I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found “robloxinstall.exe” on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.
so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)
Using Linux in the university back in 2004 helped make the jump to Linux at home and I have been using it for 20 years now.
I was thinking of Pop!_OS but also heard about NixOS that could be even run on Mid-2012 MacBook Pro.
I have run both EndeavourOS and Chimera Linux on both 2009 and 2013 MacBook Pros. You would be amazed how well they run.
Linux has been ready for some time within various educational programs, but maybe you are referring to relatively early education curriculum in public schools? The general anecdotes I’ve heard from teachers within a variety of grade levels in the USA (mostly elementary and high school levels, but some doctoral engineering/scientific as well) convey that the largest hurdles to overcome are:
- Teaching the teachers. Teachers are usually very smart and capable, but are often chronically overworked, overstressed, and underpaid for their labor. They have limited mental bandwidth in learning new tech workflows while having the added obligation of teaching these workflows to students which may be at an attention/interest deficit.
- Challenging the status quo at the administrative level. Schools often receive incentives, grants, steep discounts, etc, for installing certain types of hardware or software packages. The software baselines of some schools are restricted at the district level; many public libraries are restricted by the city/county. Perhaps the best approach here is to install Linux as a “secondary” option (similar to how a smaller number of e.g. Macs may be installed in a computer lab comprised mostly of Windows computers) until it’s more widely adopted.
- Advocating for equivalent Linux support for popular proprietary software. This is especially true for the creative design community, such as graphic design and professional music production. Adobe is usually the target of criticism here; Linux does not currently hold enough market share to capture Adobe’s attention while their patrons usually have unwavering brand loyalty or are unwilling to make any tooling/workflow compromises as to maintain their livelihood.
- FOSS-friendly awareness campaigns. Showing people that they can remain productive while not being at the mercy of Big Tech. Not using public funds for private industry.
- Feature parity case studies compared to proprietary options.
- Overcoming the stereotype that Linux is only for techy people, shrouded by gatekeepers, or subject to drama/infighting.
I’ve actually been using linux with older customers for years. It solves several problems. First, it lets them get more life out of their older machines. Second, its free. Third, the kind of malware that targets linux systems isnt really a factor for little old man on facebook. Finally, when scammers call, they cant establish credibility with my customers. They get in, remote access barely works thanks to wayland not liking their tools yet. The entire system looks different and the commands are different so they dont understand how it works but the customer does. So the scam falls apart where they try to prove they know what they are talking about because they cant use the terminal properly. It always ends the same way. My customers get suspicious and say “I’m going to call my computer guy” and the hang up.
This trick has been successful for years and my users are very happy not to have to deal with microsoft’s bullshit. The fact that it confuses the hell out of scammers is just a nice bonus.
its always funny to see scammers struggle with bash, I remember seeing a video about that and its so funny
I love Linux. I’m running Linux and love the experience.
But…
i7-4970i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for emWhat in the world are you talking about, man??
Even ignoring the silliness of the “bloat” - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.
I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons
So… No, you didn’t stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google “linux roblox how to” and 20 minutes later they’re good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?
does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?
Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It’s completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that’s SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you’d be dealing with.
Wow you really went out of your way to yuck OPs yum.
Yeah, I guess I sound a bit aggressive. That wasn’t the intention. I just get an allergic reaction when I see the “Linux is just better than Windows now!” stuff. It is - in some scenarios. In others it’s worse. Someone who wants to do IT (and it kinda’ sounds like OP’s heading there) needs to understand that.
SCCM is on life support. Microsoft wants everyone to use autopilot now and many places cant or wont use cloud shit. I actually worked for a place that couldn’t use it for legal reasons.
We set up a FOG server and that was that. Fuck the cloud.
Just FYI - SCCM is not the Autopilot equivalent, it’s the Intune equivalent. Intune’s Autopilot is, kind of, what Task Sequence is in SCCM.
As far as “life support” goes - it’s full featured. Security updates are still coming in, not much else they can add feature-wise in there.
As for the cloud - everything has its uses. Cloud is great if you don’t want to deal with all the bare-metal stuff. It allows one person to do the work of four, with the trade-off being that you lose some of the fine-tuning, control, or optimisation. As the saying goes: “the ‘s’ in 'Intune” stands for ‘speed’".
