W10 - What is everyone moving to next..

[Alastairb25]

Hi,

 

We are on an LTSC version so we have a little more time to think about it.

 

We may give some thought to Linux.. a lot of our systems will be web based

 

What is everyone else looking to do?

 

Update

To Add context

Vast majority of our systems are moving web based, therefore just a browser would be enough

Lots of older hardware that is fine but that W11 would make obsolete

Recent issues with Windows patches

 

Thanks

Alastair

Edited July 29, 2024 by Alastairb25

[Rob_D]

Windows 11.

We've already got around 2/3 of our estate across already, and hope to have most of the rest upgraded by the end of the summer. It's probably been one of the easiest OS upgrades we've done.

Moving away from windows sounds like a lot of work.

[synaesthesia]

For management purposes I think I'd be suggesting ChromeOS across the board in that scenario. Personally, W11 here at a Google trust, mostly down to the disparity of function between Office products online and off. Out of having some people on Office and the rest online, or just having Office available across the board, the latter is much preferable in our case. May change in the future, particularly when SIMS does a running jump!

[kennysarmy]

We are already Win 11 23H2 across the board (c. 1000 devices) apart from around a dozen PC's and laptops still on Windows 10 which will get hoovered up this summer.

[Olliedawg]

I'm upgrading all eligible devices to W11 23H2 this summer. Anything not compatible will be staying on 10 and we will either purchase extended support, or move to LTSC to buy us time to ugprade/refresh those devices

[Rob_D]

If you do go linux, I'd be really interested in hearing how it turns out. I imagine selling SLT on the idea is going be a big hurdle though.

[3s-gtech]

Moving school PCs to Linux goes back to threads in the early days of this forum. It never gained much traction then, and it won’t now - it has its place in universities etc, in some labs, but it’s almost like a pet project rather than a really sensible approach - managing the machines may be a nightmare. However, ChromeOS can certainly work, if that’s what you’re thinking.

[Alastairb25]

Its just a thought for the moment.

[aac]

We are using Windows 10 LTSC 2021 on most of our desktops and have done for years apart from the Art department which needs a SAC edition to support Adobe Creative Cloud products so we are deploying Windows 11 Education in that room this Summer along with Windows 11 Education also being deployed to our new teacher laptops this Summer. I anticipate sticking with Windows 10 on the desktops for a couple of years yet due to the lack of funds to replace old kit that simply wont run Windows 11...

[ToyHeartsFan]

I use Mint at home on one of my computers and have spun up various edu distros over the years to look at them but are you really suggesting Linux is suitable in a school?

 

How are going to manage them without group policy, AD etc?

 

DfE guidelines say you should use monitoring as part of your safeguarding, the schools I worked at used Policy Central / Smoothwall Monitor which required client software installing on all of the windows PC's there was no equivalent Linux solution so how are you monitoring the PC's, what about teacher tools like Netsupport school and Printing solutions like Papercut will they and everything else the school uses including your MIS solution run on Linux?

 

Depending on why they don’t meet W11 requirements you can use Rufus etc to install 11 but really schools need to accept that using 10 year old PCs is no longer acceptable and provide adequate funding. If schools had real ICT development plans instead of playing lip service to data protection and safeguarding then there shouldn’t be ancient computers in the school that don’t have TPM etc..

 

 

If you are getting rid or the servers wouldn’t Intune make more sense?

[jthompson]

Between the W10 EOL dates, W11's more strict hardware support and ChromeOS Flex's EOL dates on older model PC hardware being on a similar timescale to that of W10, there are just no viable OS options for our older hardware.

 

I did look at Ubuntu desktop, which can be domain joined to AD and does have some Group Policy administrative templates available without needing to purchase any licensing, but some of the design philosophy in Ubuntu just made it not viable (e.g. all users get read privileges of other users' local home folders by default). Which is a shame considering that it's basically supported on whatever ancient hardware you want to hang onto.

 

You can get more extensive Group Policy options if you purchase Landscape licenses for the machines, but it's still not going to be viable imho.

 

Maybe if you're just after providing a web browser behind a domain login it might be worth a look.

[dmj]

I've run linux machines in Universities, schools and in 'industry'.

 

It doesn't get any traction on this forum because the entire sector is already heavily geared towards windows.

The barrier to adoption is knowledge. People confuse 'hard/difficult/unsuitable' with not knowing how to do something.

It usually boils down to the politics of a single piece of software in my experience, not any actual technical problem - they were mostly solved a decade ago.

[ToyHeartsFan]

I've run linux machines in Universities, schools and in 'industry'.

The barrier to adoption is knowledge. People confuse 'hard/difficult/unsuitable' with not knowing how to do something.

 

Monitoring is a DfE safeguarding requirement I don't know of any software the equivalent of Policy Central / Smoothwall monitor that runs on Linux if there is one tell us what it is.

 

At the end of the day this is about SLT not funding ICT then complaining when the schools ICT is garbage.

[dmj]

Monitoring is a DfE safeguarding requirement I don't know of any software the equivalent of Policy Central / Smoothwall monitor that runs on Linux if there is one tell us what it is.

 

I already called BS on this comment in another thread. The DfE doesn't say this it needs to run on the device at all otherwise all Calculators, data collectors, cameras, IoT devices, raspberry pi's would be instantly banned.

[ToyHeartsFan]

Yes you have made it clear that your school doesn't follow DfE guidelines and doesn't use a monitoring solution but in the LEA area I worked and in others it has been mandatory for years and no devices without the monitoring software installed are allowed; at some point your school will have to play catch up and improve its safeguarding.

