I can usually work around it).
| na85 wrote:
| I have experience with both and O365 is a fucking
| nightmare.
| nogbit wrote:
| I do right now see Google Workspace being used as the primary
| goto for office docs and email at a very large company. It's
| happening.
|
| O365 is a mess, with Excel online I can't even create a named
| range, something so basic that has been in Google Sheets since
| day one. As an example.
| alaricus wrote:
| Everyone should be using open source.
| msh wrote:
| You know a person have no clue about education when they suggest
| to use vim to teach people how to code.
| sunsunsunsun wrote:
| You could easily spend a semester teaching how to use vim
| before you even write any code.
| zerop wrote:
| Sharing from my experience of selling SaaS products for school
| management to schools -
|
| 1. School staff is not tech savy. They can not install or manage
| open source easily.
|
| 2. They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support.
| Software is critical to them but not their main business. They
| lack expertise and willingness to go for Open source software.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support.
|
| But there's commercial free software with paid support.
| moralestapia wrote:
| ORLY?
|
| Give me an OSS alternative to Google Workspace and I'll move
| _today_.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I'm no expert but aren't there literally dozens upon dozens
| of those? Nextcloud, Zimbra, Kolab, etc. for example? [1]
| There are hundreds of companies that provide nextcloud
| hosting with support alone [1]...
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_soft
| ware...
|
| 2. https://nextcloud.com/providers/
| moralestapia wrote:
| Nextcloud is quite good and is the only one I'd seriously
| consider from that list.
|
| However, their Standard plan (which is the one that has
| Office-like apps) is actually more expensive than what I
| pay now on G, so there's literally no incentive for me to
| switch.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "their." There are hundreds
| of providers. Some are like $5/month.
| moralestapia wrote:
| their = Nextcloud's.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Okay well there are like 30 partners just on the
| Enterprise landing page alone. You should shop around.
|
| Also, I just remembered. The Sonoma County Office of
| Education is already using Zimbra as its groupware. I
| wouldn't write it off entirely either.
| alaricus wrote:
| > They mostly prefer commercial software with paid support.
|
| Most paid support is awful.
| zachrip wrote:
| Schools need long term turnkey solutions that offer support and
| someone who will pick up the phone when they call. The school
| district I went to used macs and you were allowed to install
| whatever browser you wanted on them. We used google drive or just
| the hard drive to store files. Forcing folks to use niche
| software means they cannot just use whatever the rest of the
| world is using when they graduate. Teachers, parents, students,
| etc would need to learn these new programs that they haven't used
| before. I don't really seen any positives to this except a feel
| good story about open source. Who actually knows what the costs
| would be? The support time? Etc. I'm sure there will be a lot of
| school sysadmins reading this and thinking "please just stay in
| your lane."
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Schools need long term turnkey solutions that offer support
|
| No they don't. Schools need affordable and generally available
| software that kids can freely download, and which are flexible
| and open enough to be tailored. It is ironic to label solutions
| that basically lock-down and lock-in student's options as
| "turnkey". More like "throw away the key"!
|
| > someone who will pick up the phone when they call.
|
| But no-one ever does. This harks back to the Total Cost of
| Ownership (TCO) FUD Microsoft were spewing in the early 00's.
| In 2022 we all know exactly what big-tech customer support
| looks like even if you pay dearly for it. Basically you're on
| your own, and good luck to you.
|
| > Forcing folks to use niche software
|
| Forcing anyone to use any software is wrong. Software should be
| a _choice_ in the same way that religion, diet, political
| affiliation and our choice of friends. There is not _only one
| way_. Understanding that there are choices - alternative ways
| of doing things - is fundamental to innovation and should be
| taught to kids from a very young age.
|
| > they cannot just use whatever the rest of the world is using
|
| That is a disingenuous generalisation. There is no "rest of the
| world".
|
| > when they graduate.
|
| One thing I've learned over many years of teaching tech, is
| that by the time students graduate and get into a real job
| market the things that were hot when they were freshmen have
| moved on. Google services have been axed. Adobe versions and
| licenses have changed. Microsoft applications moved into the
| cloud and radically changed their interfaces. It is actually
| Free Open Source Software that retains greater stability and
| offers greater career value longevity, even it is is
| functionally poorer.
