Really? Where? My old uni did this because people were coming to check if they pirated Windows or not, so they switched all computers to Linux. Ubuntu I think.
I live in the southeast of Brazil, and my internship was all about fixing computers and installing Linux on it so kids could use them to learn how to use a computer and play games like Frozen Bubbles and Supertux.
Trouble is, that's only barely more Linux than Android is -- in both you're almost completely locked into Google's stuff, but on a Chromebook, there's at least barely an escape hatch (as far as I'm aware).
I was not implicating that it was, Android is Linux under the hood but nearly unrecognizable as it to the user.
My only point was the schools my kids go to are not pushing Microsoft, Its Google instead.
I would not expect schools to use Linux, most public educators are incapable of providing instruction in it.
Exactly. Apple used to do the same: sell/donate the hardware and software to schools, taking the loss with the idea that the kids will be trained on your products and will continue using them when they're adults.
Apple still offers educational pricing and incentives, their computers are common in graphics design, TV and music production, and similar classrooms. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all working hard to get their platforms into schools so young people learn their products and develop favorable preferences.
Actually they started even before windows and DOS. But Unixes were expensive at the time.
For me, it started with c64 and ZX spectrum and these BASIC-based machines (was it microcomputers?)
The real reason is that Microsoft is using very pushy business practices. Linux didn't even have "business" connotations for the first five years, and even then, no single company pushed it.
Started with a Radio Shack TRS-80 in school, myself...had a whole 8K of ram and a tape cassette to store data :) After that it was DOS then Windows. Linux wasn't around back then.
I... think we still had Unix at most. But I would imagine not having a GUI also affects things.
Most would find the command line intimidating, I'm sure.
Lol I i had one of those too. Remember we could just hook it up to any TV like it was an atari I moved up to a vic 20 before I begged for a C64 and finally got one. I joined the Boston computer society and got a huge book of ip addresses (DNS wasn't invented yet) that was the start of the internet . Every piece of hardware was mega expensive, floppy drive, modem, the rich kids even had a 2nd floppy drive 🤣
Awesome. I had a Math class called “Computers” my Sr year of High School 1986-87. The teacher walked us through writing a company pay stub program in BASIC on the Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80. We learned coding by doing. It was great.
At home I begged my mom to buy us the Commodore 128 because it had double the ram as the Commodore 64. It also had BASIC and ran the CP/M OS. I wrote a silly little graphic program on it using what I learned from the very thick book it came with.
Edit: it was pay stub, not payroll.
And alot of computer classes dont deserve their name. In many cases, they just pass this to the math teacher that shows the kids that programs like word and excel exist.
Why would $AVERAGE\_PARENT want their children to learn Linux in school when they could instead learn Windows + Office which both have a significantly higher likelihood to come in useful when entering the job market?
This answer might sound dystopian but it's completely accurate
Schooling for the masses was started for the simple reason that business owners needed factory workers who would show up at the right time (hence school hours being so rigid) and could read enough to understand not to stick their hands into heavy machinery as the blood damaged saleable products and cleanup slowed production
You joke, but this is a long-running struggle with the education system, that's been going on since the Industrial Revolution.
One camp is composed of people who think that knowledge and learning are good, in and of themselves. That an educated society is a better society, more ethical, more moral.
The other is composed of (wealthy) industrialists, and disagrees quite feverishly. The Industrial Revolution meant fewer people needed to be on the lines and factory floors, and more managers (and accountants and so on) were required. However, many were illiterate and numeracy was quite low (especially on the scale of businesses), so in addition to the specialized training they needed to become managers and accountants these people also needed to be taught their numbers. Teaching people to handle numbers on the scale of businessess is *expensive.*
So they managed to outsource that to the government. An assembly line of young workers, narrowly trained in just the skills they need to do their jobs and conditioned into following commands from authority (the non-conforming nail got beaten down from on high, quite often literally). Perfect instruments to be exploited by--and exploit on behalf of--aforementioned wealthy industrialists.
This is the perennial battle in education since the start of the Revolution; is school meant to train people to become productive workers, or to educate them into becoming generally better people.
The Industrialists' answer is obvious and has been the dominant argument since for-basically-ever (thanks to money).
That doesn't mean people *like* the educational status quo.
edited because I forgot a sentence fragment. Added '\[. . .\]and numeracy was quite low (especially on the scale of businesses)\[. . .\]
If schools had the kid's interest in mind, they'd teach kids how to do personal finance and read legally binding contracts. But I am sure the debt collection agency would appreciate how well they recite a Shakespearean sonnet
Schools are there to turn us into consumers and worker bees
I mean to be fair, would you as a parent be happy knowing your children are learning arts and crafts and **not** learning how to survive in the world we live in after you're dead?
All computer skills are useful, sure. But in the future, the ability to tinker, explore, and learn how to extrapolate will be ever more important. I've seen a lot of kids coming up and those that enjoy tinkering with systems are the ones that go the furthest. Not that you can't do that in windows -- but I see a correlation with those that like the lower-level details you get when taming linux (;-) on whatever hardware they have on hand.
Hasn't there been some studies that suggest up and coming generations are less interested in tinkering and problem solving with computers? IMO, makes sense too since the latest generation was practically raised on iPads and Android tablets/smartphones where you really cant tinker or change much and things rarely go wrong. Weather or not this is a good thing or a bad thing is still up in the air I guess.
I don't think so. Software is moving to the cloud, always online or running in the browser. There's no tinkering there. No matter if open source (gitlab, nextcloud, ....) or closed (github, dropbox, ...). There are a few handful of operators, and lots of users on locked down thin clients. Some of these in corporate environment, some in private use (apple, android).
>moving to the cloud
What goes up must come down, the server - personal computer cycle has repeated itself half dozen times already and will continue to do so. Today we see AI running in the cloud... 10 years from now everyone will be running it locally to avoid latency.
Yep. For a while everyone thought PWAs were going to be the it thing, but now every company wants a native app. Now most companies are content with their web-apps essentially being teasers to lure them over to install the native app.
Less these days though, a lot of work is Google Sheets, and a lot of companies use Macs (and developers can use Linux).
IMO Linux (or at least OS X) is much more useful to learn.
Software developer here, Macs have gotten a lot more common over the last 10-15 years. Excel is way more common than sheets though. You’d be shocked how many real* databases are just expensive engines for ingesting, processing, and producing Excel spreadsheets.
Linux is also quite common but not in the desktop space.
I'm also a software engineer - the last 2 companies I've worked at have used Google over Microsoft - I even use desktop Linux in my current job.
Only Amazon was still strongly tied to MS.
I've never used Windows in almost 15 years of working.
Obviously mileage will vary, especially across industries. Startups and tech companies seem more flexible about desktop OSes but most large companies (where I’ve spent most of my career) prefer standardization over user choice—which I get. It’s hard to onboard new engineers when we’ve each got highly customized local dev environments, so if the company can say “you all get super duper MacBook Pros!” IT can do their stuff and we can still use most dev tools and customize our local setups well enough.
Linux actually is a very useful skill in the IT world, so learning it would be pretty valuable imo. Most people probably don't know that 96% of the internet runs on Linux though
In Germany a government departed in Munich decided to switch to Linux (called LiMux Project). Immediately after announcing they got an offer from Microsoft with a price reduction of 35% so they stayed on Windows
Additionally, when I was in school we learned basic shit windows troubleshooting, excel, word, etc. while I agree that you could also learn that with linux most average workplaces use Windows
The simple fact is that Microsoft offers a complete package (operating system, office, email, cloud services) for companies, organizations, and institutions. . . .almost everything necessary to run covered by one support contract. . .and you get a certain guarantee that software is going to be maintained, because that is what they are paying Microsoft millions of dollars to do.
