Microsoft Windows ousted at California school district

[133724]

By all appearances, the migration from Microsoft Windows to Novell SUSE Linux on the server and the desktop at the Windsor Unified School District in Northern California has been almost as pain-free as any IT professional could hope for.

By this summer, all 5,000 students and 250 teachers will be working off of a Linux-based thin client running OpenOffice.org, and the majority of the district's servers will be running Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

<snip>

When Carver arrived, Windsor had an aging Microsoft Windows environment running on 70 Hewlett-Packard and Dell servers spread across seven schools. Upgrades would have meant purchasing more powerful hardware and additional licensing costs totaling $100,000 – far too expensive for their limited IT budget, she said.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1245710,00.html

It's about time.....

[Irreverend IX]

1. A sign of things to come...

There's no reason any school should shell out the buckets of money needed to keep up a Windows or Mac installation. Linux will do everything they could want and is now every bit as user-friendly as its competition.

[133724]

2. Yea ~ trying to move to Linux

but some programs still require windoze....

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. That's easy enough;

all you need to do is get CrossOver Office--it emulates a Windows application layer that lets you run Windows apps (MS Office/Word/Outlook/etc, Photoshop, and so on).

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/

[Greyhound]

4. Great news. They've saved a lot of money and headaches, maybe they can afford

books now that they've been freed from Microserfdom. It's getting harder and harder to even find IT people that know anything other than M$.
:kick:

[Solo_in_MD]

5. The issue is automated gradebooks and other education specific tools

that are written exclusively for windows. IME most are also written by either amateurs or lesser programmers, whcih make using the windows emulators harder.

That said, the all government aganecies including school districts should go for LINUX every time they can.

[dkofos]

6. Good for them!!

Saving the taxpayers money and the sanity of the IT dept.

I have been using Linux to 2 years now and my PC has never been better.

FUCK YOU MS

[MissB]

7. Our district has run on Linux for years.

And that's a good thing. In fact, it was one of the best decisions our tech people ever forced on the district.