I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.
so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)
Did the same some years ago. It was for the gap between win7 and 10.
Everyone told me it was the best productive time. Because users can’t install stuff and my network blocked a lot of dumb shit.
But now we got new win 11 PCs and every user is back on solitaire or shady websites.
you’re lucky to have an open-minded principle
true, normally people would be too afraid
They’re often having to juggle with very low budgets, old equipment, low skill and zero support. And that’s before you add children…
I don’t doubt they jumped at the chance of someone helping out.
Principal*
Not being pedantic, just thought I’d let you and others know there are multiple ways to spell this word.
I will be pedantic. There is only one way to spell each word; principal and principle are different words (though they share a root).
I was afraid someone would do that.
Does your school have an it department? If not maybe that can be a job for you. Someone will need to maintain that fleet.
Beats me. maybe they do, maybe they don’t? I honestly have no clue, perhaps I should ask.
YES on the ask!!! Seconded big time
Woohoo, some hacker kid is about to install Sober and Prism and will be the hero for everyone.
My kid’s elementary school has a computer club handling all the PCs. The other day they were surprised to hear that the PCs they were playing GCompris, Ktuberling, Pingus, Super Tux, Tuxpaint and Tux Kart on are running Linux.
another example of: one of the best ways to teach children is to trick them.
try to force them to use linux and the terminal? booooring, hell no….
give them linux computers without games?
they’re 1337 haxors in two weeks… with skills that will help them for life….
especially if they ever get locked in a building with velociraptors….that’s how I learned firewalls and networking lmao
couldn’t access my games, so I found ways around the firewalls and network blocks, just to play on coolmathgames lmao
I’m sure the velociraptors helped you stay focused too.
Clever girl…
Same. School firewall blocked based on host names, so we all learned a lot about the hosts file so we could manually set all of the IPs Minecraft needed to authenticate.
Ooh clever. I was able to get around mine by opening sites in an iframe, I made a bookmarklet for it
Or they’ll install portable versions of Minecraft so many times they’ll decide to learn how to remove -rubbishfiles from root
my dad gave me permission to break the family computer as much as i wanted, and he would just take it to work and reinstall everything from an image….
now i can fix computer problemsI prefer removing the -french language pack on every install. The command comes with a typo though, so you need to fix that for it by adding
/*at the endmais pourquoi ?
This is how (at least elder) millennials learned everything they know about technology. It’s the only way imo
Hmm I was clearly too well behaved. Most of my knowledge of computers came through wanting to program them to do cool stuff, not bypass restrictions. The cheatiest thing I can remember doing is copying a cool puzzle game from the school computer onto a flash drive so I could play it at home, so I guess I did it backwards?
my dad told me like 5 dos commands, gave me permission to do whatever or break whatever on the home computer his work provided, told me there was some games on there but he didn’t know where… and i figured out the rest pretty much… whenever i broke it he’d just take it to work and bring it back fixed.
this was back in the wild wild west, where the hospital IT had one master hard drive image, and people threw random games and programs on there…
i was always surprised how ok he was with me breaking it weekly, but looking back on it i think he was proud…
i was really lucky in that i had free reign on yearly updated computers, starting on dos when i had just learned how to read, and growing up with that through all the versions of windows…
i mean, i hate microsoft and all, but i just think it’s crazy all of these people have super computers in their pockets and are afraid of the terminal….
it’d be hard to start a kid on the terminal first now, when they can use a touch screen in the crib….
my first computer didn’t even have pictures, but the next one did…Nice. In what year(s) did you have your first computer?
I think most kids these days like to play bedrock edition, so it will be harder anyways.
That’s one of the great things about switching to Linux … it forces you to learn something new and for kids that is a very good thing.
All those kids in the school that OP described were getting stagnant in a settled environment of living in Windows … now that they have Linux in front of them, they will go on to learn how to subvert the system under Linux. It’s not a bad thing in my opinion, it will create a whole crop of kids who now know how to fool around with Windows AND Linux.
I wish someone would have introduced me to Linux when I was kid.
yeah, that’s hopefully what I hope to happen, perhaps raising a generation of kids on linux will help linux to grow in marketshare!
For what it’s worth, the school computers in my school weren’t running Linux and they had Tuxpaint installed. Even proprietary OS users benefit from FOSS.
this is actually so insanely epic, good job!
pretty cool of the principal too to allow you to do stuff like this
ikr, didn’t expect him to agree
Seconding the last part. When I was in high school, the admins wouldn’t approve most after school clubs, or students displaying their artwork. Here this admin is encouraging their students’ curiosity and talents, while letting the students have real impact in their school. Grade A stuff right there.
