I swapped the entire school computers to linux mint
from Ace120C@sopuli.xyz to linux@lemmy.ml on 01 May 16:46
https://sopuli.xyz/post/26331954

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.)

#linux

threaded - newest

bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de on 01 May 16:54 next collapse

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.

xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 17:16 next collapse

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….

grillgamesh@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 17:17 next collapse

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

corvi@lemm.ee on 01 May 17:44 next collapse

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.

Feathercrown@lemmy.world on 01 May 18:33 collapse

Ooh clever. I was able to get around mine by opening sites in an iframe, I made a bookmarklet for it

Schmoo@slrpnk.net on 01 May 18:45 collapse

I’m sure the velociraptors helped you stay focused too.

Empricorn@feddit.nl on 01 May 19:07 next collapse

Clever girl…

grillgamesh@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 08:48 collapse

haha, I think I got a worldwide high score at the time, or at was close to one back then.

Aatube@kbin.melroy.org on 01 May 17:23 next collapse

Or they'll install portable versions of Minecraft so many times they'll decide to learn how to remove -rubbishfiles from root

pivot_root@lemmy.world on 01 May 17:30 next collapse

I 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 end

merde@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 18:34 collapse

mais pourquoi ?

xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 17:32 collapse

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 problems

prole@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 18:49 next collapse

This is how (at least elder) millennials learned everything they know about technology. It’s the only way imo

Ziglin@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:52 collapse

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?

xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 23:50 collapse

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…

Danquebec@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:59 collapse

Nice. In what year(s) did you have your first computer?

ininewcrow@lemmy.ca on 01 May 17:20 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:13 collapse

yeah, that’s hopefully what I hope to happen, perhaps raising a generation of kids on linux will help linux to grow in marketshare!

Overheat0455@lemmy.zip on 02 May 06:20 next collapse

I think most kids these days like to play bedrock edition, so it will be harder anyways.

tomjuggler@lemmy.world on 02 May 18:42 collapse

Theres a flatpak for that.

comfy@lemmy.ml on 02 May 06:38 collapse

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.

Jumuta@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 16:54 next collapse

this is actually so insanely epic, good job!

pretty cool of the principal too to allow you to do stuff like this

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:11 next collapse

ikr, didn’t expect him to agree

sparky@lemmy.federate.cc on 02 May 00:52 collapse

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.

shininghero@pawb.social on 01 May 17:04 next collapse

Sweet.

I would have gone with Fedora in order to deploy FreeIPA for an Active Directory equivalent, but this is a good start.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:11 collapse

I choose mint cuz it was approachable to newbies so yeah, I myself run opensuse (and used to run arch/void)

BroBot9000@lemmy.world on 01 May 17:22 next collapse

You fucking rock!! Keep up the good work!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:10 collapse

thanks dude!

ininewcrow@lemmy.ca on 01 May 17:23 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:10 next collapse

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)

obstructiveThoughts@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 01 May 18:33 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:59 collapse

all I can say is: based.

VintageGenious@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 06:42 collapse

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

Ulrich@feddit.org on 01 May 17:23 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:09 collapse

I tried but, grub itself was malfunctioning, so I fixed it with chroot and a live mint iso

Bluefruit@lemmy.world on 01 May 17:26 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:57 next collapse

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!

Suoko@feddit.it on 01 May 21:02 collapse

With fydeOS (or flex) you can now convert any PC or Mac to a Chromebook , that’s a good option for schools now imo

ohshit604@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 17:27 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:09 collapse

Idk tbh, but the principal seems experienced I think, he might figure it out

mukt@lemmy.ml on 01 May 17:34 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:08 collapse

ah fair enough

JoMiran@lemmy.ml on 01 May 17:35 next collapse

You have turned Roblox/Minecraft loving little kids into a lifelong Linux haters. 🤣

I applaud you.

PS: So how are the computers performing now?

BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca on 01 May 17:58 next collapse

Just install Luanti and that will take care of the Minecraft group.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:04 next collapse

Exceptionally well actually!

cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de on 01 May 18:05 next collapse

Minecraft runs natively on Linux, so it won’t take them long to figure that out.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:07 collapse

well, the ones that do figure it out, they earned their game session, that would lowkey force them to learn linux, which is good tbh

boreengreen@lemm.ee on 01 May 19:33 collapse

Once they figure out chatgpt can walk them through the process of installation, it becomes easy to learn and I bet they will become linux lovers.

Tattorack@lemmy.world on 01 May 17:35 next collapse

Cool story bro.

Except the story is actually cool, and you’re a real bro!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:25 collapse

thanks man, you’re a real bro too!

ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com on 01 May 17:46 next collapse

Them paying you is so nice! I remember installing Ubuntu in some computer in high school before I even used Linux myself lol

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:16 collapse

ikr, didn’t expect that, perhaps they saw me spending so much time on that so they felt bad or smth

Paddy66@lemmy.ml on 01 May 17:51 next collapse

lol I thought this was a guerrilla IT warfare post where you snuck in and did it, but you actually did it with permission… 😂

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:16 next collapse

yeah, I don’t want trouble xD

chetradley@lemm.ee on 01 May 19:29 collapse

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.”

nieceandtows@programming.dev on 01 May 17:57 next collapse

Nice! One step at a time.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:15 collapse

yes!

Romkslrqusz@lemm.ee on 01 May 18:00 next collapse

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.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:14 collapse

oh I see, good to know!

SanguineBrah@lemmy.sdf.org on 01 May 18:27 next collapse

This is great for a handful of devices but I deploy and administrate hundreds of devices at my school. As much as I would love to, there’s no way I could sell this without a really robust way of managing device policies & software deployment. I understand RHEL has something like that but that it isn’t quite up to the same standard as the Microsoft admin ecosystem just yet.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:34 next collapse

ah fair enough, hopefully one day, there is an easy way for linux to do what your school are looking for!

for my school they teach programming as such python webdev etc, so getting linux primed up for that was rather simple, I’m surprised, they haven’t did this before I suggested it!

obstructiveThoughts@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 01 May 18:36 next collapse

You should take a look at Ansible, it’s the same problem as infra teams in tech companies to manage Linux deployment and it’s a mostly solved problem

rmuk@feddit.uk on 01 May 19:07 collapse

Yeah, I have this conversation and lot on the sad truth is that until there’s a Linux distro that’s as manageable as Windows is with Group Policy, no big organisation is adopting it. Unfortunately, nothing in the Linux space comes close.

electric_nan@lemmy.ml on 01 May 18:31 next collapse

This is a great story, and you should be really proud of yourself! Good job :). I used Linux through college and had very few issues (that I can remember!)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:36 next collapse

thanks, mind telling me what were those issues? I’m kinda curious, perhaps I should have a mental note for those if they are related to what I just did

electric_nan@lemmy.ml on 01 May 18:45 collapse

It’s been too long, but seems like I had some problems with formatting getting wrecked between Word and LibreOffice. It probably works a lot better now, not to mention that you can just access Word in the browser if really necessary.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:55 collapse

ahhhhh okay yeah I agree, my friend (who is also a long time linux user as much as I am one as well) does complain a bit about word processing apps on linux and I quote “basic word processing works alright on linux with libreoffice and onlyoffice, but once you put advanced stuff in it, its a bit difficult to work with”, he seemed to have problems with docx files (iirc) so he has a windows VM where he uses MS office for stuff that he is required to work on, and continue to use linux for everything else.

AThing4String@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 23:25 collapse

I used Linux in university also, and actually had LESS problems than my classmates - a few of our textbooks came with “homework” versions of industry software (made by the textbook writer, just coded to be good enough to learn some basic concepts and work with some provided example files) and for reasons unknown to man and beast, most of them worked better on wine than on Windows natively - for one, the “submit” button was basically off-screen on Windows but placed where you’d expect on wine, on another trying to connect to machines was a HUGE pain… Except the Linux networking interface had no issues haha.