|
| > Teachers, parents, students, etc would need to learn these
| new programs that they haven't used before.
|
| In tech, we all have to learn new things we haven't used
| before, all the time. It's the nature of rapid progress. To
| infer that this is somehow only true of open source software is
| wrong.
|
| > I'm sure there will be a lot of school sysadmins reading this
| and thinking "please just stay in your lane."
|
| We have a massive problem with de-skilling of ICT admins at the
| primary, secondary, and even higher-ed levels. I believe this
| is a direct cause of poorer educational outcomes because the
| technical support staff are unable to serve needs in a rapidly
| advancing world that demands innovation and deeper skills than
| clicking boxes on a webmin panel to choose some Windows
| options.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Yes, that's why IT admins in public funded institutions need to
| be told the standard they are to follow, 80% of the "internet"
| runs on linux, and GUIs have filled pretty much all gaps,
| drivers aren't the nightmare it was 20y ago.
|
| Open source even if causing problems that dont exist with
| commercial solutions is worth it overall. Plus, linux support
| licences do exist.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Plus, linux support licences do exist.
|
| I would much rather RH, SUSE, Canonical, Zorin, Elementary,
| or any other FL/OSS company get those contracts than
| Microsoft or Apple.
|
| Business runs on Windows because schools run on Windows.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| As a historical matter, this is exactly backwards. Schools
| chose windows because businesses used it. Linux and other
| unices barely even registered until the late 2000s, even at
| the university level, except within computer science
| departments.
|
| Even today, various linux UIs are somewhat behind Cinnamon
| ad Gnome, in fit, finish and polish. But in the 2000s it
| was a joke. KDE didn't appear until 1998 and it was very
| much a work in progress. Windows 95 had been out for three
| years and was leaps and bounds ahead.
|
| Every year since then has been wildly proclaimed as the
| "Year of the Linux Desktop". It keeps getting closer, but
| still isn't really there.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Good point.
|
| I should've worded what I was trying to communicate
| better - the reason that businesses are stuck on
| Windows/MS Office is because all any "average joe" knows
| is Windows/MS Office.
|
| In my opinion, if we want to be able to move ahead, we
| need to start by educating people on how to actually use
| a computer, instead of being used by it. Afaict, the only
| way to do that is to move away from the "You may do what
| Microsoft/Apple say you can do" reasoning that pervades
| schools.
|
| That itself would require some amount of movement from
| Windows. Ideally, there would be a course where you learn
| how to use Windows/Linux/Mac and learn about other
| options, but as that'll never happen I would be very
| happy to at least see a shift from "Microsoft (and Apple
| if you're rich) is all there is".
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| > Yes, that's why IT admins in public funded institutions
| need to be told the standard they are to follow, 80% of the
| "internet" runs on linux, and GUIs have filled pretty much
| all gaps, drivers aren't the nightmare it was 20y ago.
|
| I tried to switch to Linux a couple of years back. The GUIs
| were fucked, and varied so much between distributions that
| everybody just defaulted to the terminal anyway.
|
| Hardware support was a major PITA. Everything would "work",
| but there'd be random issues, like my printer (Brother colour
| laser) refusing to go above about 50dpi regardless of what
| setting I put, and some disk mounting service crashing
| internally if I inserted and removed my SD card reader too
| many times (nothing crazy, like 2-3 times over an 8 hour
| session).
|
| These pains were on Kubuntu. A more niche (yet still for some
| reason recommended) distribution that I installed broke the
| entire desktop environment when I tried to switch from the
| broken, buggy mess that was Noveau to the properly QA'd
| Nvidia stuff.
|
| Similar experience with my Grandpa, for what it's worth. He
| hated Windows 10's ads and tracking with a passion, and asked
| me to install Linux on his machine when Windows 7 became EOL.
| But nope, everything was broken.
| zachrip wrote:
| If someone wants to see this happen then they should start a
| company which offers this as a service to schools - I've no
| idea if this already exists, it probably does but my point is
| schools don't just decide to run certain systems on their
| own, they meet with providers and decide which best meets
| their needs. Someone with this goal should try and get a spot
| at that table and maybe it'll actually happen.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I believe Zorin Grid will be exactly that! When I first
| heard about it, it appeared to be more education focused
| and now appears to target education and enterprise.
