Micr$oft vs FOSS

[RLR]

We're a 1:1 iPad school and an apple distinguished school (whatever that means!) so we kind of needed a MAC suite. A couple of Summers ago we kitted out one of our labs with brand-new iMacs. Within the first few weeks in to the new school year it was causing such a headache as staff didn't know how to use them. We then had to spend the half term putting bootcamp on all the iMacs and duel booting them to Windows. They are now always used as Windows machines. Real waste of money! Edited December 8, 2015 by RLR

[ThatBoringBloke]

Whilst we're still running Windows on the Desktop / Servers we now have an almost 40/60 split moving to Chromebooks and GAFE.

 

The vast majority of what we deliver, or expect the students to deliver, can now be done either through GAFE or through online subscriptions to web based services. This means that as a NM I'm less focused on the platform that's is being used to deliver the services and more the infrastructure required to deliver it.

[Geoff]

This means that as a NM I'm less focused on the platform that's is being used to deliver the services and more the infrastructure required to deliver it.

 

I think as the SaaS cloud based offerings become more prevalent, Techs are going to have to get used to either doing pure user facing/desktop/device support (ugh), or support infrastructure (yay). The traditional application support is going to disappear.

[localzuk]

I think as the SaaS cloud based offerings become more prevalent, Techs are going to have to get used to either doing pure user facing/desktop/device support (ugh), or support infrastructure (yay). The traditional application support is going to disappear.

 

There's going to be a lot more development type work also - taking a package and crafting the end solution out of it (eg. turning Sharepoint into the solution needed by the organisation, like I am doing right now).

[mthomas08]

We're a 1:1 iPad school and an apple distinguished school (whatever that means!) so we kind of needed a MAC suite. A couple of Summers ago we kitted out one of our labs with brand-new iMacs. Within the first few weeks in to the new school year it was causing such a headache as staff didn't know how to use them. We then had to spend the half term putting bootcamp on all the iMacs and duel booting them to Windows. They are now always used as Windows machines. Real waste of money!

 

To be honest this is among those times when I can understand the Mac system. If you are already built around Apple it makes sense.

 

As for your 1:1 can I PM you a bunch of questions

[unixman_again]

The first school that I worked at ran 100% Linux on all the student desktops. Although they complained a lot and said it was carp, in reality for what these students did - web browsing and office it was perfectly fine. There were a few problems with them bringing in files from their home PCs - mostly involving strange fonts. Every student was given a CD with the windows ports of the software that was on the student machines. OpenOffice, GIMP, some mind mapping software, etc. If they used that, there would be no problems. The other problem we had was reading CDs coming from a PC. Windows disregards the Rainbow book standard in that you can access an unfinalised CD. Simples! When students came in waving a CD they couldn't read, I'd finalise it for them.

 

The science department had some simulated experiments that they were very attached too. This was Windows 98 software. When I started, the room where is was running was Windows 98. One particular experiment would crash the box (BSOD) and the students would run this so they could spend 10 minutes chatting to their friend while it rebooted. They were really upset when I installed Linux and had the software running under Wine. The experiment would just sit there doing nothing and the program carried on running, allowing they to select another experiment.

 

We used to run sessions for parents at the start of the year in which we let them loose on our systems. After they logged on I'd say "Let's all go to the BBC website. You'll need a web browser." They would all look a bit bewildered until they saw a section "Web Browsers" on the menu. We would also do a couple of exercises involving writing letters. Parents would leave wondering what all the fuss was about as they could see the system worked fine for students.

[RLR]

To be honest this is among those times when I can understand the Mac system. If you are already built around Apple it makes sense.

 

As for your 1:1 can I PM you a bunch of questions

 

Yep, I totally got the reason behind it. Just didn't work out very well.

 

Fire away with the questions.