I only switched because the forced upgrade to Windows 8 ate my first year midterm essays and I never forgave it.

merde@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 18:31 next collapse

you’re lucky to have an open-minded principle

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:36 next collapse

true, normally people would be too afraid

pulido@lemmings.world on 01 May 19:05 next collapse

Principal*

Not being pedantic, just thought I’d let you and others know there are multiple ways to spell this word.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 02 May 00:18 collapse

I will be pedantic. There is only one way to spell each word; principal and principle are different words (though they share a root).

pulido@lemmings.world on 02 May 00:25 collapse

I was afraid someone would do that.

digdilem@lemmy.ml on 01 May 19:28 collapse

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.

markstos@lemmy.world on 01 May 18:40 next collapse

There is way to do this that works with even older computers and is easy to manage.

That’s with Edubuntu and thin-client computing using the Linux Terminal Server project, LTSP.

help.ubuntu.com/…/Chapter_5_-_Thin-Client_Computi…

In that model, you install Linux once on a server. Each computer in the lab is set to boot over the network from the server.

This way there is one computer to maintain, the users can’t access root and all the storage is centralized.

Even old computers with low CPU and RAM and no hard drive can make good thin clients.

A number of schools have been using this approach for 15+ years.

www.edubuntu.org

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:42 next collapse

I didnt know this actually! thanks!

monaho@lemmy.eco.br on 02 May 22:54 collapse

You could also set up one machine with all the required software and clone the OS simultaneously to all computers over LAN with Clonezillla.

azimir@lemmy.ml on 01 May 19:19 collapse

15+… I was there, Gandalf… We had these kinds of setups 25+ years ago. How time flies.

Before that, it was often XTerm style systems. The local machine only booted an XServer and then connected to a central UNIX system. All programs ran on the UNIX server, and were rendered on the XTerm/XServer you were sitting at.

The original XServer systems were efficient enough to run over serial lines, not just Ethernet.

Another setup was to put multiple monitors/keyboards/mice on a single UNIX/Linux tower and have it launch multiple XServer sessions so you could have a single computer with up to six people sitting at it.

I also managed a Rembo lab for a bit. It used a PXE shim OS to get a menu from the Rembo server. From there, you could boot the main OS, or download a new hard drive image from the server. I would build new drive images and upload them to the server, then updating the lab would mean rebooting the computers and clicking a “grab latest” button. It actually worked very well for distributing OSes. We had both Linux and Windows images students could pull down.

Lab management at scale is a continual struggle to keep everything functional and patched.

aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee on 01 May 21:22 collapse

now i’m sad that this is (afaik) impossible in the future with everything switching to wayland

azimir@lemmy.ml on 01 May 22:02 next collapse

I haven’t looked into it too hard yet. I saw some design that would allow remote GUI rendering for Wayland, but it likely won’t be the all in design for network transparency that X11 had (has).

I use SSH with X forwarding for all kinds of system maintenance and demos in my CS courses.

Fizz@lemmy.nz on 01 May 18:40 next collapse

Does your school have an it department? If not maybe that can be a job for you. Someone will need to maintain that fleet.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:43 collapse

Beats me. maybe they do, maybe they don’t? I honestly have no clue, perhaps I should ask.

brbposting@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:13 collapse

YES on the ask!!! Seconded big time

trd@feddit.nu on 01 May 18:46 next collapse

Don’t teach the kids about flatpak. Then they will soon discover Roblox/sober.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:57 collapse

not like they have the balls to use the terminal anyways, they saw me install vim there and they freaked out “are you some sort of hacker?” they said, and I looked confused at first before I realized they were talking about me using the terminal, which I become accustomed to it since I used linux for so long.

SwampYankee@mander.xyz on 01 May 18:58 next collapse

Minecraft Java Edition runs natively in Linux. But kids these days are probably playing Bedrock… chumps.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 18:59 collapse

probably, I haven’t been paying that much attention to them on class tbh lmao

teawrecks@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:05 next collapse

And IMO if one of those students can get Roblox working on Linux, they have solved a harder problem than any homework they would be given 😆.

I’m curious how ootb mint works out for this usecase. Any chance we could get a 6mo update later? I’m particularly curious how well it holds up against non-admin users who may constantly be trying to get root-level access. There’s almost certainly going to be one student who figures out a local privilege escalation.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:14 collapse

Sure! I might even make a follow up to explain the whole thing in detail, however I fear it may be too long for one post, should I perhaps make an entry in a neocities website I just finished making? I could probably make it like a diary with detailed entries and stuff, idk if yall up for it, otherwise I’ll just post it here in parts.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:15 collapse

but right now, I’m tired, so I’ll probably write it tomorrow.

Inkstainthebat@pawb.social on 01 May 22:33 collapse

Please do! I’m curious to hear about the specifics, mainly in how you set up administration (as Windows does have surprisingly good group admin tools)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:36 collapse

sure I’ll make a new post about it when the page in the site is ready, so look forward to it!

mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world on 01 May 19:18 next collapse

Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:

  • LibreOffice can create really nice documents and presentations too. Heck, some tasks are more straightforward in LibreOffice than MS. 99% of schoolwork is done in Office suite, so this is nice. Win for Linux

  • For stuff like coding in C or Python, it is even easier in Linux: download a compiler, open a text editor, type some codes then use terminal to run the codes in 10 minutes. In Windows, you need to download the stupid Cygwin and mess around with environmental variables to get Cygwin to recognize the libraries… Or if you want to automate things, MS Visual Studio will do that. The only downside is you will lose > 10 GB of space. Linux wins here again.

  • Anything more advanced will unfortunately Windows land. I’m talking about advanced image programs like Photoshop or professional video apps. But again, if you need them then might as well get a Mac. Another hiccup would be in CAD software: Linux just doesnt have a good app.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:26 collapse

tbf with all due respect Screw Adobe, idek why people even use their products, KDENLive and GIMP serve well, for the tasks I doing, and even if you want something more advanced, there is davinci resolve, it’s proprietary software but its forgivable if KDENLive isn’t cutting it for you

InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world on 02 May 00:46 collapse

Some of the bigger issues with Kdenlive i’ve heard is around GPU acceleration and just force of habbit. Fair enough, I wouldn’t tell someone to jump ship if they productivity and professional skills are taking a hit. People need their livelihood. Still I do hold that most people overestimate how pro their workflow is

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 00:51 collapse

I mean, it’s never a good idea to FORCE anything but the “normies” (pardon my french) always use that as an excuse when there are definitely alternatives that are usable and can definitely do the job (ie: davinci resolve), like do seriously people wanna keep using software from a company that charges you CANCELATION FEES?

(how did adobe get away with charging you more money for cancelling your subscription, iirc it was like 60 or 80 bucks???)

InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world on 02 May 01:03 collapse

Ohh yeah for sure. Most of these proprietary software are costing on brand names and institutional momentum.

carrion0409@lemm.ee on 01 May 19:26 next collapse

I wouldn’t be shocked if more schools start looking for open source options as their funding gets cut by the current regime.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:28 collapse

Germany already moved their tech stack to FOSS alternatives for their government assigned computers!

there is actual progress that’s being made 🥳

muhyb@programming.dev on 01 May 19:33 next collapse

Next month: The principal complains that the students play SuperTuxKart now. :)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:38 collapse

lmaooooo, well they have to touch the terminal or figured out that there is a software store first…and know the sudo password kek

RedSnt@feddit.dk on 01 May 20:26 collapse

What about flatpak tho? flathub.org/apps/net.supertuxkart.SuperTuxKart

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:29 collapse

they are newbies, who are accustomed to windows, I doubt they’ll know how to get games on linux yet, however they might figure it out if they learned how, and thats lowkey also good cuz they get to know how to use the OS

user224@lemmy.sdf.org on 01 May 21:39 collapse

They are newbies, for now.

