alfred's blog
Open source trumps Microsoft in UK schools
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 09:14.MICROSOFT has suffered further set-backs in the UK education sector this week after Becta, the government procurement quango, reformed its purchasing regime to break the software giant's hold on education, and launched a programme to get schools to adopt open source
software.
At least three open source software suppliers submitted tenders to Becta yesterday for the £270,000 Schools Open Source Project. The winner will spend two years building a community of schools which uses and develops its own open source alternatives to Microsoft software.
Paperless Schools and Linux Notebooks for Every Kid
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 09:11.I was very interested in this piece from Computerworld U.K., titled "Can we give every school child in the U.K. a Linux notebook and still save money?" It provides a cost breakdown of what it would take to give every student a Linux notebook, compared to the costs schools in the U.K. currently face for software licenses, other technology fees, and printing and photocopying.
School switches to Linux, hopes to keep MS funds
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 09:08.Warrington School, in Otago, has decided to jump ship and deploy the GNU/Linux operating system with free software across the board by a target date of 2010, says the school’s principal, Nathan Parker. The complete switch to Linux has been approved by the Ministry of Education, and Parker is now hoping that a portion of the money that would normally be paid to Microsoft for software licences will continue to be paid to the school.
ASPIRE High Goes Linux
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 09:02.Over one year ago I received an email telling me about how I could get a free CD of a Linux operating system called Ubuntu. I got several and tried them out on various computer without even effecting their current systems. I was amazed what what it could do and that you could do this all for free...
Private St. Louis school goes Linux
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 08:50.A private school in St. Louis, Mo. is increasingly choosing Linux for the computers it supplies to students and faculty, according to laptop supplier Lenovo. Students at the Whitfield School are using Linux about 86 percent of the time now, Lenovo says, up from 50 percent three years ago.
Lenovo has supplied about 600 laptops to the Whitfield School, it says, including systems that run both Linux and Windows. Whitfield started its PC program in 2005, and this year achieved its goal of supplying each student in grades six through 12 with their own laptop, it says.
23,000 Linux PCs forge education revolution in Philippines
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 08:47.Providing high school students with PCs is seen as a first step to preparing them for a technology-literate future, but in the Philippines many schools cannot afford to provide computing facilities so after a successful deployment of 13,000 Fedora Linux systems from a government grant, plans are underway to roll out another 10,000 based on Ubuntu.
Linux: 9000 PCs in Swiss schools will switch to Ubuntu only
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 08:35.Beginning from next term, all computers at schools in the Swiss canton of Geneva will be switched to Ubuntu Linux only.
Geneva newspaper Tribune de Geneve reports today that from September 2008 all computers at schools that currently are dual-boot MS Windows and Linux will have MS Windows removed and become FOSS (Free Open Source Software) only.
Cost of Open Source desktop maintenance is by far the lowest
Submitted by alfred on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 07:29.The Foreign Ministry is migrating all of its 11.000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other Open source applications. According to Schuster, this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. "The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we spend only one thousand euro per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average spend more than 3000 euro per desktop per year."
Drupal receives high scores from Nonprofit Technology Network, a major Non-profit Technology organization.
Submitted by alfred on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 16:29.Drupal (the website software we use for our clients) received high scores in a satisfaction report by NTEN, a major Non-profit Technology organization. Drupal was evaluated in five categories, and had the highest number of responses, and the highest number of respondents that indicated Drupal is their primary CMS. Drupal is clearly popular with the non-profit crowd and this satisfaction survey provides the Drupal community with focused areas for improvement. Follow the link below to learn more
How to support your local economy, save money and get a great computer at the same time...
Submitted by alfred on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 06:25.So Vista is here and you do not want to buy a computer with it on it.
So you start to think "I will buy a Mac"...
Well here is your chance to make an even better choice for your wallet and the local economy.
Either way you go Mac, Vista, Ubuntu (http://ubuntu.com) you will have to learn new icons and menus but the base work flow is all the same.
So now the question really comes down to money...
Mac: $2,000 (all the money goes out of the state unless you buy it at YES computers, in which case a fraction of the money stays in state.)
