10,000 new Linux boxes (can you spell momentum?)

I know that there have been other stories like this one in the press. But I'm not sure if any of the ones I've read before have talked about such a large conversion of machines away from Microsoft towards Linux.

Anyway, it was a good read and I thought I would share it with anyone who might be interested. These people are serious about their Linux!. Its also cool that we're talking about Linux on the desktop here:

Washington Post

or

MSNBC (for you Microsoft fans who want the .asp version )

Wow,10,000 (and 100,000 are sheduled for next year) converted to Linux/GNU,thats great news.Finally the people get the chance to use a good OS.Vazquez de Miguel is a really cool guy.

Verizon - they are switching to linux by the handfulls as we speek. Dreamworks studio is another, not sure how many, but I know quit a few - high end implementations of the OS at that......

It goes to show everyone that if there were quality sales people out pushing the product, the Linux OS can be pushed into the mainstream and (or) corporate sectors....

I think this is a really great thing. One of the big things going on in the U.S. right now is the growing rift between people who have technology and people who don't. Microsoft gives out a bunch of their software to institutions and high schools for free, or, at very low costs, but really, once the kids get out of their classes, that's it. They're sitting there with some very base knowledge of a product that costs a grand (Visual Studio.Net), and the only way to improve their skills is to buy it. They'll also need one of the higher end boxes that will cost around $1000 if they expect to use it at all...

I think more schools should be adopting Linux and BSD technologies for learning purposes. Think about it. With Windoze you can use the following programming language right out of the box: JavsScript

With Linux / BSD, you get g++, gcc, perl, python, ruby, Glade, etc. If more high schools would move toward teaching technologies like C++ off of *nix boxes, kids who can only afford to grab a $200 computer out of the paper could get a Linux distro and continue learning it on their own after the classes are out. With the introduction to Linux they wouldn't necessary becomes experts, but they could become more skilled on their own time without forking out several thousand dollars. Just think about the benefit of learning PostgreSql or MySql over Sql Server. Hmmm... free software and a $200 computer vs. $10,000 software and a $1500 (at least) computer. Real tough decision.


This is even more good news. I like the way European states seem to be bailing out on Microsoft lately. Hopefully, with some more big pushes like this, we'll see even more changes in Microsoft that make it a software player that's finally worth it's price tag. If Microsoft doesn't start shaping up and offering quality products and services, and these big shifts keep occuring, maybe they'll tank. If they do see the light and actually become "agile" like they're stupid ads claim, maybe they can be the next IBM and find some redemption in the computer world by making their products to fit the needs of their buyers instead of just glutting them and shafting the end user.

Too bad I don't know Spanish I'd like to check out that Linex distro they have just to see what it's like. I can decipher enough of the homepage based on my English skills (one time aspiring English-major ) to tell that people are really enthused about it though (at least, that's what the posts displayed when I was there).

Well the real test is time! Everybody was very enthusiast about the Red Escolar project (same thing but in mexico). The problem was simply that the installation wasn't smooth, especially because of exotic hardware and no tech to set up the machines properly. They ended up installing windows instead!

But after 10, 000 computers I think they suceed where mexico failed.

I've worked (well actually it was part of a school-work project, I wasn't paid) in a school where they used Linux as the main os for kids. There we're 486's all over the place! They had five servers that served as a X server (the kernel booted with nfs) and looks like it worked pretty well, other than the random paper jam it was fine.

There are several elementary schools using Linux here in Montreal but I have yet to see a high school.

I wonder if they are registed at a Linux counter project?!

One of the things that I find interesting about these types of migrations is that in many cases they're being attempted by people without a lot of money or in areas of the world that aren't known for being on the leading edge of technology. Like a case of the "tail wagging the dog", its different to see a technology being pushed from the bottom -> up. America is rich enough to keep paying the Microsoft tax each year. Like a lot of the world using metric (the better system) while we continue to measure things in 16th of inches (the stupid system), I can just see a world where America is the last nation relying heavily on Microsoft. In the article, Vazquez de Miguel was said to believe that co-existence means a world that's the flip side of today: 90 percent Linux, 10 percent Microsoft. I think it would be ironic if the majority of the world migrated to Linux (the 90%) and it was America (the 10%) that was just too lazy to learn a new operating system.

I've always liked this argument. Its amazing they keep using it when similar comparisons don't work:

"Somebody might give you a free car, but you're going to have to insure it, put gas in it and pay a mechanic when it breaks" (unless of course its a car that you can fix yourself because you have all the source code.) I guess the guys at Microsoft would argue that free cars are a bad thing too.

The puppy comes with it's own source code, too, in the form of DNA. Not like you should mess with that too much, though. You'll end up with some mutant super-puppy. . . And what would your compiler look like?

Anyway, real-world analogies are often times worthless when used in a software/IT context, and this puppy one happens to be terrible. And I STILL can't believe folks are comforted by having support from MicroSoft- they obviously haven't ever attempted to use it. If they had, they'd think different (apple pun NOT intended.) I personally don't know one person who's had a good experience with them, tech-support wise.

Lol Hero, and we just had someone in the PHP forum looking to switch from ASP to PHP but wanted, as he puts it, 'the good quality service they recieve from microsoft'. Wonder what microsoft company he is dealing with, certainly not the one from redmond....

I am sorry,but that's not correct,since Windows out-of-the-box only has Internet Explorer which has incompetent support for JavaScript,compared to Mozilla.Oh,and it's not a programming language,but a scripting language

Well actually IE doesn't support Javascript it supports JScript... Go figure.

But win has another one nobody mentionned: g'old batch files.

Batch files?What are those?Some kind of scripts?Because bash scripts are way more powerfull.

You don't know what a batch file is but yet you /bin/bash them? Batch file are shell scripts for DOS if you ask and yes bash is much more powerfull (but then so does PERL, Python, PHP or anything else that starts with a 'P').

If you ask me we should forget about BASH, it's like HTML, old and bloated and scripts are not always backward compatible (gotta hate it). I mean, that's just fine if used locally by a sys admin but if you're serious about programming and portability i'd go with any other scripting language (again PERL, Python, tcl what else?). That was my @#$%^&*( pet peeve.

The bad news just keeps flowing. Microsoft tried to "donate" its software to the schools in Namibia to replace the Linux they were using. After finding out what Microsoft really wanted and how much it was going to cost them, the director of SchoolNet Namibia wrote a fairly scathing letter to Microsoft.

Open Letter to Microsoft (click here)

The letter has some awkward wording and it takes a few paragraphs before it really gets interesting. But its still fun to read. Here's a good quote:

Ouch! Nothing like being nibbled to death by penguins to ruin your day.

Yeah,I know,I only use the scripts for my own personal computer,all my applications are C++