I have had a Linux Mint USB (installed, not live) with me since middle school. Not the same one, of course, that was USB 2.0.
SanDisk CruzerBlade seems to work pretty well. On the other hand, a Panasonic flash drive I have is absolute shit for random access. Booting up install from it will take ages and then it will freeze up all the time.

External SSD would be best, but it’s not worth it for occasional use.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:45 collapse

yeah for now, if they learned how tbh they earned their short gaming session, however I should discuss with the principal this matter.

also I have a Toshiba USB which works really nice, I have it setup with ventoy so I can do multiboot (I have a lot linux distro and both freeBSD and OpenBSD)

boreengreen@lemm.ee on 01 May 19:39 next collapse

The issues are probably gonna pop up when teachers and students bring incompatible ms office documents from home, and start complaining. Excel is the one I have run in to most, not always being compatible with libreoffice.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:44 collapse

we are a programming school we dont use word processing software, however as for the teachers, we decided to keep windows for them

ayyy@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 19:39 next collapse

Holy shit if there’s that much dust on the front grille of the computer I can’t even imagine how much is caked on the internal heat sinks. I bet you could literally double the speed of these computers with a vacuum or air blower.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 19:47 collapse

probably but I wasn’t allowed to open them (Its too much work for 20+ computers) but atm they got double the speed compared to before with windows

_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works on 01 May 20:32 collapse

They really need to clean the computers out or they may eventually cook themselves and then nothing will run on them.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:36 next collapse

might tell the principle that tbh, we’ll see what he’s gonna do about it.

LumpyPancakes@lemm.ee on 01 May 21:55 next collapse

Principal.

(yeah I know it’s rude to correct spelling, but if you want to impress him, spelling his title correctly may help.)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:02 collapse

my bad…

brbposting@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:12 collapse

@LumpyPancakes@lemm.ee kinda burying lede ish

He’s your princiPAL

no one could remember it without that pneumonic!

superkret@feddit.org on 02 May 06:29 collapse

These spelling mistakes make me tyred.

LumpyPancakes@lemm.ee on 02 May 11:55 collapse

Aah well, time for a brake.

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:25 collapse

Dust can also block connections. I remember a 64 GB RAM system becoming 128 GB when it was cleaned (two sticks; one was clogged).

catloaf@lemm.ee on 02 May 00:20 collapse

Nah, anything even slightly modern will see the high temperature and throttle down to keep from cooking.

_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 14:27 collapse

They should be cleaned out regardless if the school intends to keep using them.

[deleted] on 01 May 20:00 next collapse

.

enemenemu@lemm.ee on 01 May 20:00 next collapse

How did you install them? One by one? Wouldn’t this be the perfect case for fedora’s atomic distros?

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:03 collapse

yes, one by one, and I choose mint because It was approachable, and thats what I showed to the principal to convince him to let me do this in the first place, and oh I didnt know there was an atomic version of fedora

enemenemu@lemm.ee on 01 May 20:08 next collapse

I don’t judge you for the choice. It’s an honest question since you take care of a lot of computers and with ublue you have good control over the machines

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:11 collapse

oh no make no mistake, I was not implying that, I’m just explaining why I choose mint, I now learned that there are distros that can be deployed on multiple PCs at once thanks to you, so thanks a bunch!

ace_garp@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:14 next collapse

Congratulations on your win.

Although it is fun to run around updating each PC individually, as the install numbers increase, Clonezilla can be helpful to multicast one OS image to many PCs in parallel.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:27 next collapse

yeah uhhh I’m wondering if I could ask the principal to let me come around once a month to update the computers

ace_garp@lemmy.world on 01 May 22:42 collapse

Was recommending this to speed up your next fresh lab install. :^)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:45 collapse

ooooooooh, right right my bad I’m dumb

ace_garp@lemmy.world on 01 May 23:52 collapse

I don’t think that at all (c:

user224@lemmy.sdf.org on 01 May 21:46 collapse

Is there something that has to be done first (like Windows generalization)?

railcar@midwest.social on 02 May 02:52 collapse

If you had installed bazzite those kids would worship you

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:18 collapse

true lmaoooo

melroy@kbin.melroy.org on 01 May 20:13 next collapse

Linux was always ready for the education sector. I think already for 10 years now.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:15 next collapse

fair enough, I just hope at some point schools and organizations switches to the cool penguin.

melroy@kbin.melroy.org on 01 May 20:19 collapse

Back in my days I was also disappointed that schools weren't using Linux. So I totally agree with you.

Drekaridill@feddit.is on 01 May 21:04 next collapse

My highschool used Ubuntu exclusively back in 2010

HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml on 02 May 00:02 next collapse

When I heard about schools using Chromebooks literally the first thing I said was “Linux can do more than a Chromebook can and is free, why the hell aren’t they using that?!” Linux running on the cheapest OEM laptop (make sure you get ones without the prepaid Windows license so you don’t spend more than you need to) is a better experience than the most expensive Chromebook.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 02 May 02:31 collapse

The user experience is not as important as the management tooling.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 02 May 00:17 collapse

It was ready since day one. Linus wrote Linux while a student at the University of Helsinki. It was inspired by MINIX, which was also targeted for use in schools.

LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml on 01 May 20:16 next collapse

Don’t forget to test updates and make timeshift backups when needed, I never had a bad update but it really helps.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:17 next collapse

I shall offer this to the principal, thanks for reminding me!

aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee on 01 May 21:21 collapse

yeah i’m thinking that if you want you might be able to wrangle this into a semi permanent job

Xanza@lemm.ee on 01 May 20:30 collapse

A delayed update schedule really helps for environments like this. Keep your ear to the ground for critical updates, but I’ve done this sort of thing a few times and waiting a week or two to update is a really great solution.

One thing I’ve almost done before is to choose a computer as a test subject, update it before anything else, and if all things are good you’re probably fine.

Xanza@lemm.ee on 01 May 20:28 next collapse

ancient windows 8

😠

does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

* Angry in 20 year old Edubuntu *

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:30 collapse

windows 8 is 13 years old…

Xanza@lemm.ee on 01 May 20:34 collapse

13 years old is ancient to you?

My mouse is older than that…

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:37 collapse

idk, windows 8 is super dated to me as it tried so hard to appeal to the tablet crowd, however dated or not this wasn’t the point of the post…

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 20:32 next collapse

That’s super awesome

Buuuut my guest gaming machine is a 4670k machine and I can confirm that not only does Windows 10 run very smoothly on it, but it also runs most modern games at 60+FPS! CPU-bound games can struggle. We finally got my partner a new computer and made that one the guest machine when Persona 5 went from 80FPS down to 5FPS when they got off the train hahaha

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:35 collapse

oh haha I see, I’ve been using linux for 5 years so far and I have been ONLY gaming on linux, I have ditched windows for good, this switch was very easy to me cuz I dont have any windows specfic apps/games dependency, everything I want is there, and the ones that aren’t, there are alternatives that are the same or better than the apps I’ve used on windows!

