How Far would you go with Linux in school?

[mavhc]

> There are literally thousands of support companies providing support. Google includes support with ChromeOS when you buy the management license.

 

Exactly, you can pay people for support. Question is are you paying them when you don't need support?

 

> There is no single "standard" way. Also are you seriously saying that building a linux setup, from scratch, would be as easy as buying Chromebooks and loading up the admin console which is ready to go??

 

No, just that it would be better, GIMP, FreeCAD, Blender, OpenShot, LibreOffice, and also everything ChromeOS has.

 

> Yup. Linux is a niche skill. Especially Linux on the desktop. Again, this is because there is no "standard" way of doing things with Linux. Every distro does it differently. Many distros provide dozens of ways of doing things. Mac? There's a Apple standard way of setting things up. Android? There's MDM - which is standardised based on the spec by Google. iOS - same as with Android. ChromeOS? Only one standard way of doing it - the admin panel. Windows? Whilst you *can* do things in different ways, MOST people follow the MS way of doing things - using MS tools on MS OS's in their standardised way.

 

There's many MDMs each with different features that are half supported on different OSes. Can't even get android to display a configured launcher. Apple requires you buy iOS devices a specific way too, so useless for anything bought in the past. Which MS tools, Windows Server? Or InTune? Azure AD? Setup School PCs app? WDS with its UEFI AD Deny permission bug they've known about for 8 years and never fixed?

 

> One server? Running one piece of software? Not exactly an example of an entire network is it?

 

Oh, you wanted me to write more? Excellent. Well, DNS, DHCP, OpenLDAP, that's all simple stuff, Apache obviously, the switches and router and access points obviously run linux. File and Print, that's easy, Zabbix for monitoring. Wordpress is on linux, pfSense is BSD, darn, that doesn't count.

 

> That doesn't dismiss what I said in the slightest. Things broke - they took longer to fix when they were Linux systems. My years of experience with Windows didn't help - at the time, we didn't have ChromeOS, Android, etc... You are talking about a total and radical change in doing things. Going from "MS says click XYZ and it'll do ABC" to "write your config files by hand, you'll fundamentally need to understand how every single tool works, and how to integrate them together" etc... ChromeOS is an easy transition - it is a very simple single pane of glass to admin it. Linux stuff is not.

 

You have to understand how ldap and dhcp and dns etc work anyway, and at the other end http(s).

 

> That's kinda the whole point I'm trying to make. There is no such thing as a standard Linux network. It doesn't exist, because there is no such thing as a standard Linux OS, let alone the tools on top of it to do various tasks.

 

Let's start a new thread then, Ubuntu in schools or something. Under the hood it's all the same anyway. Windows 10 is as different from Windows 7 as 2 linux distros are from each other

 

> That flexibility increases admin and support costs. It is a completely different way of doing things, that will require significant investment in training - either in the form of actual training, or in the form of time. Many schools don't have time, so you end up trying to justify actual training - and the question then becomes why do we pay for all this training, when the system we have already does everything you want this new one to do, and we can get support from thousands of companies at ease, and hire your replacement at ease should you leave right now?

 

Not any completely different from any other OS. I'd barely used Windows before I got a job in a school, same principles apply to any OS, files, ACLs, processes. Networking is all the same. As people have shown with ChromeOS, if you manage to get Chrome installed they're happy

[localzuk]

Exactly, you can pay people for support. Question is are you paying them when you don't need support?

 

Here? Not any more. They used to though. Many schools do pay a third party for extra support too.

No, just that it would be better, GIMP, FreeCAD, Blender, OpenShot, LibreOffice, and also everything ChromeOS has

 

Those are just the end user apps. Not the system as a whole. Again, ignoring the complexity of building and managing such a setup.

There's many MDMs each with different features that are half supported on different OSes. Can't even get android to display a configured launcher. Apple requires you buy iOS devices a specific way too, so useless for anything bought in the past. Which MS tools, Windows Server? Or InTune? Azure AD? Setup School PCs app? WDS with its UEFI AD Deny permission bug they've known about for 8 years and never fixed?

 

Depends what you want to achieve. Fully legacy? Server + WDS or SCCM etc... Modern cloud stuff? Azure + InTune. Both have well documented ways of doing things, used in exactly the same way by hundreds of millions of other users.