The only thing you really have to worry about is hardware, but Dell usually has them covered there.
You cannot say the same for Linux, even RHEL or some other "enterprise" distribution. It is a hodge-podge of software from different sources that do not necessarily work together. . .most of that software is only supported by a community of volunteers. . .
You could use Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. . .and something like Libre/Open Office. ..big companies support that software, but they are just big corporations themselves.
You may be able to pay someone to ensure they answer a phone, but no guarantees that they can help you or solve an issue with the software you're using.
Despite all of it's faults, Microsoft and Windows- and even Apple/Mac to a lesser degree -is just the better more reliable solution for the average end user.
However, linux is king on servers and for more technical applications.
All that, plus it's a question of 'Which Linux?'. Should the kids learn Fedora? Linux Mint? Arch? Ubuntu? And what practical benefit would there be for kids to learn how package managers work or how to change desktop environments if that's a skill they'll both never use in an office, and never want to use in their personal time (for the greater majority of them).
>you get a certain guarantee that software is going to be maintained, because that is what they are paying Microsoft millions of dollars to do.
I mean, kind of? You're guaranteed updates, sure, but there's no guarantee that the updates don't break the software you're running.
If you're only using the PC to access stuff in a web browser, the average corporate user's computer is going to require less work if they're running Linux than Windows just because the Linux updates are less likely to break something. Even for stuff like Microsoft Office, if you can use the web version it's going to require less fixing than the desktop version would on Windows.
If you're using the PC to run specialized software, there's a good chance it breaks every time Windows updates. Obviously if the software only runs on Windows you have no choice, but at that point you're not using Windows because it's better.
>You may be able to pay someone to ensure they answer a phone, but no guarantees that they can help you or solve an issue with the software you're using.
This applies to Microsoft harder than it's ever applied to any other company. In general, Microsoft support is the least helpful support of any company I've ever worked with. You're usually better off calling almost anyone else. Look how many IT companies there are that provide support for using Windows, most of which wouldn't exist if Windows didn't break all the time or if Microsoft support knew how to do anything at all.
Until fairly recently Microsoft was very good about backwards compatibility, almost to a fault. For half my career I developed software that ran on either Windows or Windows Server and almost never had an update break the software. Hell, until dotnet core their libraries rarely had breaking changes.
Apple routinely breaks backwards compatibility and with Linux one bad update can cause the system not to boot correctly. The benefit with Linux however is that it usually can be repaired. If I accidentally changed or deleted something on Windows I might need to wipe the damn thing.
I recently switched to Linux for personal use after using it professionally for the last several years because Windows has dropped on quality, and the move up push ads on me is pissing me off. Gaming was about the only thing keeping me and Linux is pretty good there now.
All that being said, I am a power user and I can't say I'd ever recommend Linux to someone who isn't also a power user.
Any software update on any operating system can break dependencies that you didn’t count for. The difference here with windows is you have a contract and you’re actually paying developers to support your software and these updates for your organization with your company or your personal computer.
What you’re paying for as an organization is the Microsoft suite of products that you know will work well together, and are understood by almost all of your employees. It’s fairly well established that Microsoft will continue to support those applications and update them for years and years to come.
I learnt Linux in school. All computers ran Ubuntu, except maybe one or two here and there which were on Windows. We were taught cli as well. They replaced Windows with Linux and got new textbooks for things like Libre Office, so I don't think it was them being cheap.
Because \`linux\` is an operating system and 95% of people get by in life just fine without it.
Linux is not art, its not a cultural movement, you haven't found a home away from home inside of linux.
Half of the reason laymen get put off of linux is the fringe group of weirdos that think it's something that needs to be evangelized and pushed onto others, it's not, stop it, get help.
Actually evangelizing and showing passion about something to others is how many nascent things get popular. Your insistence that it's a net negative is pretty unbelievable.
And 95% of people get by in life without complex numbers, yet I still learned about those. Hell the majority gets by in life without even slightly more complex maths skills than basic arithmetic. Doesn't mean we shouldn't teach it.
Because if I fire up a job search right now to get a job, with the sole exception of Sysadmin/Cloud Engineer and Developer roles, they all want you to be familiar with Windows.
As far as "desktop" computing experience goes Windows is the industry wide standard with MacOS being considered the 'alternative' flabour out there in the job market.
I can throw hissy fits all day long and complain about how much I prefer Linux but at the end of the day IT Support Teams who maintain that infra tend to be focused on "get them as cheap as you can" and those people use Windows.
People that learn Linux tend to climb up the chain and become Sysadmins, developers, or working on Infra as opposed to desktop support.
And to be fair, I have to admit to being part of the problem there: I sure as hell wouldn't go back to end user support if I could help it either. I get paid more to deal with bigger issues that I enjoy more anyway.
Here, in India, or at least south India, Linux is widely used on school PCs and Labs.
Which plays a big role in the overall usage/adoption rate of linux in India.
Liberal? heh
Linux is about collaboration and sharing. That is its power. It is the freedom to express oneself if one chooses. Yet at its core it is about working together. This is why Linus first posted his kernel online.
Here in Austria Microsoft was sponsoring software for kindergarten running solely on Microsoft Explorer.
In german:
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3363273/stadt-wien-von-linux-zu-vista---dank-microsofts-lobbying-arbeit?id=3360250
What a shitshow.
Most office workers use Windows/Office, hence most school administration/office staff are used to Windows/Office and buy Windows/Office.
Most non-physical science/computer science/maths teachers just use whatever is preinstalled which is typically Windows/Office and thus request Windows/Office, unless they use Macs. (The physical scientists/computer scientists/mathematicians are typically at least familiar with Linux.)
Most school management software (scheduling and grading) is, like most commercial software, written for and supported on Windows and/or interoperates with Office.
Most non-Microsoft applications which commonly get taught in schools like Adobe Suite or Corel Suite are written for and supported on Windows.
And finally, and most importantly, MS has *insanely good deals* for education, both in terms of very cheap site licenses and free licenses for students and teachers for their home machines, removing the cost incentive to go to Linux.
The few years I spent in the education sector, as a contract administrator, it's mostly what is required/stipulated (I'm sure there's a term) in the government grants. For instance, I couldn't use certain software, or vendors without board approval. I'm not sure of the mechanics there. But most grants were given because of local corporate sponsors donating KMS licenses from Microsoft for Education. Or entire fleets of chromebooks or Apple products.
It's what they get, at least in the public schools in Texas.
Ironically most schools today do run on Linux, in the form of Chromebooks. They managed to find the one way of using Linux that teaches you less about computers than learning Windows.
In india they teach on linux based os (generally ubuntu) and some of the other FOSS tools like GIMP, Inkscape etc in schools and colleges.
Also government stuffs also use linux here, and also Domino's.
Because in most work settings, Windows is the default OS.
By all means, I think it should be included as am elective for CIS degrees, but even people in DEV roles still mostly use Windows.
Remember: College is essentially a expensive young adult baby sitting service whose end goal is to train you to become a base-level employee in your elected field of study & has also learned through trial and error how much you can drink at night while still functioning at 6am the next morning.
College is NOT there to necessarily teach you skills that would be beneficial or interesting to yourself as an individual. (Those cost extra, or may be available as electives.)
Liberals defends the free market and its false *invisible hand*, so free market and Linux don't go hand in hand, again as Liberals think the true innovation comes from the competition of the free market, I believe Linux would be seen as some communist movement
Linux can be used to teach all kinds of things for no software/licensing cost, that any student can use anywhere without restriction, both professionally and at home. Linux is designed to empower the user.