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 20:42 next collapse

Ugh I would love to switch solely to Linux but I have ONE GAME that I play online with friends that’s an incredibly ridiculous install process and it is impossible to run on Linux without issues. It’s amazing that it even runs on Windows nowadays. (The Specialists, a mod for the original Half Life.)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:01 collapse

you could play with a VM with GPU pass-through or have a seperate computer running windows made JUST to play that game (if you are wealthy enough), however these are merely suggestions, and it’s always up to you

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 21:54 collapse

Nahhh thank you, hahaha. My other machines are Linux, we just keep our high end gaming machines on Windows. That older computer with the 4670k is getting Pop! OS when I get around to it.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:05 collapse

ah okay understood, fair enough, also PopOS is pretty good, cosmic is coming up pretty nicely, might give it a try when it gets to stable branch!

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 20:43 collapse

Oh and I should specify my old guest machine does have 16GB of RAM, solid state drives, and an RTX2070, so it’s probably a bit better equipped than school machines hahaha

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:00 collapse

great specs! I have a slightly underpowered computer compared to yours, R5 5600H and RX6500M, and I’m also a persona fan, great series tbh, my favorite is persona 4, its the most fun game to me in the series so far, rn I’m playing through P3 Reload!

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 May 21:56 collapse

Oooo nice! My partner has the best machine in the house now, since they always got my hand-me-downs and never a brand new machine. We built it about a year ago, so it’s got a 12600k, 32GB RAM, a 3070, 3TB SSD space, and 4TB HDD. Mine’s not terribly far from that, but I am a little envious hahaha

Ooo and yah, I’m doing P3R after P5!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:01 collapse

sweet!

I wanna build my own computer, but Ive been putting it down because of life and stuff, been very busy these past 2 years bit I’ll eventually find time to do it!

oh you doing P3R too? very nice! you’ll enjoy it I think, happy peace distrubing lol xd

PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world on 01 May 20:46 next collapse

Just a funny story, but, I use an Ubuntu laptop as my work computer as a teacher, and once, while I was helping another student with work, a student opened my laptop and began trying to install Roblox. She got far enough to figure out it wouldn’t work, and started searching for how to install it. When I came over she was trying to figure out how to set up Wine. She got pretty close to getting it working before I came over. I was secretly pretty impressed with how fast she figured it out. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 20:56 next collapse

that’s actually an interesting story, makes you wonder if kids nowadys do get exposed to linux first and not windows, would actually learn it faster than having to unlearn windows first?

huppakee@lemm.ee on 01 May 21:59 collapse

Or they’re so used to smartphone that windows and Linux are equally alien to them

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:01 collapse

we dont have those people…yet, I fear for the day when we do though…

Isaac@waterloolemmy.ca on 02 May 02:34 collapse

Having taught college level students software development, Ctrl-c & ctrl-v was foreign to many

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:17 next collapse

that’s quite unfortunate

TerHu@lemm.ee on 02 May 07:57 collapse

i’ve had the same situation with university students

NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 00:49 next collapse

I wouldn’t even be mad honestly. I learned a ton of my early computer skills trying to get stuff running where I shouldn’t or get into things I had no business messing with. That’s how kids learn!

Echolynx@lemmy.zip on 02 May 04:53 next collapse

Gives me hope, I’m glad the kids are still curious and willing to learn. I’ve seen too many early-20s people at work who have absolutely zero computer skills.

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:19 collapse

Teh kidz r al rite.

i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk on 01 May 21:02 next collapse

This is great! The science teacher who used to also look after all the computers at my school was a big fan of the Acorn Archimedes/RISC PC (quite standard school computers in my day due to the BBC computer literacy stuff, where Acorn won the contract for the BBC Micro). We had a couple of PCs (RM Nimbus) which didn’t get as much use. I believe the plan was to switch over to PCs running Windows (95 had been out a couple of years) and because of that he left. I wonder if there was a viable alternative at that point, such as Linux, that he would have stayed.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:04 collapse

windows 95 and RICS PCs…this makes me feel nostalgic…

i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk on 01 May 21:05 collapse

I am old.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:07 collapse

same (I might still be younger than you though…but I was definitely using 95 back when it was new, however I was very young then)

hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org on 01 May 21:15 next collapse

This is awesome. I hope the students don’t start enjoying xbill :p

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:29 next collapse

I looked up xbill and this looks fun, I might try it on my computer actually! thanks btw

AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world on 01 May 22:03 collapse

Lol, blast from the past…

Suoko@feddit.it on 01 May 21:15 next collapse

Now you go with veyon?

tkk13909@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:31 next collapse

There are plenty of Minecraft launchers in the flatpak store so you might wanna make sure they’re not taking advantage of that lol

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:32 collapse

if they know what flatpak is anyways! however good point lol

tkk13909@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:36 collapse

Well it’s literally the app named “software” and this is a programming school so someone’s bound to find out

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:42 collapse

true but then they have to know the sudo password to install such apps, unless the teachers, the principal or me tell them that, I doubt they’ll be successful but hey you do still raise a good point and I shall probably discuss this with the principal

hellequin67@lemm.ee on 01 May 21:56 collapse

You generally don’t need sudo to install flatpaks and actually pretty sure they advise against it.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:03 collapse

for us mint always asks for it, so if you dont type it, it’ll just not install it, idk tbh

Inkstainthebat@pawb.social on 01 May 22:30 collapse

Actually, for flatpaks specifically, even by the software manager it won’t ask for root privileges and go straight to installing
Check up on it, that’s my experience at least and I’ve got my own laptop running the latest version of Linux Mint. It could be some change in config you’ve done

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:33 collapse

I have school on saturday so I will post an update here if I remember (hopefully I do)

TrickDacy@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:34 next collapse

I love it. Way to go!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 21:35 collapse

thanks a lot!

WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:47 next collapse

… And this is how you land in IT work

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:09 collapse

I’ll be definitely cool if I somehow land such job lol

scytale@lemm.ee on 01 May 22:28 next collapse

That’s definitely something that goes into your resume and should be mentioned in interviews if you ever pursue that line of work.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:31 collapse

good idea, I will keep that in mind.

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:31 collapse

Definitely ask your principal for a recommendation.

Agent641@lemmy.world on 02 May 01:00 next collapse

You will regret it in 500 years though.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 01:07 collapse

I was forced to learn Bloatscript (JS) cant get any worse than this lolololol xd

toastmeister@lemmy.ca on 02 May 01:31 collapse

It will all be Chromebooks and software as a service by then. Unless you work as a SaaS vendor, then it will be automatically orchestrating docker containers.

Solventbubbles@lemmy.world on 02 May 03:15 collapse

To be fair, I just replaced my Chromebook OS with mint…

toastmeister@lemmy.ca on 02 May 04:48 collapse

Well I mean for corporate use. Everything you use will be through a web browser and all the data will be stored on corporate servers.

debil@lemmy.world on 01 May 21:48 next collapse

Great job! Now it’s a good time to learn a bit of Ansible so you can keep your fleet up-to-date and configured. It would also come in handy in case you get a permit to do more conversions in the future.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:09 next collapse

I’ll look into it, thanks a bunch!

Cyber@feddit.uk on 01 May 22:09 collapse

+1 for Ansible

  1. Install an application
  2. Do all the updates at the same time ( - after automating all the backups of course 😉)
  3. Removing games 😈
The_v@lemmy.world on 02 May 02:45 collapse

My son fell into a bad group of mostly straight A kids in middle school.

They collected a large collection of webpage based games. They started out attempting to host them on the schools network through shared docs etc. The IT guys wised up to them and shut it down.

Then they turned into 14 year olds and took it up a notch.

Got together and paid for a hosting location overseas. Built a video hosting webpage with thousands of pirated educational videos. Made a secondary menu without any links on the homepage. They have to type in the index page in the URL. All of the games pages show up as educational videos in the history.

Most of the teachers in the school are using the free educational videos so the webpage is on the trusted site on the school districts content filter.