Don’t fuck the cloud. Just use it when it’s better than on-prem.
The cloud has one plus in modern infrastructure. It gives you someone else to blame for shit breaking. My old boss told worded it best. “I want just one throat to choke”
There are many ways to skin the cat for centralized login in Linux, including using Samba-AD or just LDAP.
Patching is IMO less fun. Landscape can work for Ubuntu but it’s finicky, and I haven’t really found anything satisfactory (FOSS) for patch management if multiple Debian systems. Setting up “unattended-upgrades” does tend to handle most of it but that doesn’t give centralized control or visibility.
It’s honestly extremely surprising to me that there aren’t still any proper FOSS solutions that handle this. Is it because it’s super difficult to do? I’ve no idea, but it’s definitely something that’s preventing a lot of businesses to switch over.
A lot of people use automation systems etc. They work, but don’t provide the same GUI/reports you might see from RHS or Windows patching systems.
I too was surprised at how sparse or apparently kludged-together the pickings were.
You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man
thanks!
Liberation
Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)
Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.
Well done! Protip: You can use double new lines to format paragraphs. And full-stops.
And if they learn about wine and lutris and manage to install Roblox, they’ll probably get more out of it than by listening to the class in the first place !
I learned so much by circumventing the school security stuff. I probably wouldn’t be in IT if not for the parental control limitations and school network blocks
Back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days, they tried to lock it down with whatever software they had. We found a way around it. Even the DOS based menu system, we managed to copy the menu software out with its configuration file. Then we experimented with the “encrypted” password in the configuration file and found out that if we removed it, the system would allow you to do anything but that also meant we could create our own password and look at the “encrypted” password. We quickly found out that it was just shifting the ASCII table. We then “decrypted” the school password. Such 12 your old hackers 😆
And this is how you create a cybersecurity expert xD
yes exactly, its a win win all around
Now I want to attend your school!
Is there not some kind of RMM software you could be using to install the same setup on all of them simultaneously? How about monitoring? Firewalls?
netbooting an install image and running a script probably wouldnt have been too hard
Hey OP, regarding Minecraft: It’s a Java program that uses OpenGL for rendering. Therefore it’s not a Windows game, but inherently cross platform. Here’s the official .deb package https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb
oh dang, that changes everything
Well for a .deb, the users would need sudo access.
Actually it’s just an archive. It can be easily extracted using
dpkg -x *.deb ~/.localfor example.TIL but that makes sense. What else would it be. It also contains some setup logic that is executed when installing, right? I wonder whether the launcher would just work like that
You’re right, apparently amongst other things there are some hooks that are ran during the package’s lifecycle in something that is called the control archive.
Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school’s IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.
the school’s IT
I wonder if that even exists. A mix of Windows 8 (EoL) and 10 (almost EoL) running on Haswells with students freely installing Roblox… all gives an unmaintained vibe.
I always assumed schools had at least one or two IT people who just are spread really thin or something. Never occurred to me that an organization would just have PCs with no admin, but it sounds plausible. I guess the instructors just have to fix things if they run into issues.
not yet, might ask if I could be
They probably are, At the UTP in Panama they will contact some students (based on what idk presumably on impressions of performance) to do IT for them, it’s not technically an internship it’s a regular job that’s part time
When I was in high school, computers had Deep Freeze setup, because kids would constantly break the OS and download malware. It’s a software that resets the C drive to a known state on every reboot. You might consider using something similar on classroom workstations.
Also, it might be worth learning about network booting, automating the Linux installer and ansible to install things on every machine at once and automate configuration work.
I’ve always wondered how these solutions worked but never found much info about 'em
I was thinking more like using an immutable or atomic os instead, like bazzite or bluefin. At least then you get regular updates, and core functionality is safely protected.
my school also had windows with deep freeze before they malfunctioned or smth iirc from what principal told me
Yeah, that was also what was used in my school.
The only problem was, it was rarely updated so all the applications were always very outdated. And it was still possible to play Minecraft without any administrator privileges.
Same in my case. But we were also learning c++ using Turbo C++ (the msdos one with the blue UI) in the 2010. Everything about high school was 15-20 years out of date. The OS (windows xp) was probably the newest thing on those computers.