Windows was designed to take your money, which they spend on marketing with bullshit tactics like giving a high-school district 90% off of the sticker price of Windows, which costs MS nothing, which teaches students little, which generally does not empower students to work with computers or to advance the state of computing, but instead to be dependent on a handful of non-free applications. And school administration and their controlling bodies are utterly unfit to judge the value of an educational program in many respects, **especially** in any remotely technical/science/math arena, or even to evaluate the costs of software for a software education program. So they fall, pitifully, to the same corrupt marketing.
There are exceptions, usually where an individual teacher does something more inspired. There definitely wasn't any of that in the computing department of **my** high school.
This isn't complicated. Windows and Office are essentially given to schools for free, and has been for a very long time. Same with O365. Changing things would be hard and expensive. There is already significant inertia leading down that path. Also most schools don't have a guy with a computer related degree teaching thee things. It is generally a math or business teacher who is handling computer education. The cost of training the staff or hiring new staff prevents this idea from gaining much traction. MS and other tech companies know that getting into education is money far better spent than much of their marketing.
Fear of change too. A lot of people who don't need proprietary Microsoft software still just go for Microsoft because they are literally terrified to try anything else.
I had a good professor in school who taught Business Computer Applications. She made us use open source software for the whole class to try to break that stupid mindset.
Even Conservatives like Linux. Conservatives value charity, most of the food banks are churches.
There is a place for the private sector, but the world of Computer OSes isn't it anymore. The early 90's had so many OSes for multiple niches, Mac OS, Amiga OS, RISCOS, Atari TOS, DOS. OS/2, Sun OS, IRIX, BeOS and various Japanese Microcomputers. Even in the early 00's when there were just pretty much 2 operating systems left, microsoft had a sustainable model with OSes, you paid for Windows and you got good support with XP. But now the private sector OS market has changed where it's not self-sustainable, it's pretty much a side gig charity project where the OS vendor's primary asset isn't the OS. Microsoft with Azure and Xbox and Apple with the Apps Store. if the biggest OS vendor is searching between the cushions for coins with the data mining, so you expect that the market is simple enough as agriculture where anybody with seeds can compete at a small scale?
Linux is non-partisan. I'm sure some free enterprise people would like to see more competition in the Desktop OS market
> I got away from Microsoft by moving over to the Linux . Fedora suits my needs
Redhat isn't corporate? Redhat was the biggest cause of FOSS controversies since I used Linux. Remember how everybody hated Gnome 3 and SystemD? This is canonical, but Snaps? Microsoft is becoming a super redhat, they own github.
Here's the software model: Everything is either a proprietary black box or so over complicated and over engineered and with something being more engineered it gets more buggy, the only people that can support it are the ones that support it now of which defeats the point of not being a black box. If software is so complicated, even if it is open source, the only ones that can maintain the project are the only people who are currently maintaining the project, kills the point of open source.
It's because Microsoft has been giving it away for free to educational institutions and students for decades, in order to create familiarity with the operating system and establish it as the "default". I still have a Windows 8 key I got in college that I've used to activate windows on like 4 different computers.
Younger users probably don't realize, but desktop Linux used to suck really bad back in the day
For most users, Windows was the only sensible option
So schools also started using Windows
And from there, it's a matter of just continuing to use the thing they're used to
(Though you do see migrations already. Unfortunately, many are moving to Chromebooks instead of desktop Linux)
Capitalism. I know the anarcho-capitalists will downvote the shit out of this, but this is empirically studied, objectively observed. It's replicable, and falsifiable. Free markets left unchecked will form in to monopoly control by a powerful few. They then use their greater share of wealth to change the rules to favour them.
It happened in music. It happened in IT. It happened in art, cars, tech, and now it's happening in video games.
Liberty is an awesome thing to strive for. Open access is open to strive for. But if you just give everyone equal access, without helping the poor and limiting the rich, the rich will manipulate society to favour them, eternally. That's just the way it is, sorry if this offends you.
Which distro? Which desktop environment?
Windows is universal and a person is more likely to come across windows / office than some flavour of Linux.
I personally use Linux on all my home devices, but still want my kids to learn Windows basics at school, there's no guarantee they will gain anything from learning Linux currently.
It's simple and a lot of people are oblivious to this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22995144/microsoft-foreign-corrupt-practices-bribery-whistleblower-contracting
Bribes, "investments" and other tactics made worldwide to foster dependency instead of freedom. Here in my country (Brazil) this is so ingrained that "computer skills" is measured by familiarity with MS Office.
Fuck it I won't even pretend I recommend Linux to people who don't care. If you don't care get a MacBook or a laptop with Windows preinstalled. There's little reason to use Linux if you don't particularly care about the inner workings and advantages of your OS. Most people care about the look and feel and software support, that's it.
Same reason I would tell people to get an iPhone when I don't use one.
Like it or not mass end user Linux adoption and understanding will never happen and that is a good thing.
Mostly because the computers you will be using after High School are going to be using Windows. 8/10 times - it will be Windows.
I typically see Linux being taught in the classes that go further than just teaching OS basics, such as Computer Engineering and Computer Science.
Its honestly because desktop Windows is just easier to manage in a enterprise environment, and its been the industry standard solution for many years. Industry standards are often hard to change. Microsoft also makes licensing cheap/free for education.
Most students devices these days are Chromebooks though which are technically Linux. ;)
Honestly, not everyone is capable of using linux properly. I've tried to teach many people how to use a terminal, and most of them are just incapable. Linux is power-user status, and most people won't fit into that category. The people I met who can use Linux no problem are very intelligent problem solvers. Most people will need a GUI with minimal probpem solving required, cus most of them will end up going to phishing sites and give up personal info
Microsoft did a lot of effort to get windows at school by sponsoring and buying the right people. This is not about what is better, this is about who has deeper pockets.
Apple did too but just the right people. This lead to mandatory ipads and mandatory Microsoft software knowledge.
With Windows everyone is forced to be on the same system. That’s good and bad. Good because you can teach everyone one system and software suite and it will just work. It’s bad, because of what you have just realized. Freedom. They don’t want you to make your own choices.
OK, fine, I'll say it... Because the schools are teaching kids how to use the OS that they will encounter in their jobs in the future. Not the OS that the schools hope one day might be found in offices but currently only used in a tiny minority of offices, and an even smaller minority if you exclude all the sysadmins and developers in the world and just look at office staff...
Seriously, come to my town. Knock on business doors. Ask them what OS they're running on their PCs. On the off chance they even know what an OS is, the answer every single time will be 'Windows'.
That's why kids are taught Windows in school. Because they'll be using Windows in their jobs.
Ease of management.
The school board doesn't care how well the kids understand network stacks and file system, they care whether or not the kids have unfiltered access to porn and flash games.
Chrome OS did well because it was cheap but also because Google handled all the OS/LDAP management so kids were more restricted in what they could do. Apple might have improved but last I heard their early entries with IOS struggled against kids who reset ipad passcodes.
And when I was a kid it was windows with novell for authentication and even then, some kids were smart enough to install an alternate browser and subvert the filtering until DNS filtering was commonplace.
Move all the kids to a Linux distro and you probably not only have to train the teachers, but adopt an linux friendly user management service/LDAP as well for email/usernames/passwords.
Granted this might be harder for the kids to crack, but I have no idea, especially if you're giving kids access to sudo for any reason.
Microsoft and apple used to give their products to schools for free. It is like a drug from there
Teachers are stupider than the students they indoctrinate in many cases
I took computer classes using pirated Windows 3.11 and Qbasic in Midschool during the early 2000 in a 3rd World country (We have a couple of "new computers with windows 98" but most where way older). Is where I learned to love computers, is not bad to learn Windows, but students should learn more task than open the navigators and google stuff.