The IT teacher at highschool figured it out. Instead of ratting them out and banning the webpage. He started working on getting them scholarships to colleges. Now most of the ringleaders have full ride scholarships.

My son was invited in because he is extremely good at games (unusually fast reaction times). He holds the high score on most of the games. I don’t play against the little shit. It’s pointless to try to beat him.

onlinepersona@programming.dev on 01 May 21:52 next collapse

How does one get a job like this? This is great! I want to get a job in a school or university and infect it with linux. “Guys, look! It’s cheaper and we can set it up then pay for support which still makes it cheaper and students can learn how to use it on their computers too, since it’s freely available to them!”

Anti Commercial-AI license

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:08 collapse

I got this “job” completely by accident, which is funny considering it all started from me being so annoyed with using windows 8 on the computer thats assigned to me (while being so used to linux), life is truly a roller-coaster haha

CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml on 01 May 22:14 next collapse

Linux is so good today. Windows is increasingly shooting itself in the foot and MacOS requires a huge premium (and also billionaires suck) which is increasingly incompatible with budget conscious sectors like education. Really great stuff if you’re managing to get people to love it there.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:28 collapse

a lot definitely started to open up to it I think, I overheard 2 students wanted to try it on their laptops, so my move definitely did smth

tehn00bi@lemmy.world on 01 May 22:19 next collapse

Linux over here being all environmental and shit.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 01 May 22:27 collapse

real lmao

gerdesj@lemmy.ml on 02 May 00:13 next collapse

You have done a remarkable job already.

Linux is a free and open operating system. The licence for it - GNU Public License v2 is designed to grant you and me and my wife and your family and everyone everywhere rights and not restrict our rights. The only restriction with the GPL is that if you make a change to the code, that you make it available to everyone.

Education should be about teaching concepts and ideas and ideals. I think it should not involve artificial costs that might constrain access to a full and fruitful education. Those costs might even involve … thou shalt update to Windows 11 and your laptop’s CPU is not good enough.

Please keep on doing what you are doing, in your way. When you have your school running as you think it should, there is a good chance that you will be asked to do the same thing for other schools.

Please make sure you have the full support of your school principal (I think that is the right term - I’m from Britain so we might have different names for jobs)

I run a small IT company in the UK and I am trying to put together a distribution and so on for my company. Perhaps I should try your approach and be a bit more direct.

Cheers mate Jon

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 00:56 collapse

thank you for your very well thought out comment, and I do know about the GPL, I use it myself in my projects (AGPL for my neocities website and GPL3.0 for some of my other projects), the GPL is a very good license to your most important projects and I never skip it, I only use like BSD/MIT/CC0 for stuff that I dont really care that much about, also I love Britain its a wonderful country, cheers! also good luck!

thirstyhyena@lemmy.world on 02 May 00:43 next collapse

Next step is to teach the students WINE. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 00:52 next collapse

I’ll let them figure that out themselves xddd

racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml on 02 May 03:26 next collapse

The pictures OP posted suggest the distro is Mint. At the last time I installed it, I remember double clicking a exe file brings up a dialogue which asks if I want to run it through WINE.

Nasan@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 17:32 collapse

Mint doesn’t come with WINE out of the box if I’m remembering correctly. While trivial for most of us, it might be effective enough as a hurdle for the kids. Especially if installing it is locked behind su permissions.

DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml on 02 May 14:16 collapse

Give them easy access to .exe games??? They should have to put in the effort to slack off during class.

neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 01:24 next collapse

Before I read the text, I was going to ask,

“Umm did they know you were doing it?” It would be funny if you just did it without asking leaving them wondering, “How the hell did this happen?”

turtlesareneat@discuss.online on 02 May 02:52 next collapse

You know it’s bad when Shadow IT starts migrating your inventories.

neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 03:23 collapse

It’s like the elf that helps the shoemaker at night.

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:37 collapse
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml on 02 May 01:36 next collapse

Btw I would recommend leaving a note on the desktop saying something like COMPUTER_SPECS.TXT. I had Linux on my computers in school, and I was thinking “holy crap Linux is slow and old”, but it turned out to be cheap hardware (and I didn’t know better, back then)

Zealousideal_Fox_900@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 01:42 next collapse

This post reminded me of year 7, and spending like 3 or more hours with the school tech getting their shitty Education Queensland spyware to function on Linux Mint. Next thing was circumnavigating the web filter, and getting Wine to run 😂

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:16 collapse

bruh…lmaoo, luckily for me it was just VScode and thats it lol

SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml on 02 May 02:10 next collapse

But if you left tomorrow would they be able to admin them?

cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de on 02 May 02:49 next collapse

They will just wipe these computers

oz1sej@lemmy.world on 02 May 05:46 collapse

I don’t think they will bother. They will end up in a landfill, and the school will buy new Windows computers.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:16 collapse

good question however principal said he wanna keep linux on them forever, perhaps he will learn it and admin them himself, thats my guess

SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml on 02 May 14:58 collapse

Maybe write up some basic admin instructions (updating, services start/stop, user management, etc). Hire yourself out as a consultant on call if you leave :D

cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de on 02 May 02:49 next collapse

1: You sure you had the right permission to do so?

SpiderUnderUrBed@lemmy.zip on 02 May 03:31 next collapse

??? He said he talked to the principal multiple times

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:18 collapse

ummm yes?

Zink@programming.dev on 02 May 02:57 next collapse

Linux Mint is probably the perfect educational OS to switch to like that. I’m assuming most people are coming from Windows, are mouse+gui only, and are not used to being their own admin and installing all the basics like Firefox and libreoffice.

But it’s still Linux, so the user friendliness doesn’t mean you are locked out from going on tech or customization deep dives. Daily terminal user here, still love me some mint.

dipcart@lemmy.world on 02 May 05:57 next collapse

I’m a noon to Linux but I still love using terminal to download apps and stuff because it just looks cool. ASCII makes me feel like I know my way around computers but I’m just installing Firefox lol

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:19 collapse

exactly! that’s why I picked it xd

3dmvr@lemm.ee on 02 May 03:26 next collapse

Lol a kid can google how to install games on linux, just need one to do it and teach the others, I used to bring games on a usb to play on macs through wine through the school lan, eventually I put them in some random folder on the school network, it didnt delete it til like the last day of school my senior year, wed copy the games to our computers and delete them at the end of class.

beveradb@lemm.ee on 02 May 05:13 next collapse

You overestimate the technical competence and attention span of the current generation of kids - they barely know how to use a mouse.

IMO if any kid these days manages to do enough work to figure out how to do anything on Linux, they’re probably well ahead of the pack and deserve to play their game as a reward 😅

oo1@lemmings.world on 02 May 05:47 next collapse

One of them will, and the others will ape it.

Repeat this process enough times and more and more of them will get a bit better.