Oh, you wanted me to write more? Excellent. Well, DNS, DHCP, OpenLDAP, that's all simple stuff, Apache obviously, the switches and router and access points obviously run linux. File and Print, that's easy, Zabbix for monitoring. Wordpress is on linux, pfSense is BSD, darn, that doesn't count.

 

None of that is "simple stuff". The fact that you cannot recognise that is the issue you repeatedly are exhibiting in threads like this. What is simple for you is NOT simple for everyone else. It is a new setup. It is an entirely different way of doing things.

You have to understand how ldap and dhcp and dns etc work anyway, and at the other end http(s).

 

Not overly so. There are a lot of schools that don't have that expertise in house, they outsource the top level knowledge to support providers. So, their IT staff don't know the intricacies of DNS/DHCP/LDAP.

Let's start a new thread then, Ubuntu in schools or something. Under the hood it's all the same anyway. Windows 10 is as different from Windows 7 as 2 linux distros are from each other

 

Under the hood its the same? I think the distro maintainers would disagree with you. Systemd? Non-systemd? There's an entire battle going on out there about that one. Windows 10 and Windows 7 are not as different as 2 distros. Redhat vs Debian might as well be 2 completely different OS's rather than 2 different distros.

 

Not any completely different from any other OS. I'd barely used Windows before I got a job in a school, same principles apply to any OS, files, ACLs, processes. Networking is all the same. As people have shown with ChromeOS, if you manage to get Chrome installed they're happy

We're going in circles. Anything I say won't change your mind, and you seem to be dead-set on something that is not suitable for many schools. If your individual school manages with it all like that, good for them. I'd hazard a guess they'll have issues when you leave though.

[BKGarry]

OK, this is going right around in circles, not quite what I intended, and actually I prefer to be OS and Vendor agnostic but this is really bad. This is very much reminding me of this comic from The Oatmeal https://theoatmeal.com/blog/fix_computer

 

:-) I do not think we are going to agree, I also think in schools we cannot restrict ourselves to any one system, but I think we are a bit of a way away from the attempt of a 100% pure linux environment in schools

[mavhc]

> Here? Not any more. They used to though. Many schools do pay a third party for extra support too.

 

I mean you're paying to buy the stuff in the first place.

 

> Those are just the end user apps. Not the system as a whole. Again, ignoring the complexity of building and managing such a setup.

 

Ah, so the desktop part is fine, right.

 

> Depends what you want to achieve. Fully legacy? Server + WDS or SCCM etc... Modern cloud stuff? Azure + InTune. Both have well documented ways of doing things, used in exactly the same way by hundreds of millions of other users.

 

Exact same way to do both with Salt etc, client gets config from web server, configures itself.

 

> None of that is "simple stuff". The fact that you cannot recognise that is the issue you repeatedly are exhibiting in threads like this. What is simple for you is NOT simple for everyone else. It is a new setup. It is an entirely different way of doing things.

 

DHCP and DNS are simple, everyone does that. AD is LDAP, same thing. Who's not running a web server? Most popular web servers are Apache and nginx. Everyone has switches and routers and APs, although not everyone has the same model, oooh, scary, such differences. Will you get training when you move to a new Wifi system?

 

> Not overly so. There are a lot of schools that don't have that expertise in house, they outsource the top level knowledge to support providers. So, their IT staff don't know the intricacies of DNS/DHCP/LDAP.

 

If your IT staff don't know how DHCP works you're not getting value for money.

 

> Under the hood its the same? I think the distro maintainers would disagree with you. Systemd? Non-systemd? There's an entire battle going on out there about that one. Windows 10 and Windows 7 are not as different as 2 distros. Redhat vs Debian might as well be 2 completely different OS's rather than 2 different distros.

 

Everyone picked systemd. FreePBX distro is CentOS based, I've not found anything difficult about it not being Debian based like everything else I have is.

 

> We're going in circles. Anything I say won't change your mind, and you seem to be dead-set on something that is not suitable for many schools. If your individual school manages with it all like that, good for them. I'd hazard a guess they'll have issues when you leave though.

 

You seem to think I'm saying many schools should run it. Only ones with IT people who know stuff about computers.

 

I picked a random guy off the street, but I didn't train him, I educated him, so he knows how computers work, not how to press 6 buttons in a row in Windows, and now he runs linux servers, windows servers, writes php websites, it's really not that hard.

[elsiegee40]

Thread being closed due to circular argument. Go have a cuppa and a hobnob