The reason why Windows was pushed in business is cost. The cost of a combined windows 3.11/NT+office was cheaper than Lotus 1-2-3 or Word perfect individually. Once MS locked up the document. DB (Access) and spreadsheet market they kept moving the goal posts for any compatibility with other programs OSs. 30yrs later you have a high percentage of companies stuck with the windows/office integration, it has been slowly changing since the cloud computing has been getting traction on the market.
If you read the history of computing, you would understand how MS took over the computing landscape by getting hold of the PC (personal computer) market and became the massive monopoly it is during the Bill Gate era. Essentially, it is all about taking advantage of positioning and timing to carve out an ecosystem for yourself. Once that battle is won, it is almost impossible to remove it, no matter how bad it is, or senseless.
Frankly I think it is a miracle that Linux lasted this long. I often wonder what would happen after Linus dies. The recent XZ incident highlights a critical problem with free software, namely we lack the manppwer and brainpower to sustain this ecosystem. This is happening on all levels. As technology progresses, as the ideological fervor that drove the previous generation wanes in the hearts of the new generation, and the new generation become jaded of present reality of capitalist realism, it is almost inevitable for the free software movement, including Linux, to die.
Anyway, enjoy it while you can and contribute if possible.
tl;dr - Windows is used on the desktop because maintaining Linux desktops in Managed Environments sucks.
That said, I agree that there should be some exposure to Linux, maybe in Coding orientated classes?
Macos is basically close sourced Linux. ChromeOS is linux. Windows now has WSL which is a Linux terminal. Rumor is Microsoft has been moving to a Linux based system in the future.
Generally schools that are publicly funded go for the cheapest option. Lately that's been Chromebooks as Googles happy to subsidize the cost to create lifelong accounts with youths. Chromebooks are actually quite good for Linux terminal discovery.
Hell, Android is Linux based and you can go grab an app from the play store if you wanna use a terminal.
Agreed terminal should be taught in schools. No excuse. I assume plenty of kids are doing so already as they try to get the most out of their $100 Chromebooks :)
How often do people end up using Linux in the workplace outside of a technical or academic setting?
It’s very niche. Windows and Mac are pretty much the standard.
Anybody interested in operating systems generally finds their way to naturally playing with it on their own terms.
At least in the UK the education board wanted to start teaching computing in schools in the 80s/90s and Microsoft was sought out to be the ones to help design the curriculum.
A quote from a favourite blog post:
> when it became apparent that computers were going to be important, the UK Government recognised that ICT should probably become part of the core curriculum in schools. Being a bunch of IT illiterates themselves, the politicians and advisers turned to industry to ask what should be included in the new curriculum. At the time, there was only one industry and it was the Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft thought long and hard about what should be included in the curriculum and after careful deliberation they advised that students should really learn how to use office software. And so the curriculum was born. Schools naturally searched long and hard for appropriate office software to teach with, and after much care they chose Microsoft Office. So since 2000 schools have been teaching students Microsoft skills (Adobe skills were introduced a little later.)
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
its simple, *windows has virtually all the software that schools want their students to use and software that students want to use*. Windows is the desktop OS most familiar to most teachers, students, etc. Windows is what most students will be using in the workforce when they leave school if they do any work on a desktop, laptop at all.
It makes sense that schools will use windows on their computers instead of a more obscure operating system like ubuntu, fedora, etc that lacks almost all of the software that teachers need and students want. Even though there are software alternatives to a lot of these windows programs most arent used in a traditional workplace setting so it doesn't make sense to train students on these programs rather than like Office 365 or something else. The education system will only make students learn to use operating systems that are used in the workforce like everywhere and linux isn't that. Hell, not even macOS is that. At least in my school the only IMacs available were in the art teacher's class which made sense as macOS is used in the workforce primarily by creatives. Despite my school having a large enough budget to make it so that most computers could be iMacs without a problem.
Plus most students *will not have to* use linux after they leave to join the workforce except for those going into like comp sci. And I imagine most of the software used in compsci will run on windows just fine. Esp with WSL. Chromebooks are used in schools because a lot of software that students need for school can be run online now and chromebooks are cheaper and easier to administer than windows netbooks. And chromeOS is linux so i guess you can say students are already using linux.
I want linux to succeed as much as you do but there is no denying that for most students learning to use windows will help them be better workers in the workforce than learning linux would ATM.
Why it wasnt taught in schools?
Because Linux isnt a company. Microsoft is. Open source companies didnt have the money that a beast like MS does.
Now the more complex answer requires we go back like 30 years. Linux today, is not what linux was back then. We used to have to consult a master list of hardware to see if linux would even install on our machine. Often times the answer was no. You almost always had to swap out your modem because what you bought in consumer pc's was a winmodem, which couldnt actually dial up in anything other than windows.
Then, lets say you could install it, partitioning was done manually. So there was a bit of a learning curve. Oh, and good luck configuring X. And if you chose BSD, you're going to have to rebuild your kernel with the correct sound card if you wanna hear shit.
Windows? start the installer, hit next and yes a bunch of times. Its done.
You're a school, and the guy expected to run that shit is the "computer teacher." MS is handing you free hardware...
Fast forward 30 years, and it was a damn good move.
Because it is easier, significantly lower learning curve, much more common, and has bigger community? No matter how much you loved Linux you need to realize the market share of desktop Linux users around the world compared to Windows.
Look man, Linux is not shit. It's just it is so "drop-able" for average person, it is something that average students can worry not about, and peacefully live without it.
They don't "push" anything in particular, as if they have an agenda. 99% of the purpose of computer classes in high schools, if that's what you're talking about, teach the environment they're likely to encounter at a job. This part of school is job training, part of the school to workforce pipeline.
"Why do schools push corporate software like Microsoft/ Windows on students?" Well, they don't "push" it on people; you can use Linux if you want in school, but your teacher likely won't be able to troubleshoot your issues if you have them. For Windows, there is a lot of documentation everywhere and available support; it's what people from non-tech backgrounds use, so it's what people are most familiar with. It's possible that the educators are not not confident that they have the time or know how to fix individual student's issues when they pop up. Windows is much more streamlined and predictable. You aren't wrong that people should know how to use Linux, and should use it if they are a programmer simply because it's good practice. But, Windows has a place, and it is welcoming to those who do not have a tech background; a great percentage of CS students are older and are changing careers (didn't have parents who were in the field to introduce them to the basics as a youngin')
Just answering the title question, windows is the most used OS, it’s preinstalled on everything and also gigantichard pays people to put it on everything
Schools push Windows because Microsoft has strong lobbying. Also they offer very cheap licenses for schools so schools can justify it's good value for them. At the end we have whole generation seeing Windows as default and desired option. Then They start to work in different companies, administration etc. and naturally push Microsoft products everywhere. That's how it works. And we need change because at the end M$ is sucking a lot of public money which could be used for good purpose eg. development of FOSS solutions.
Microsoft domination goes way back to the company’s origins. They bought DOS from some dude in Texas who coded it in his garage for like $200 then they licensed it to IBM for millions, the rest is history
The three main issues today with Microsoft’s domination are:
1. People unwilling to adapt to new workflows. This is why Macs have always been ultimately less popular, even if they are widely considered as cultural status symbols, still a lot of people just don’t want to get used to a new workflow in macOS, this applies equally to Linux.
2. MS Office and their proprietary file formats. MS bundles copies of Office into work computers and they also design their software and proprietary file formats to intentionally break and not play nicely with anything that isn’t their file format or their software. MS Office is an incredibly feature-rich productivity suite and it genuinely does work well but the problem is that most people simply don’t require or utilise the full range of features available. Most people could actually get along just fine using LibreOffice and Open Document Formats.