It’s sort of like education; except the students are a bit better motivated.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:20 collapse

this tbh, thank you for saying what I had in mind lol

Evotech@lemmy.world on 02 May 06:36 next collapse

But then the accidentally had to learn Linux, win win

DragonOracleIX@lemmy.ml on 02 May 14:11 collapse

Back when I was in high school I remember hearing about other students that would store games on certain teachers shared folders on the network. I can’t remember if the school ever caught on to that.

bpev@lemmy.world on 02 May 04:43 next collapse

Focus on lessons instead of slacking, eh?

workstation013 is not in the sudoers file. 
This incident will be reported.
Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:21 collapse

yes (they need to be in the wheel group)

brbposting@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:08 next collapse

Roblox in the trash AHAHAHAHA

Beautiful effort!!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:24 collapse

yeah! was funny to me too!

beveradb@lemm.ee on 02 May 05:12 next collapse

Nice work, you did a good thing 😊

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:25 collapse

thank you!

starstriker@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 05:11 next collapse

It takes one technology inclined person to set it up, it’s just takes another one to find a workaround, now the success of Linux in preventing gamers from doing their think depends on whether the second person decides to make the workaround known

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:25 collapse

yes but they will have to learn the OS, thats also a good thing

TerHu@lemm.ee on 02 May 07:51 collapse

yeah i also think that if people get their things to run, they probably learned something in the process

Otiz@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 05:50 next collapse

Why did you pick Mint?

fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 06:40 collapse

Mint’s a great choice for beginners, especially for those used to windows

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:26 next collapse

this, people who are afraid of new things won’t pick something thats too different to windows

polle@feddit.org on 02 May 08:21 collapse

I allways wonder why its mint and not kde, which seems more mature and even more like windows.

fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 08:42 collapse

Mint’s a distro and KDE’s a desktop environment. You can install KDE on mint

Biyoo@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 May 10:04 next collapse

There is a KDE distro, KDE neon

polle@feddit.org on 02 May 10:18 collapse

I know. Mint mostly stands for the cinnamon desktop. If you choose mint for another, you probably just can use the specific ubuntu spin or even debian itself.

fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 10:46 next collapse

Oh sorry :p

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 04:22 collapse

Mint also gets rid of Snaps.

sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 05:59 next collapse

Yoo that’s wild man doing gods (Richard Stallman) work here man.

Great initiative nonetheless. Compared to 8 this much more secure and for programming it’s a great choice too. Bringing more life out of some old PCs, saving a school money, and forcing some kids to get creative in order to play Roblox.

As for is it ready fr this application, programming, it has been for a while. For general, especially web based, applications it absolutely is. Of course, there are quite few things were it’s just not but for the most part Linux is a great choice.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:27 collapse

thanks, gotta push GNU/Linux a bit higher in marketshare huh xd

pineapple@lemmy.ml on 02 May 06:26 next collapse

That’s an awesome story. If all your doing is browsing the Web or using applications that can easily and stably run on linux or have drop in replacements then linux would definitely be totally viable. On the other hand if you need to install specific proprietary applications and you have to rely on wine then maybe not.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:29 collapse

luckily its just VSCode, so I didnt have to install something thats too hard!

The_Caretaker@lemm.ee on 02 May 06:41 next collapse

Bill Gates is responsible for Common Core which has enshitified the education systems of many states. Anything the schools do to stop giving money to Microsoft is a good move.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 07:29 collapse

agreed!

tibi@lemmy.world on 02 May 07:04 next collapse

When I was in high school, computers had Deep Freeze setup, because kids would constantly break the OS and download malware. It’s a software that resets the C drive to a known state on every reboot. You might consider using something similar on classroom workstations.

Also, it might be worth learning about network booting, automating the Linux installer and ansible to install things on every machine at once and automate configuration work.

Noobnarski@lemmy.world on 02 May 08:28 next collapse

Yeah, that was also what was used in my school.

The only problem was, it was rarely updated so all the applications were always very outdated. And it was still possible to play Minecraft without any administrator privileges.

tibi@lemmy.world on 02 May 14:04 collapse

Same in my case. But we were also learning c++ using Turbo C++ (the msdos one with the blue UI) in the 2010. Everything about high school was 15-20 years out of date. The OS (windows xp) was probably the newest thing on those computers.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:15 next collapse

my school also had windows with deep freeze before they malfunctioned or smth iirc from what principal told me

beastlykings@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 18:04 next collapse

I was thinking more like using an immutable or atomic os instead, like bazzite or bluefin. At least then you get regular updates, and core functionality is safely protected.

LiveLM@lemmy.zip on 02 May 21:23 collapse

I’ve always wondered how these solutions worked but never found much info about 'em

lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network on 02 May 07:32 next collapse

Little side note

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

The i7-4790K is still quite powerful, so I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the problem, at all. Perhaps they’re running on an HDD, have little RAM, or you got the CPU wrong.

You can see the CPU and RAM by launching System Info from tbf start menu, and see if it’s running on an SSD or HDD by launching Disks from the menu.

Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de on 02 May 09:10 next collapse

Or they could just have been infected. Especially the ones on Windows 8, which has been EoL for over a year.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:17 collapse

<img alt="" src="https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/d882d542-ad9d-425c-a37c-ddb98dba9661.webp">

we dont have the K, just the regular, eitherway these were fastest computers (lenovo thinkcenter) we have, but there weren’t many of em, most were with the i5 (HP Elitedesk G1)

lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network on 02 May 12:22 collapse

we dont have the K, just the regular

Ah, my bad (^^;
I ran an i7-4790K in my gaming PC for a long time, as far as games go this 10-year old CPU still hold up well, never had to upgrade it surprisingly enough!

Still, a 4 GHz quad-core with hyper-threading, and about 8 GiB of RAM, is more than enough to run Windows 10.
Assuming these are for studying, the heavier workloads would consist of MS Word, Powerpoint and an instructional video in the webbrowser, no?
What required tasks were too heavy for these computers under Windows 8/10?
And do they run off SSDs, or spinning HDDs?

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 13:26 collapse

VS Code.

and uhhhh Chrome (ew)

basically made those computers run like a tractor and tbf a tractor is probably fast (not an issue anymore now since I just put brave and firefox on em and convinced the principal to ditch chrome for brave)

Abnorc@lemm.ee on 02 May 07:33 next collapse

Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school’s IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.

Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de on 02 May 09:01 next collapse

the school’s IT

I wonder if that even exists. A mix of Windows 8 (EoL) and 10 (almost EoL) running on Haswells with students freely installing Roblox… all gives an unmaintained vibe.

lightnsfw@reddthat.com on 02 May 10:48 next collapse

And this is supposed to be a tech school…

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:21 collapse

Sounds like ITT technical institute. God I hated working with the “graduates” they put out. Absolute morons.

Abnorc@lemm.ee on 03 May 01:47 collapse

I always assumed schools had at least one or two IT people who just are spread really thin or something. Never occurred to me that an organization would just have PCs with no admin, but it sounds plausible. I guess the instructors just have to fix things if they run into issues.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:18 next collapse

not yet, might ask if I could be

ThelastfingerofH@lemmy.world on 02 May 10:25 collapse

They probably are, At the UTP in Panama they will contact some students (based on what idk presumably on impressions of performance) to do IT for them, it’s not technically an internship it’s a regular job that’s part time

Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de on 02 May 09:06 next collapse

Hey OP, regarding Minecraft: It’s a Java program that uses OpenGL for rendering. Therefore it’s not a Windows game, but inherently cross platform. Here’s the official .deb package launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:18 collapse

oh dang, that changes everything

zaubentrucker@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:23 collapse

Well for a .deb, the users would need sudo access.

ClemaX@lemm.ee on 02 May 09:41 collapse

Actually it’s just an archive. It can be easily extracted using dpkg -x *.deb ~/.local for example.

zaubentrucker@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:30 next collapse

TIL but that makes sense. What else would it be. It also contains some setup logic that is executed when installing, right? I wonder whether the launcher would just work like that

ClemaX@lemm.ee on 02 May 16:33 collapse

You’re right, apparently amongst other things there are some hooks that are ran during the package’s lifecycle in something that is called the control archive.

ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 16:56 collapse

I was today years old when I realized I can install packages non-privelaged if I leverage ~/.local/

ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml on 03 May 07:02 collapse

So long as /home isn’t noexec.

blayd@lemmy.ml on 02 May 09:20 next collapse

Sober (flatpak) should work for Roblox :) it uses the Android version with some fixes, signing in was a little jank when I tried it but after that flawless!