 

"If mobile or app technologies are used then you should apply a technical monitoring system to the devices, as your filtering system might not pick up mobile or app content. "

 

 

Regardless changing the OS because the hardware is garbage doesn't stop the hardware from being garbage; ICT funding should be as important as staff funding SLT that thinks otherwise isn't fit for purpose.

[dmj]

Yes you have made it clear that your school doesn't follow DfE guidelines and doesn't use a monitoring solution

You're twisting things, neither of those things are true. The DfE guidance is dumbed down, an intelligent chap like yourself isn't supposed to take it so literally. You are allowed to think outside the box.

[dhicks]

Vast majority of our systems are moving web based, therefore just a browser would be enough

Lots of older hardware that is fine but that W11 would make obsolete

 

We have a mixture of ChromeOS and Windows 11 machines logging on using a Google login. We've found that Windows 11 (with an Education license, so automatable with an unattend.xml file) will install on quite old hardware (think about 12 years old is our current record, although that machine wound up being very slow), and future updateability might vary.

 

If you just want machines with a web browser, then the most-easily-managed option is going to be ChromeOS - again, ChromeOS Flex will install on older hardware, and tends to perform (a bit) better than Windows 11 - a 12 year old machine is still probably a bit much, but we've had some 10 year old laptops running ChromeOS okay.

 

If you do decide to give Linux a try, I'd go for Debian (probably the Raspberry Pi distribution), with the standard desktop removed and just running Chromeium browser. I use a Raspberry Pi running both Chromeium and Firefox browsers on a daily basis as my office machine, as a simple web browser machine it works fine. You'd need to figure out how you handle logins, or you could simply set up as a kiosk machine, giving each user a fresh, blank web browser that they then log in to with some kind of web-based account. ChromeOS / Google Workspace is probably going to be easier to manage, though.

[notsogenius]

I've run linux machines in Universities, schools and in 'industry'.

 

It doesn't get any traction on this forum because the entire sector is already heavily geared towards windows.

The barrier to adoption is knowledge. People confuse 'hard/difficult/unsuitable' with not knowing how to do something.

It usually boils down to the politics of a single piece of software in my experience, not any actual technical problem - they were mostly solved a decade ago.

 

I'd suggest in 'industry' you may not have an environment where the users are actively trying to mangle or change every possible setting available.

 

Say for example I setup a system with Linux desktops on ancient hardware then departed for pastures new. What happens to the next person managing the system? Is it going to be straightforward to employ someone with that skillset? (I don't have the answer there) You also have to consider the users of the system - our staff. How many would be familiar with it? How much training time would be involved. How much does that all cost. How much development time is involved.

 

I don't have a horse in the race so to speak - I work on a CC4 network (boo hiss). It's mostly about whats best for the school end of the day and running a random bespoke Linux system doesn't feel like it has much longevity at least in the environments I've seen over the years.

 

Back on topic - I'd lean heavily towards Chrome OS Flex - I can't jump on the LTSC bandwagon (I wonder if Microsoft will slam on a big licensing cost at some point to force the point to stop the 'general' usage - I don't blame people for doing it though). I've used Chrome OS Flex on some pretty ancient devices with varying success. However the danger with that situation is you're encouraging a school to keep retaining old kit and showing them its 'OK' to do so. If a school wants a decent IT system it does require regular investment.

[Rob_D]

(I wonder if Microsoft will slam on a big licensing cost at some point to force the point to stop the 'general' usage - I don't blame people for doing it though).

I think they'll just continue not adding or removing newer features and program compatibility. Even years ago, LTSC took a bunch of faffing to get working with all the features users expect.

We've found that Windows 11 (with an Education license, so automatable with an unattend.xml file) will install on quite old hardware (think about 12 years old is our current record, although that machine wound up being very slow), and future updateability might vary.

We've got win11 on some older machines, but given the lack of official support and the constant threat of "no security updates for out of spec devices" I wouldn't consider it any more of a long term solution than using LTSC or just sticking with windows 10 and relying on 3rd party security (which I wouldn't want to do).

[jthompson]

We've got win11 on some older machines, but given the lack of official support and the constant threat of "no security updates for out of spec devices" I wouldn't consider it any more of a long term solution than using LTSC or just sticking with windows 10 and relying on 3rd party security (which I wouldn't want to do).

 

That's the issue with Chrome OS Flex, too. It can probably be installed on hardware that's not certified for it, but it's the uncertainty over whether the regular updates stop all of a sudden (or an update arrives but borks it) that is the killer.

[dmj]

I'd suggest in 'industry' you may not have an environment where the users are actively trying to mangle or change every possible setting available.

 

You would be surprised what users get up to !

 

Say for example I setup a system with Linux desktops on ancient hardware then departed for pastures new. What happens to the next person managing the system? Is it going to be straightforward to employ someone with that skillset? (I don't have the answer there) You also have to consider the users of the system - our staff. How many would be familiar with it? How much training time would be involved. How much does that all cost. How much development time is involved.

 

This is a real concern, for a school. Linux engineers tend to earn a *lot* more than windows engineers simply because there are fewer of them and a significant proportion of the worlds systems rely on linux. Staff retention would be an issue.

I'm not saying anyone can just jump onto windows server and be competent, but fundamentally they are not that different between learning how to manage the two.

 

For end users the trouble isn't so bad, it's really an issue for power users. People said that the transition from Win7 to Chromebooks would be an issue for user training but in the end it wasn't as most people just use applications, not the OS

[ItsASetup]

We will be sticking with Windows and moving onto Windows 11. This is mainly due to support of applications

[db062995]

Windows 11