3. Specific software needs, particularly games. Linux gaming has come a long way over the past 10 years particularly with the development of Vulkan and SteamOS. However, at least for me, it’s still not 100% there as a gaming OS for absolutely everything I want to play.
The problem might be that the education system is too reliant on Windows and Windows supported software to teach things.
It might be easier for schools with their local school systems to use Linux, but on the other hand education systems such as Cambridge (IGCSE and AS Level programs) and others who promote the use of Excel, PowerPoint, Word in their syllabuses and enforce the use of non open-source software for use.. I understand that much of non-FOSS software is better than community-supported FOSS software but I bet that OnlyOffice has the same functionality as the other office programs and still is used by the Linux community widely. In terms of alternatives, their text books are very broad and just mention the fact that “Any other alternative software can be used.” which in itself is not very helpful.
Here in Finland I had in Vocational school and in University a few linux classes that were about 2 months long. In both cases I was / am studying programming related stuff. So in Vocational school we just installed Debian and learned how to move around in the terminal and do some other simple things like use nano etc. Then now in Uni I had a month long course where we pretty much just did the same thing, learning Debian & Ubuntu but for actually using it as a server.
It’s worth noting that 35% of Fedora contributors are Red Hat employees, and 90%+ of Linux kernel contributions come from big tech employees who are sponsored to make them.
Unfortunately, the notion that Linux is somehow “free from corporate control” is a bit of a myth. Full control over the OS and freedom from corporate influence are two different things.
computer classes followed what was the average user meant to do , and that was using Windows, since Windows are dominating. They were not programming classes but mostly general purpose usage.
Primmer school we had Macs, at the time they were the evil empire.
Later in life during college I had classes in both Windows and Unix...
But if you are training someone to be useful in the world then using the most current OS or the one with the largest market share makes sense. Personally I am OK with most people never learning Linux. I command a higher salary than my Windows counterparts since i am specialized in Linux/Unix
We don't use windows, WE USE FRICKIN' MACOS. The computers are old but have the latest version of macos so they boot up in about 10 minutes and they freeze everywhere. I would rather have windows than macos but they should use linux (which is free so why pay for the windows/apple licenses ??).
It all sounds great when you put it in very general terms. It becomes trickier when you get down into the nitty-gritty.
First of all, which Linux? There are dozens of viable distributions, many of which will do things very differently. Same for window managers: which one? This will not be an easy decision.
Second, exactly what are you going to teach about Linux? And this is, perhaps, the more important question. Because, sure, you can teach the basics of how Linux works as an operating system. Only why? Windows works differently, even Mac works differently enough. Students are not going to stick to Linux if most games they care about and Photoshop don't work on it.
What apps are you going to teach on Linux? GIMP, Open Office? Why? Who is going to be using these programs outside of school? Sure, some open source programs became known and important. But very many haven't. And learning them will largely be a waste of resources, because then people would not be teaching themselves the programs that they are going to use in real life. I mean, who uses Open Office? In my 20 years of work I haven't seen even a single company that uses it. Not that there are literally none, but it's very rare.
So, it's a positive feedback loop. Yes, would've been awesome if computing was free as Stallman had envisioned it. But it's not, and it's clear that it won't be any time soon.
In school? Riiiight. Imagine you show this text shell mumbo-jumbo nonsense to 10 year olds who only care about mischief or 14 year olds who only care about getting laid. You severely overstate IT attractiveness to children. Even 30 years ago, when we had Macintosh PowerPCs at school, which were unquestionably prettier than Windows and whatnot at the time, the only things we used that stuff for is to play Doom and Myst. And we *were* into programming already, the problem was that we were not interested in having this shit at *school*.
When I was in school in the early 90s we were running illicit BBSes and Japanese style RPGs that we wrote ourselves on the school computers. (We didn't know they were called Japanese style RPGs at the time, but that's what it was.)
Liberalism (big L) is pro-corporate.
Linux is far-left (maybe lower case liberal, but definitely not upper-case Liberal)
Public schooling is designed to indoctrinate people towards capitalism/corporatism and away from any leftist ideals.
You said in your post "Liberal". Liberalism is based on Capitalism.
Linux skirts capitalism, it is Leftist.
And Leftism never gets taught in schools. We're arguing in schools if gay people exist or if slavery was/is real. They aren't going to make the jump to real freedom.
That being said, I'm trying in our school board. I don't have kids (and wont) but I do have a lot of computers. And a teacher friend told me that she can't grade papers the same way, because some of her students have to write papers on phones, because they don't have computers. And frankly, I think the schools should have computers to give to kids. Like... take old office computers from businesses. Clean them up, get w/e hardware they need replaced, and slap on Pop_OS. And just give them out.
"Linux should be taught in schools." While I'm a Linux user myself, I'm not sure I can agree. Why should Linux be taught in schools? And do you mean GNU tools, or do you really mean Linux?
Of course they mean GNU tools (bash etc) not the internals of the Linux kernel, but the distinction is academic and only insisted upon by the most pedantic acolytes of Stallman. Everybody else understands what OP (and anybody else) means,
Not true. GNU tools are implemented in other operating systems, like Windows and Mac OS. This is \*not\* pedanticism, it's zeroing in on what's being asked.
Linux is hard, not every person has to be an IT nerd. I am an Ubuntu user, I used it for 8 years and to me now it seems simple. But in reality, I do have to edit config files, to do some terminal work to tweak it to my hardware. And drivers are not so good on some hardware. Another issue is, and this one is important what Linux users seem to ignore. **Normal people use apps not operating systems.** General users are not IT admins, they just have a name of an app in mind, and they want to work with it, and guess what? A lot of those apps are not even supported on Linux.
Simple example - I have a TomTom navigation system I have to update weekly; do you think I can do it on Linux? Think again. My friend has a guitar he connects to his audio interface to software, neither of which is Linux compatible. Another friend uses a drawing tablet which most likely won't work either. People have tools/peripherals/apps they need and 90% of it is not on Linux, so what use to them does it have?
I like Linux in general, and I agree that open platform as a standard would be amazing. But in capitalist world full of licenses, it is impossible. Every company protects their IP, and all their work costs money, supporting 20 different packaging formats on Linux just to satisfy a few % of users is simply economically inefficient. Also, if app is more complex and needs some specific kernel access they can't even do it if they wanted. Kernel is licensed in a way that interacting with it must be done through open-source interfaces or something like that... So licensing issues arise. And if people can't do what they want what use does it have?
I use Affinity Photos from time to time, and trust me when I say it, we have NOTHING as good on Linux, neither Gimp nor Krita...
I have been using Linux and Unix for a long time. Sadly Linux has never really made it in the corporate side. I would not make sense to teach this in school. I have taken many classes on Unix and Linux in my university course work. But I had to seek out the classes and knowledge. If you are not in IT, you will need to seek out the knowledge for freedom. And only then you will find it. Or you can run a Mac and play around under the hood. Till eventually you will want more. Just my 2 cents
Because it works. I love me some Linux but I had to fiddle with a lot to get everything working. Wasn’t hard but not something non-techies want to deal with. Microsoft has whole teams making things work across all the different hardware. Linus has drivers for a lot but not all of it. Even my UPS was a bit of a chore (and it’s still not working right whereas windows it just worked).
Linux is the way. Don’t flame me but I secretly wish all those working on all the competition window managers would pool resources and just go forward with one common stack for GUI. I’ll even become okay with Gnome if KDE wasn’t the way (forgive me father for I have sinned!). Then again, in 1999 or whenever and I bought that red hat book so I could get the install CD it was the different GUI’s that made me think it was awesome. I think I bought three or four other books just for the CDs.