|
| https://zorin.com/grid/
| pid-1 wrote:
| I've worked as a sysadmin (not a school though) and I've
| researched before how feasible it would be to allow a
| subset of my users to run Linux as their main client.
|
| The tooling simply is not there yet. Your only choice is to
| pay very expensive licenses to either Suse or Red Hat.
| digisign wrote:
| Everything at our school running over the web. This is
| not a barrier any longer.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| "Open source even if causing problems that dont exist with
| commercial solutions is worth it overall."
|
| Spoken like someone who doesn't have to deal with the day-in-
| day-out hassle of running it in a school environment and
| dealing with the lack of knowledge and support from your
| superiors and users.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I actually did that a couple of years and in a foreign
| country that include language barrier and all sort of
| logistical issues for provisioning hardware. It's more than
| do-able, but yes, it involves thinking over needs and
| filling gaps that aren't so obvious how to fill at first +
| training staff. But that's what education is all about so
| open source only, and it worked. The only commercial/closed
| source pieces we used are cloud solutions, even then, it
| could have been avoided by having just one other IT onboard
| to maintain self hosted alternatives, which would have cost
| less than the sum of the subscription services. But yea
| here again it would have taken some education and a bit
| more planning as no open source is click and play like most
| commercial solutions.
|
| We are bringing lack of knowledge and training to explain
| the current trend, what an irony given we are talking about
| sanctuaries of knowledge and education.
| pid-1 wrote:
| Linux dominates server side for sure, but very feel companies
| run Linux in the client side.
|
| In fact, the tooling used to manage Windows and Mac fleets
| generally doesn't even exist for Linux, or is just very bad
| (Active Directory, Intune, etc ...)
| 0des wrote:
| > I'm sure there will be a lot of school sysadmins reading this
|
| Hard to read when convulsing in the fetal position.
| npteljes wrote:
| >whatever the rest of the world is using
|
| This is exactly what Microsoft got right: establishing
| themselves as the standard. Their OS on the PC, their OS on the
| laptop, and their suite in the offices. Deals with governments,
| deals with schools, and then, you're the idiot if you want to
| use something else compared to "whatever the rest of the world
| is using".
|
| I do agree about turnkey solutions though. This is what MS got
| right, and also I think what Red Hat and Canonical got right.
| balaji1 wrote:
| > "please just stay in your lane."
|
| Well said. Most institutions and organizations need and would
| prefer turnkey long-term solutions.
| johncoltrane wrote:
| Schools should use software that works.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Could be worth distinguishing between open source and free-to-
| use.
|
| Something like VS Code works nicely but costs nothing.
|
| If there's a budget problem in schools there's certainly software
| that can be used without paying for it.
| abetusk wrote:
| Wow, I didn't expect to see so much pushback from the community
| here. This sounds pretty obvious to me.
|
| Gimp is really not adequate for everyday usage compared with
| Photoshop? Really?
|
| LibreOffice/OpenOffice doesn't provide adequate alternatives to
| spreadsheet/doc/csv? Really?
|
| Notepad++ is not good enough of a text editor? Really?
|
| One semi valid criticism is that there isn't a support
| infrastructure to help organizations with their open source
| needs. While I don't believe it on it's face, regardless, this is
| an opportunity to push for that infrastructure and to help every
| single FOSS project with funding to support the community needs.
|
| Public infrastructure should not be captured by vendor lock-in.
| kcplate wrote:
| It's also about how much time you need to put into the apps.
| The UX as stated elsewhere on this thread with these
| alternatives just doesn't measure up.
|
| For one off, simple jobs, used sparingly...those FOSS
| alternatives are fine.
|
| If I need to spend more than 10 minutes of time using
| them...I'm frustrated beyond measure at their UX issues.
| digisign wrote:
| These are newbie children learning their first apps. They
| don't need "professional" features or ground-breaking UX. Not
| to mention these apps are generally better than MS stuff from
| the 90s, which were good enough.
|
| Learn a spreadsheet, pick up any spreadsheet easily for the
| rest of your life.
| sgwizdak wrote:
| This article discusses end user applications, but nothing
| regarding the classroom experience. (E.g., how does the teacher
| monitor individual screens to ensure they're staying on task?) My
| wife is a teacher and google classroom is what most of the
| districts in this area leverage.
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