06.23.09
Linux Fear Factor
So many school districts think that if they aren’t using Microsoft products everywhere, especially on the desktop, that they will be missing out on some type of golden opportunitiy. Opportunities like, Bill Gates is going to give them free software for perpetuity, that some huge conglomerate will recognize their district as deserving of some special accommodation because they have played ball, followed the party line, tasted the fine slop while feeding at the huge Microsoft trough…
Back in the day (well, the prehistoric computing day), IBM was the “Yes, sir!” company — we’re talking the 60s and 70s here. If you bought IBM products for the corporate silicon farm, you deserved a real, “Attaboy!”, “Job well done,” “Can’t go wrong choosing IBM.” It’s this same kind of dull-thinking, clone mentality that is the mindset public schools are facing today. Schools are all about teaching students to think outside the box, be creative in their thinking, use all their resources in the best possible way, don’t waste! So, apparently, this is the old saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
My school district has been floundering in a morass of foggy thinking for ages. Well, not an epoch as we normally perceive extreme expanses of time, but it certainly seems like forever! Information Technology (IT) professionals (and by professionals I mean people who have had training in planning, design, taking into consideration the entire scope of a project) are a rare commodity in public schools—I mean extremely rare! The norm is to have an idea, and start implementing the idea without a plan, without a well-thought out goal with developed milestones, checkpoints, a roadmap. (Jeez, I didn’t know project planning used so many damn euphimisms for highway travel!) Repeat until either: (A) the financial officer wises up and decides to pull the plug on the ill-conceived design; (B) the public gets wind of the fiasco and cries, “Foul! Enough!”
Look at every modern school and education journal/magazine: chock full of advertisements with articles that are seemingly written by the advertising copy personnel. Articles explaining why such-and-such new gizmo or new technology will breath life into schools and teaching our beloved students. Come on, this is Amerka for Christ’s sake—it’s all about the sale, the bottom line! The hardware/software/technology companies could give a rat’s ass about schools, they only want the sales when the schools can be enticed into buying product X (that will revolutionize and energize our classrooms.) All these gizmos tell the school that they have to have Windows version X with such hardware, a Windows network server, a Windows Exchange mail server for their program to function.
Of course, Linux desktop systems and back office services are not even in the picture. Schools are too afraid to consider anything but the correct response—the Microsoft product/solution. Back to my district: we have ancient (well, geriatric might be closer to the euphimistic truth) desktop systems with Pentium II/233 processors with 4 GB hard drives or Pentium III/450 processors with a whopping 12.7 GB hard drives. Zow! These machines have just been “upgraded” to Windows 98—yes, Windows 98! within the past 9 months. This has been this momentous occasion—joy! now I can use my USB thumb drive or my USB printer. Of course, we are still running Office 97 on 80% of the desktops. Even teachers have newer hardware and software at home, and these are the people who are usually the last folks to buy anything new because they are so underpaid. Let’s not talk about students: to hear them talk, they all have huge high-performance clusters sitting in their bedroom closet, “Dude! this computer is so crappy, like, I totally have such better stuff at home. Warez are the best, they rule! Did I tell you? I installed a keylogger on my Dad’s PC so I’ll be getting that new XBox-360 game next week with this digits! Righteous!”
Let’s not talk about using open source software and Gnu Linux-based operating systems. Them’s is commie talk! “OpenOffice.org as a replacement for all the different versions of Microsoft Office? (Office 97, 2000, XP, 2003—all on one campus.) No way! We can’t deprive the students of their exposure to industry-standard software—everybody uses MS Office. We would be doing the children an incredible disservice if we didn’t teach them how to use Office 97.” <sigh… I fear for humanity!>
But here I am, everyday dealing with virus outbreaks, spyware and malware, incompatibilities with hardware and documents when used on different machines on campus. All of this is completely unnecessary. We could be running SuSE Linux or Debian Linux on all our desktops and see real performance from all the hardware systems. Software upgrades, operating system updates and patches—all performed with ease and elegance, and in a timely and well-planned manner. Not the standard, “Oh yeah… we forgot that these systems need to be maintained, updated, protected. We’ll have to scramble now and come up with a solution for all these problems that are breathing down our collective necks. We’re swamped! Oh yeah, did we tell you? We’re migrating your school’s servers to Windows servers next week—hope you have your data backed up and that the backup tapes are viable! We have to wipe every PC and slap on a new disk image—Microsoft, of course!”
Where’s my passport?