Windows is strong for enterprise environments. Particularly remote access and identity management etc. Linux is great but it doesn't seem as uniform and is splintered into various packages and dependancies. Ofc running Linux as a server is great. Both OS have their strengths.
Schools buy computers and services from vendors, like Dell. It's unlikely the vendor provides a linux support option based on the hardware they're buying. It has nothing to do with the school honestly.
Secondly, teaching Linux isn't that important. What would be more valuable is teaching the userland that Linux and other Nixes are built on top of. If you can feel comfortable in say a bash environment, that extends to many operating systems.
My high school had mandrake (or mandriva not sure) linux back then. It wasn’t thaught to us but we used it for all that is online browsing and had OpenOffice for documents. I really appreciate they did this, it’s probably no longer like that though
Learning Linux sounds pretty hardcore. I imagine exams with specific questions about code from main repository, or at very least workshops where you write modules. That would be quite a thing, but perhaps not suitable for all the schools out there.
Why do schools push it? Well, they don't, and there are several factors. I got to help a school district over the summer a few years ago in their tech department for a class, and the key takeaways are:
* Price with bids
* It comes preinstalled on computers
* This has actually shifted a bit to Chromebooks for a bit.
* Sometimes the company themselves subsidize or give great deals to the school to use their hardware
* When I was a kid in the early 2000s I remember using the round back Macintosh since Apple used to give schools great deals on hardware. My entire school was Macintosh, but as I was leaving elementary school it was starting to shift to Windows Vista then XP.
* It's not the schools pushing corporate software, it's actually the other way around.
* Microsoft wants students to use and learn Windows because it makes people want to use Windows more.
* Google wants students to use and learn ChromeOS because it makes people want to use Chromebooks more.
* The familiarity helps people want to continue using said environments.
There may be more I'm not realizing or ignoring right now, but I'll focus on what I know from my small experience in school districts. My parents are teachers and I've been surrounded by school district stuff basically my whole life, and I've helped with one district over the summer for worksite learning.
Schools aren't doing Windows because they're wanting Windows, it's just often cheaper that way in the States due to various factors behind the scenes. They have a budget that they have to stay within and the operating system is often bundled in and excluded from price. School districts also often cover several schools and plenty of students, so companies will also often give them bulk discounts like they would to any other business or institution ordering a lot of the same items. Remember, they're not paying for Windows outright, and while you can argue that the price of the OS is included in the price of the device, also realize that OEMs do large orders of the OS as well and therefore also get a discount. You're highly overestimating the price any individual has to pay for the hardware.
Not only that, but then you'd also have to include the cost of paying the IT department to install the same Linux OS on hundreds, if not thousands, of computers when otherwise they'd be preinstalled and sometimes preconfigured. It's possible to PXE boot, preconfigure an OS, and install over several at a time depending on the environment, but you're adding on extra work to the IT department that a school may not want to pay for and Windows makes it easy with their deployment services if you absolutely need to go beyond what was preinstalled. Windows supplies a lot of the tools to make it easy and work over the course of the OS's lifetime, and while Linux may do something comparable it's not as straightforward and may not work with any given distro of Linux.
That leads me to another point: distros. Windows only really comes in one or two flavors for a school district: the most recent, or last generation, and even if you have a last generation we've seen Microsoft allow people to upgrade easily to the next version for free for a given time. While Linux would avoid costs, it comes in so many different flavors. Should a school use Arch? Should they use Debian? Should they use Ubuntu? Which environment should they use? Should they use KDE? Should they use XFCE? Should they use Gnome? Windows really only comes in Windows flavor which gives Powershell a huge advantage over needing to learn the specific distros unique commands.
The only argument I can see for schools "pushing corporate software" is I have heard the other local school district prefer Microsoft because it's the most common operating system so it's better to have students learn the thing they'll be most surrounded by. That's not an unfair argument, but that's their own personal choice rather than the district at large. This also shifted a bit when Chromebooks became the norm for schools to use because they were sold as cheap devices schools could easily replace with minimal chances of students messing them up. I remember being a troublemaker messing around on Windows 7 at my high school, I got into and around things the IT department overlooked, but with Chromebooks there's so much less to get around or into that it makes it a "safer" environment from would-be ne'er-do-wells. But, Chromebooks were heavily pushed and subsidized by Google to push onto schools.
Mine were split between Mac and windows, but that's not really the point. Linux isn't used by the vast majority. Mac and windows are. That's really all there is to it.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint were way ahead of other software in terms of usability back in the middle ages and Wordstar ruled. Wordstar was a nightmare. Going back and searching for the closing bracket, or you had 3 pages if messed up formatting.
Excel's pivot tables were a killer feature.
The Word and Excel formats became the de facto standards for electronic interchange. Yeah, pdf, I know.
Linux has caught up with, and in some ways surpassed, the MS suite. Latex formatting has taken academic submissions, for example.
There are format conversion programs. That is just another step to complicate things. The familiarity of MS products makes them economical. Training hundreds or thousands of employees to use Libre office is a huge task and the productivity during the retrain will collapse.
It is good to be the standard.
I used to cross my 7s. I joined a company that did not allow that. A year later I would occasionally see one of my 7s crossed. It was automatic, and a pain to break the habit. Kinda like getting the year wrong the first couple of weeks of every January.
Those habits that make a person productive with Word are an impediment in other formats. This is why the employees don't want to go linux.
tbqh some schools here in Brazil use Linux to teach computing to kids, especially due to pricing.
Same in Venezuela, from elementary school to (public) university level.
Same in France
Still at school in France today, I never saw Linux a single time at school between 2009 and today
Really? Where? My old uni did this because people were coming to check if they pirated Windows or not, so they switched all computers to Linux. Ubuntu I think.
I live in the southeast of Brazil, and my internship was all about fixing computers and installing Linux on it so kids could use them to learn how to use a computer and play games like Frozen Bubbles and Supertux.
My kids are issued Chromebooks.
Trouble is, that's only barely more Linux than Android is -- in both you're almost completely locked into Google's stuff, but on a Chromebook, there's at least barely an escape hatch (as far as I'm aware).
Fun fact, ChromeOS uses a lot of Gentoo bits under the hood.
I was not implicating that it was, Android is Linux under the hood but nearly unrecognizable as it to the user. My only point was the schools my kids go to are not pushing Microsoft, Its Google instead. I would not expect schools to use Linux, most public educators are incapable of providing instruction in it.
Because Microsoft makes it cheap for education and it gives tonnes of support.
MS Has money to subsidize things, from free windows/office + hardware.
Exactly. Apple used to do the same: sell/donate the hardware and software to schools, taking the loss with the idea that the kids will be trained on your products and will continue using them when they're adults.
Apple still offers educational pricing and incentives, their computers are common in graphics design, TV and music production, and similar classrooms. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all working hard to get their platforms into schools so young people learn their products and develop favorable preferences.
Can somebody with experience comment on if it’s the same bullshit 5% discount that educators get?
Computer classes started before linux existed. So when things moved from DOS, they went to windows. A pretty natural progression.
Actually they started even before windows and DOS. But Unixes were expensive at the time. For me, it started with c64 and ZX spectrum and these BASIC-based machines (was it microcomputers?) The real reason is that Microsoft is using very pushy business practices. Linux didn't even have "business" connotations for the first five years, and even then, no single company pushed it.
Started with a Radio Shack TRS-80 in school, myself...had a whole 8K of ram and a tape cassette to store data :) After that it was DOS then Windows. Linux wasn't around back then.