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:36 next collapse

oh I see, well I’ll ser what happens in like a month

ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 10:26 collapse

Sober is pretty decent nowadays. I had it installed for my daughter last week and she’s been playing roblox with no issues besides my old machine ram limitations.

bonnashejve@europe.pub on 02 May 09:39 next collapse

When I studied in university - all our computer classes were running Linux, and it was many years ago! Linux proved its effectiveness. When we had russian cyber attack on our banks (virus Petya)- our bank system survived thanks to Linux). Nowadays when twitter, facebook chose nazism - there is only one option to go to decentralized media

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 09:42 collapse

based, also I agree decentralized media is the best

its the based form of the internet

bonnashejve@europe.pub on 02 May 10:00 collapse

I like the idea of free speech and we see that tech giants chose dark side of the world. They are not only spying on people but also manipulating their minds… many still do not realize that they are living in matrix…

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:35 collapse

agreed

termaxima@programming.dev on 02 May 09:53 next collapse

That’s pretty cool !

If I had to do this myself, I would probably choose NixOS, so that I could write up a config on one of the PCs, and the deploy the exact same thing on every single one and be certain the build is perfectly reproduced.

Though I’m sure there are similar tools for other distros, but that’s what I know.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:29 collapse

I considered it but prinicipal said no its “too hard” for them, maybe next time

Biyoo@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 May 09:56 next collapse

And if they learn about wine and lutris and manage to install Roblox, they’ll probably get more out of it than by listening to the class in the first place !

I learned so much by circumventing the school security stuff. I probably wouldn’t be in IT if not for the parental control limitations and school network blocks

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:30 next collapse

yes exactly, its a win win all around

vandsjov@feddit.dk on 02 May 17:22 collapse

Back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days, they tried to lock it down with whatever software they had. We found a way around it. Even the DOS based menu system, we managed to copy the menu software out with its configuration file. Then we experimented with the “encrypted” password in the configuration file and found out that if we removed it, the system would allow you to do anything but that also meant we could create our own password and look at the “encrypted” password. We quickly found out that it was just shifting the ASCII table. We then “decrypted” the school password. Such 12 your old hackers 😆

Biyoo@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 03 May 08:11 collapse

And this is how you create a cybersecurity expert xD

Samsy@lemmy.ml on 02 May 10:18 next collapse

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.

ColdWater@lemmy.ca on 02 May 10:27 next collapse

Now students got addicted to linux ricing instead of games, jk good job op and the principal is nice for letting you do that.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:33 collapse

thanks!

Xatolos@reddthat.com on 02 May 10:28 next collapse

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

No, not for elementary/HS. You have to understand that schools aren’t regular users. They will have 2 top priorities:

  1. Hardware vender support. There isn’t any vendor that can/does support the volume and pricing that a school will do. While some major vendors are starting to offer Linux pre-installed, they aren’t apart of their educational vendor options.
  2. They need to have a “drag and drop” security suite. Schools don’t have large/well skilled IT department, so they rely on security suites that “tick off all the boxes”. This allows them an excuse is suddenly little Timmy has porn on their school computers. (This is one of those reasons ChromeOS is becoming so popular. They can issue a device, have the student only have a Google Workspace for Education account, and then walk away. Easy and simple. And yes, there are many websites that can tell you how to get around it, but then the school gets to turn around and claim the student “hacked” it and is in violation of rules X, Y, and Z to which the parent can also be held responsible.)

Until these two issues are solved, Linux won’t be ready for the public education sector. (When the parent issues the device, all rules are gone since it’s up to the parent what limits to place, and all the school will say is that the device must be able to run programs X, Y, and Z.)

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 11:34 next collapse

maybe only ready for programming education sector then…

bluewing@lemm.ee on 02 May 12:23 next collapse

Linux is kind of sort is already in elementary and high school use. Schools in my state are often issuing Chromebooks to students for use. They are cheap, easy to manage and get support for, and can do the things students need to do. And the only ones really using all those old Macs that infest schools are the teachers. Though in my local school, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades are using iPads but switch to Chromebooks in 5th grade.

One can complain about google being evil all you want, but they do offer all the free tools schools and teachers and students need for their lessons.And if COVID taught schools anything it was that we could teach classes online if necessary-- no more snow days.

Littux@lemmy.world on 02 May 18:53 next collapse

Every government school here uses Linux. And there’s no security (password is “password” even for root account). The only reason it works is because everyone has common sense on what they shouldn’t do. The worst any kid could do is visit a “bad” site on a browser because no one knows how to do anything else.

Even the exam software assumes you don’t know how things in Linux works:

  • The scores and answers are stored in simple non-encrypted SQLite3 databases at a directory in /usr/share.
  • During the exam, the panel for launching applications is hidden, so you can’t cheat on questions like “What does this tool do in GIMP?” by opening GIMP. But you can just do Ctrl + Alt + T to launch the Terminal and Alt + Tab to switch to it.

I easily qualified for a State level competition where the education minister visited and had big news agencies visiting that made up a lot of nonsense. You can probably guess what the average student will be like from this

emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works on 03 May 03:26 collapse

Schools in India already use Ubuntu. To be fair we benefit from having some local manufacturing assembling. There’s usually no security beyond whatever linux offers by default.

Juliee@lemm.ee on 02 May 10:31 next collapse

Cool but why do you ask the teachers? Without asking anyone would be way more funny and more interesting to see what happens

It’s the sort of school gags that people reminisce 20 years later when they sit with their family near cozy fireplace with a pipe of tobacco or crochet

You need to score all the silly memories while you still can.
People, remember the most important when you are young is to have fun. The responsibility and adulting will come for you anyway. You don’t want to be ‚mature for your age’. Have a heckin blast and take no prisoners

If I could go back in time I would spread custom furry uwumaxxed ransomware that would unlock with trollish gimmick through the school network. But when I got this good with computers I was already at uni so such things lost their luster.
Nowadays I would rather work in security and pentesting and get substantial amount of the adult green paper risk free. We get so boring with age don’t we. There’s nothing more boring than being a good, law obeying citizen but it is what it is if you have half a brain. You can always buy some expensive drugs or become motorsport adrenaline junkie

kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 May 10:58 next collapse

For such a setup I think it Is a good idea to look in to freeipa/idm. Would make management a load more easy. centralized account control and being able to sit at any PC and login with your own credentials is one of the many benefits.

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:20 collapse

Don’t distros like ubuntu and fedora tie into active directory pretty cleanly anymore? You could use your schools existing infrastructure with linux clients

kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 May 04:43 collapse

Well yes but if you are migrating almost anything to Linux. this might be worth while over expensive windows infrastructure.

aqua_cat@pawb.social on 02 May 12:58 next collapse

Would Edubuntu be a better fit?

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 13:27 collapse

we agreed on mint, so I had to put that in since I was trying to get the principal to not use “windows is more familiar” excuse

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:17 collapse

When I was a kid, what was more familiar didnt matter. We used macs in schools. My little brother comes in and it was all Dells with windows, but the school had decided the teach MS office and OpenOffice side by side because “Microsoft is not the future.”

It’s in a red state so that initiative didnt last long. They went full MS later and regretted the decision ever since. Others have shifted to chromebooks but that district is still on microsoft crap now for the same reason they still waste time teaching cursive: Older Karens with no knowledge but lots of opinions.

towelie@lemm.ee on 02 May 13:21 next collapse

You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 17:40 collapse

thanks!

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 14:38 next collapse

Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)

Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.

acockworkorange@mander.xyz on 02 May 15:30 next collapse

Well done! Protip: You can use double new lines to format paragraphs. And full-stops.

Alaknar@lemm.ee on 02 May 17:06 next collapse

I love Linux. I’m running Linux and love the experience.

But…

i7-4970 i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em

What in the world are you talking about, man??