Sweet.
I would have gone with Fedora in order to deploy FreeIPA for an Active Directory equivalent, but this is a good start.
I choose mint cuz it was approachable to newbies so yeah, I myself run opensuse (and used to run arch/void)
You fucking rock!! Keep up the good work!
thanks dude!
the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life
Can’t you just change this in the BIOS?
does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
Linux has always been suitable (and I would argue ideal) in the education sector. But the reality is that almost no one is going to use Linux in a professional environment so there’s an argument to be made that they should be using and learning Winblows.
I tried but, grub itself was malfunctioning, so I fixed it with chroot and a live mint iso
I don’t know how developed your school system is but, I would advise the principal into blocking the websites via DNS that way the computers won’t resolve them.
AdGuard, PiHole, OpenSense are free open source DNS resolvers however, chances are your school already manages its own DNS so I would obviously consult with them first.
Idk tbh, but the principal seems experienced I think, he might figure it out
Is linux ready for the education sector? Kinda depends on the tools involved.
If its a google classroom kind of workflow and or everything is done in the browser, absolutely. Theres a reason Chromebooks got popular for schools, not just cause they’re cheap, but being more locked down and basically only useful for in browser work made them a good alternative to Windows machines.
However, some stuff specific to certain courses or classes may not be compatible with linux. Something like a photo editing college course that requires adobe (ew) would be an example.
I’d personally love to see Linux in the education sector more. With immutable distros, no licensing costs, and lower hardware requirements, Linux is likely going to be really attractive to schools that are looking for alternatives.
So sick that you were able to do this. Kudos for taking the initiative and making your community better.
oh, thanks, sorry for taking so long to reply, I didn’t notice your comment till now, I got a swarm of comments that they kinda burried yours, but yeah uhhh we do programming so setting those computers up for that was rather simple, also I agree adobe stinks!
With fydeOS (or flex) you can now convert any PC or Mac to a Chromebook , that’s a good option for schools now imo
Beautiful work … I wish my school had done that when I was a kid.
The great thing about it is that now you are helping to generate a new crop of kids who will learn how to use Linux. Sure, they will try to do stupid things on it like install games or figure out how to bypass things or install or uninstall … the great thing about that is that they will learn how to use the system in order to try to break it. It’s the same way I learned how to use Linux and probably the same way you learned how to use it.
You’ve advanced the computer department for those kids more than you know.
This reminds me of when I was a kid. My school computer were running slow as heck windows xps or windows 7s, mostly slow because the bloat of education software that was installed to block visiting certain websites, lock down computers during certain hours or when the teacher is lecturing, etc. Even in my high school.
One day for my computer class during a lecture, I plugged in my liveboot USB running Mint, hushed my classmates next to me and rebooted. I didn’t expect the computer to make a loud as hell beep sound when it got to the bootloader, but I was sitting in a side row so the teacher just said “what was that?” and moved on while others looked at me suspiciously. But then I was able to boot up Linux right there, super easy. And everything works, I was able to browse the web without any restrictions, well I’m not really trying to look at bad stuff but just hate being locked down when I can do something else instead. Or maybe I just wanted to show off Linux. Anyways my classmates next to me silently whispered “what the heck how did you do this??” I look back at this as a fond memory.
all I can say is: based.
true tbh, I do wish linux takes on MacOS in marketshare and beat it at least (I know beating windows atm is a pipe dream, but MacOS seems realistic atm)
I used to make bash scripts to either create infinite terminal and crash my classmates PC or use text to speech in bash or loop closing and openind dvd reader :p
Linux has been ready for education for a long time! Most of the public high school machines I interacted with in the mid 2000s were linux based. There was a dedicated Mac lab for creative work.
oh I see, good to know!
I had dual booted Ubuntu with Windows when I was in college, without having any prior exposure to Linux or any skill in coding or even scripting. The install itself was incredibly easy and I was wondering why more kids don’t do it. All the core functions that a computer was supposed to, Ubuntu was doing it better than Windows save one - running windows specific software.
I guess Linux was good enough for education back then itself, but it ddn’t run fancy games and I could not convince anyone else to dual boot their PC.
ah fair enough
Cool story bro.
Except the story is actually cool, and you’re a real bro!
thanks man, you’re a real bro too!
lol I thought this was a guerrilla IT warfare post where you snuck in and did it, but you actually did it with permission… 😂
Could you imagine the stories that would circulate in the playgrounds? “I heard the Linux fairy is close. Timmy can’t play Roblox in class anymore.”
yeah, I don’t want trouble xD