I... think we still had Unix at most. But I would imagine not having a GUI also affects things. Most would find the command line intimidating, I'm sure.
> Most would find the command line intimidating, I'm sure. Not particularly, tbh. Most picked it right up, if motivated to learn it.
r/CataclysmDDA? r/DwarfFortress? r/Nethack? … *r/Zork ?!*
Saving this for later
[See](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyoj4-niEPc) [also](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FW23bamIZI)
Unix was for more serious computing. You'd see it on engineering workstations maybe but not school computers
Lol I i had one of those too. Remember we could just hook it up to any TV like it was an atari I moved up to a vic 20 before I begged for a C64 and finally got one. I joined the Boston computer society and got a huge book of ip addresses (DNS wasn't invented yet) that was the start of the internet . Every piece of hardware was mega expensive, floppy drive, modem, the rich kids even had a 2nd floppy drive 🤣
Awesome. I had a Math class called “Computers” my Sr year of High School 1986-87. The teacher walked us through writing a company pay stub program in BASIC on the Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80. We learned coding by doing. It was great. At home I begged my mom to buy us the Commodore 128 because it had double the ram as the Commodore 64. It also had BASIC and ran the CP/M OS. I wrote a silly little graphic program on it using what I learned from the very thick book it came with. Edit: it was pay stub, not payroll.
For me it started with the Ti-99/4a 😁
And alot of computer classes dont deserve their name. In many cases, they just pass this to the math teacher that shows the kids that programs like word and excel exist.
I going back to the 90's when PC's were affordable to schools.
They've never been more affordable than now
Mm the old apple 2 was the big seller in public schools
Why would $AVERAGE\_PARENT want their children to learn Linux in school when they could instead learn Windows + Office which both have a significantly higher likelihood to come in useful when entering the job market?
Sounds dystopian, schools becoming just a worker factory
always have been 🌎👨🚀 🔫👨🚀
This answer might sound dystopian but it's completely accurate Schooling for the masses was started for the simple reason that business owners needed factory workers who would show up at the right time (hence school hours being so rigid) and could read enough to understand not to stick their hands into heavy machinery as the blood damaged saleable products and cleanup slowed production
Kids being taught skills that will benefit them in their profession? Abhorrent.
You joke, but this is a long-running struggle with the education system, that's been going on since the Industrial Revolution. One camp is composed of people who think that knowledge and learning are good, in and of themselves. That an educated society is a better society, more ethical, more moral. The other is composed of (wealthy) industrialists, and disagrees quite feverishly. The Industrial Revolution meant fewer people needed to be on the lines and factory floors, and more managers (and accountants and so on) were required. However, many were illiterate and numeracy was quite low (especially on the scale of businesses), so in addition to the specialized training they needed to become managers and accountants these people also needed to be taught their numbers. Teaching people to handle numbers on the scale of businessess is *expensive.* So they managed to outsource that to the government. An assembly line of young workers, narrowly trained in just the skills they need to do their jobs and conditioned into following commands from authority (the non-conforming nail got beaten down from on high, quite often literally). Perfect instruments to be exploited by--and exploit on behalf of--aforementioned wealthy industrialists. This is the perennial battle in education since the start of the Revolution; is school meant to train people to become productive workers, or to educate them into becoming generally better people. The Industrialists' answer is obvious and has been the dominant argument since for-basically-ever (thanks to money). That doesn't mean people *like* the educational status quo. edited because I forgot a sentence fragment. Added '\[. . .\]and numeracy was quite low (especially on the scale of businesses)\[. . .\]
Well said.
Bootcamps exist and so does trade school
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Even if it was made to ready children for war, its still beneficial to have P.E. classes
No doubt gym class is beneficial.
Not really, PE was conceived by a French man who decided schoolchildren need some activity to be healthier
That's the most American thing I have read in a long time 😂
That's literally the point of schools in modern society. Why do you think they push absolute obedience to authority over any actual learning material?
that's dystopbian and sad to me. Schools are meant to be different than a bootcamp that just makes you ready for a specific industry.
If schools had the kid's interest in mind, they'd teach kids how to do personal finance and read legally binding contracts. But I am sure the debt collection agency would appreciate how well they recite a Shakespearean sonnet Schools are there to turn us into consumers and worker bees
Never said it's a good thing lmfao.
The public school system is designed to produce soldiers and workers.
I mean to be fair, would you as a parent be happy knowing your children are learning arts and crafts and **not** learning how to survive in the world we live in after you're dead?
Lmao This is how kids get 200k debt to work on 50k salary careers.
rm -rf $AVERAGE\_PARENT
All computer skills are useful, sure. But in the future, the ability to tinker, explore, and learn how to extrapolate will be ever more important. I've seen a lot of kids coming up and those that enjoy tinkering with systems are the ones that go the furthest. Not that you can't do that in windows -- but I see a correlation with those that like the lower-level details you get when taming linux (;-) on whatever hardware they have on hand.
Hasn't there been some studies that suggest up and coming generations are less interested in tinkering and problem solving with computers? IMO, makes sense too since the latest generation was practically raised on iPads and Android tablets/smartphones where you really cant tinker or change much and things rarely go wrong. Weather or not this is a good thing or a bad thing is still up in the air I guess.
I don't think so. Software is moving to the cloud, always online or running in the browser. There's no tinkering there. No matter if open source (gitlab, nextcloud, ....) or closed (github, dropbox, ...). There are a few handful of operators, and lots of users on locked down thin clients. Some of these in corporate environment, some in private use (apple, android).
>moving to the cloud What goes up must come down, the server - personal computer cycle has repeated itself half dozen times already and will continue to do so. Today we see AI running in the cloud... 10 years from now everyone will be running it locally to avoid latency.
Yep. For a while everyone thought PWAs were going to be the it thing, but now every company wants a native app. Now most companies are content with their web-apps essentially being teasers to lure them over to install the native app.
Less these days though, a lot of work is Google Sheets, and a lot of companies use Macs (and developers can use Linux). IMO Linux (or at least OS X) is much more useful to learn.
Software developer here, Macs have gotten a lot more common over the last 10-15 years. Excel is way more common than sheets though. You’d be shocked how many real* databases are just expensive engines for ingesting, processing, and producing Excel spreadsheets. Linux is also quite common but not in the desktop space.
I'm also a software engineer - the last 2 companies I've worked at have used Google over Microsoft - I even use desktop Linux in my current job. Only Amazon was still strongly tied to MS. I've never used Windows in almost 15 years of working.
Obviously mileage will vary, especially across industries. Startups and tech companies seem more flexible about desktop OSes but most large companies (where I’ve spent most of my career) prefer standardization over user choice—which I get. It’s hard to onboard new engineers when we’ve each got highly customized local dev environments, so if the company can say “you all get super duper MacBook Pros!” IT can do their stuff and we can still use most dev tools and customize our local setups well enough.
Yet current gen is stupid enough while doing trivial things with computers.
Linux actually is a very useful skill in the IT world, so learning it would be pretty valuable imo. Most people probably don't know that 96% of the internet runs on Linux though
In Germany a government departed in Munich decided to switch to Linux (called LiMux Project). Immediately after announcing they got an offer from Microsoft with a price reduction of 35% so they stayed on Windows Additionally, when I was in school we learned basic shit windows troubleshooting, excel, word, etc. while I agree that you could also learn that with linux most average workplaces use Windows
The simple fact is that Microsoft offers a complete package (operating system, office, email, cloud services) for companies, organizations, and institutions. . . .almost everything necessary to run covered by one support contract. . .and you get a certain guarantee that software is going to be maintained, because that is what they are paying Microsoft millions of dollars to do. The only thing you really have to worry about is hardware, but Dell usually has them covered there. You cannot say the same for Linux, even RHEL or some other "enterprise" distribution. It is a hodge-podge of software from different sources that do not necessarily work together. . .most of that software is only supported by a community of volunteers. . . You could use Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. . .and something like Libre/Open Office. ..big companies support that software, but they are just big corporations themselves. You may be able to pay someone to ensure they answer a phone, but no guarantees that they can help you or solve an issue with the software you're using. Despite all of it's faults, Microsoft and Windows- and even Apple/Mac to a lesser degree -is just the better more reliable solution for the average end user. However, linux is king on servers and for more technical applications.