Even ignoring the silliness of the “bloat” - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.

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

So… No, you didn’t stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google “linux roblox how to” and 20 minutes later they’re good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?

does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It’s completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that’s SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you’d be dealing with.

phx@lemmy.ca on 02 May 18:00 next collapse

There are many ways to skin the cat for centralized login in Linux, including using Samba-AD or just LDAP.

Patching is IMO less fun. Landscape can work for Ubuntu but it’s finicky, and I haven’t really found anything satisfactory (FOSS) for patch management if multiple Debian systems. Setting up “unattended-upgrades” does tend to handle most of it but that doesn’t give centralized control or visibility.

Alaknar@lemm.ee on 02 May 21:11 collapse

It’s honestly extremely surprising to me that there aren’t still any proper FOSS solutions that handle this. Is it because it’s super difficult to do? I’ve no idea, but it’s definitely something that’s preventing a lot of businesses to switch over.

the_q@lemm.ee on 02 May 18:16 next collapse

Wow you really went out of your way to yuck OPs yum.

Alaknar@lemm.ee on 02 May 21:14 collapse

Yeah, I guess I sound a bit aggressive. That wasn’t the intention. I just get an allergic reaction when I see the “Linux is just better than Windows now!” stuff. It is - in some scenarios. In others it’s worse. Someone who wants to do IT (and it kinda’ sounds like OP’s heading there) needs to understand that.

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:14 collapse

SCCM is on life support. Microsoft wants everyone to use autopilot now and many places cant or wont use cloud shit. I actually worked for a place that couldn’t use it for legal reasons.

We set up a FOG server and that was that. Fuck the cloud.

Alaknar@lemm.ee on 02 May 21:09 collapse

Just FYI - SCCM is not the Autopilot equivalent, it’s the Intune equivalent. Intune’s Autopilot is, kind of, what Task Sequence is in SCCM.

As far as “life support” goes - it’s full featured. Security updates are still coming in, not much else they can add feature-wise in there.

As for the cloud - everything has its uses. Cloud is great if you don’t want to deal with all the bare-metal stuff. It allows one person to do the work of four, with the trade-off being that you lose some of the fine-tuning, control, or optimisation. As the saying goes: “the ‘s’ in 'Intune” stands for ‘speed’".

Don’t fuck the cloud. Just use it when it’s better than on-prem.

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 22:07 collapse

The cloud has one plus in modern infrastructure. It gives you someone else to blame for shit breaking. My old boss told worded it best. “I want just one throat to choke”

andybytes@programming.dev on 02 May 17:36 next collapse

You are doing the lords work and I ain’t even a christian

steeznson@lemmy.world on 02 May 18:52 next collapse

Is there not some kind of RMM software you could be using to install the same setup on all of them simultaneously? How about monitoring? Firewalls?

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:11 collapse

netbooting an install image and running a script probably wouldnt have been too hard

Jocker@sh.itjust.works on 02 May 18:54 next collapse

Liberation

hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 18:54 next collapse

Wish I could do that when my school computers had Dos and Turbo Pascal. Ah, the good old himem.sys times. Miles better than W11.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 19:32 collapse

true

[deleted] on 02 May 19:08 next collapse

.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 19:32 collapse

some do, most don’t bring their own devices

muusemuuse@lemm.ee on 02 May 19:10 next collapse

I’ve actually been using linux with older customers for years. It solves several problems. First, it lets them get more life out of their older machines. Second, its free. Third, the kind of malware that targets linux systems isnt really a factor for little old man on facebook. Finally, when scammers call, they cant establish credibility with my customers. They get in, remote access barely works thanks to wayland not liking their tools yet. The entire system looks different and the commands are different so they dont understand how it works but the customer does. So the scam falls apart where they try to prove they know what they are talking about because they cant use the terminal properly. It always ends the same way. My customers get suspicious and say “I’m going to call my computer guy” and the hang up.

This trick has been successful for years and my users are very happy not to have to deal with microsoft’s bullshit. The fact that it confuses the hell out of scammers is just a nice bonus.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 02 May 19:27 collapse

its always funny to see scammers struggle with bash, I remember seeing a video about that and its so funny

leaf@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 May 22:12 next collapse

Now I want to attend your school!

jcs@lemmy.world on 02 May 23:35 next collapse

Linux has been ready for some time within various educational programs, but maybe you are referring to relatively early education curriculum in public schools? The general anecdotes I’ve heard from teachers within a variety of grade levels in the USA (mostly elementary and high school levels, but some doctoral engineering/scientific as well) convey that the largest hurdles to overcome are:

  1. Teaching the teachers. Teachers are usually very smart and capable, but are often chronically overworked, overstressed, and underpaid for their labor. They have limited mental bandwidth in learning new tech workflows while having the added obligation of teaching these workflows to students which may be at an attention/interest deficit.
  2. Challenging the status quo at the administrative level. Schools often receive incentives, grants, steep discounts, etc, for installing certain types of hardware or software packages. The software baselines of some schools are restricted at the district level; many public libraries are restricted by the city/county. Perhaps the best approach here is to install Linux as a “secondary” option (similar to how a smaller number of e.g. Macs may be installed in a computer lab comprised mostly of Windows computers) until it’s more widely adopted.
  3. Advocating for equivalent Linux support for popular proprietary software. This is especially true for the creative design community, such as graphic design and professional music production. Adobe is usually the target of criticism here; Linux does not currently hold enough market share to capture Adobe’s attention while their patrons usually have unwavering brand loyalty or are unwilling to make any tooling/workflow compromises as to maintain their livelihood.
  4. FOSS-friendly awareness campaigns. Showing people that they can remain productive while not being at the mercy of Big Tech. Not using public funds for private industry.
  5. Feature parity case studies compared to proprietary options.
  6. Overcoming the stereotype that Linux is only for techy people, shrouded by gatekeepers, or subject to drama/infighting.
DimFisher@lemmy.world on 03 May 04:47 next collapse

Man seriously aren’t you happy with the 2% of users that use Linux right now?, I m telling you for certain, if Linux bites a larger piece of that pie Microsoft is munching for decades, their coders will unleash an influx of any kind of viruses to show how “shitty” Linux are, I really feel safe to be on that 2%, let people find their own way.

Ace120C@sopuli.xyz on 03 May 06:22 next collapse

microsoft can’t do sh*t

nixigaj@lemmy.world on 03 May 06:25 next collapse

Rage bait?

DimFisher@lemmy.world on 03 May 09:16 collapse

If you gotta ask, then you certainly have to check yourself my friend 😜

avieshek@lemmy.world on 03 May 06:56 next collapse

These are the type of fans that the original Linus creator Linus Trovalds himself called toxic and the reason behind hampering Linux growth to average users.

DimFisher@lemmy.world on 03 May 09:14 next collapse

Omg, I m sry guys didn’t want to insult anybody or anything, just said my opinion, chill

DimFisher@lemmy.world on 03 May 10:43 collapse

And by the way I m not a fan of anything, I just want to do my job quietly and without too much hustle, I hope I am understood

lambda_notation@lemmy.ml on 03 May 09:03 collapse

Is the linux kernel and gnu userland a bastion of security? Of course not, but it is still magnitude orders better than M$ counterparts for a multitude of reasons. Not even M$ runs windows as a baseplate on Azure. It is a net positive for humanity if more people and orgs ran linux based operating systems.

avieshek@lemmy.world on 03 May 06:59 next collapse

I was thinking of Pop!_OS but also heard about NixOS that could be even run on Mid-2012 MacBook Pro.

PanArab@lemm.ee on 03 May 09:30 collapse

Using Linux in the university back in 2004 helped make the jump to Linux at home and I have been using it for 20 years now.