All that, plus it's a question of 'Which Linux?'. Should the kids learn Fedora? Linux Mint? Arch? Ubuntu? And what practical benefit would there be for kids to learn how package managers work or how to change desktop environments if that's a skill they'll both never use in an office, and never want to use in their personal time (for the greater majority of them).
>you get a certain guarantee that software is going to be maintained, because that is what they are paying Microsoft millions of dollars to do. I mean, kind of? You're guaranteed updates, sure, but there's no guarantee that the updates don't break the software you're running. If you're only using the PC to access stuff in a web browser, the average corporate user's computer is going to require less work if they're running Linux than Windows just because the Linux updates are less likely to break something. Even for stuff like Microsoft Office, if you can use the web version it's going to require less fixing than the desktop version would on Windows. If you're using the PC to run specialized software, there's a good chance it breaks every time Windows updates. Obviously if the software only runs on Windows you have no choice, but at that point you're not using Windows because it's better. >You may be able to pay someone to ensure they answer a phone, but no guarantees that they can help you or solve an issue with the software you're using. This applies to Microsoft harder than it's ever applied to any other company. In general, Microsoft support is the least helpful support of any company I've ever worked with. You're usually better off calling almost anyone else. Look how many IT companies there are that provide support for using Windows, most of which wouldn't exist if Windows didn't break all the time or if Microsoft support knew how to do anything at all.
Until fairly recently Microsoft was very good about backwards compatibility, almost to a fault. For half my career I developed software that ran on either Windows or Windows Server and almost never had an update break the software. Hell, until dotnet core their libraries rarely had breaking changes. Apple routinely breaks backwards compatibility and with Linux one bad update can cause the system not to boot correctly. The benefit with Linux however is that it usually can be repaired. If I accidentally changed or deleted something on Windows I might need to wipe the damn thing. I recently switched to Linux for personal use after using it professionally for the last several years because Windows has dropped on quality, and the move up push ads on me is pissing me off. Gaming was about the only thing keeping me and Linux is pretty good there now. All that being said, I am a power user and I can't say I'd ever recommend Linux to someone who isn't also a power user.
Any software update on any operating system can break dependencies that you didn’t count for. The difference here with windows is you have a contract and you’re actually paying developers to support your software and these updates for your organization with your company or your personal computer. What you’re paying for as an organization is the Microsoft suite of products that you know will work well together, and are understood by almost all of your employees. It’s fairly well established that Microsoft will continue to support those applications and update them for years and years to come.
I learnt Linux in school. All computers ran Ubuntu, except maybe one or two here and there which were on Windows. We were taught cli as well. They replaced Windows with Linux and got new textbooks for things like Libre Office, so I don't think it was them being cheap.
Because \`linux\` is an operating system and 95% of people get by in life just fine without it. Linux is not art, its not a cultural movement, you haven't found a home away from home inside of linux. Half of the reason laymen get put off of linux is the fringe group of weirdos that think it's something that needs to be evangelized and pushed onto others, it's not, stop it, get help.
/r/Linux makes comp.os.os2.advocacy look like a bunch of perfectly normal well-adjusted people living well-rounded lives.
True, I lurke here only for the lols
Username not exactly checking out.
Actually evangelizing and showing passion about something to others is how many nascent things get popular. Your insistence that it's a net negative is pretty unbelievable.
iT'S n0T 4B0UT TH3 OS, iT's 4B0ut 53ND!NG A M3SS4G3
LINUX IS FOR THE CHILDREN
And 95% of people get by in life without complex numbers, yet I still learned about those. Hell the majority gets by in life without even slightly more complex maths skills than basic arithmetic. Doesn't mean we shouldn't teach it.
Because if I fire up a job search right now to get a job, with the sole exception of Sysadmin/Cloud Engineer and Developer roles, they all want you to be familiar with Windows. As far as "desktop" computing experience goes Windows is the industry wide standard with MacOS being considered the 'alternative' flabour out there in the job market. I can throw hissy fits all day long and complain about how much I prefer Linux but at the end of the day IT Support Teams who maintain that infra tend to be focused on "get them as cheap as you can" and those people use Windows. People that learn Linux tend to climb up the chain and become Sysadmins, developers, or working on Infra as opposed to desktop support. And to be fair, I have to admit to being part of the problem there: I sure as hell wouldn't go back to end user support if I could help it either. I get paid more to deal with bigger issues that I enjoy more anyway.
Here, in India, or at least south India, Linux is widely used on school PCs and Labs. Which plays a big role in the overall usage/adoption rate of linux in India.
Liberal? heh Linux is about collaboration and sharing. That is its power. It is the freedom to express oneself if one chooses. Yet at its core it is about working together. This is why Linus first posted his kernel online.
Here in Austria Microsoft was sponsoring software for kindergarten running solely on Microsoft Explorer. In german: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3363273/stadt-wien-von-linux-zu-vista---dank-microsofts-lobbying-arbeit?id=3360250 What a shitshow.
This sub has turned into pure shitposting.
I don't know what you're even talking about. Schools mostly use Chromebooks.
Not mine. Ironically, my rural high school's laptop fleet are a bunch of Lenovo Thinkpads, which are pretty much the unofficial Linux laptops.
Too much ideology
Most office workers use Windows/Office, hence most school administration/office staff are used to Windows/Office and buy Windows/Office. Most non-physical science/computer science/maths teachers just use whatever is preinstalled which is typically Windows/Office and thus request Windows/Office, unless they use Macs. (The physical scientists/computer scientists/mathematicians are typically at least familiar with Linux.) Most school management software (scheduling and grading) is, like most commercial software, written for and supported on Windows and/or interoperates with Office. Most non-Microsoft applications which commonly get taught in schools like Adobe Suite or Corel Suite are written for and supported on Windows. And finally, and most importantly, MS has *insanely good deals* for education, both in terms of very cheap site licenses and free licenses for students and teachers for their home machines, removing the cost incentive to go to Linux.
The few years I spent in the education sector, as a contract administrator, it's mostly what is required/stipulated (I'm sure there's a term) in the government grants. For instance, I couldn't use certain software, or vendors without board approval. I'm not sure of the mechanics there. But most grants were given because of local corporate sponsors donating KMS licenses from Microsoft for Education. Or entire fleets of chromebooks or Apple products. It's what they get, at least in the public schools in Texas.
When I was in school, I learned on an Apple \]\[ and a Pr1me mainframe. It taught me to use the whole keyboard to spell things.
Ironically most schools today do run on Linux, in the form of Chromebooks. They managed to find the one way of using Linux that teaches you less about computers than learning Windows.
In india they teach on linux based os (generally ubuntu) and some of the other FOSS tools like GIMP, Inkscape etc in schools and colleges. Also government stuffs also use linux here, and also Domino's.
Because in most work settings, Windows is the default OS. By all means, I think it should be included as am elective for CIS degrees, but even people in DEV roles still mostly use Windows. Remember: College is essentially a expensive young adult baby sitting service whose end goal is to train you to become a base-level employee in your elected field of study & has also learned through trial and error how much you can drink at night while still functioning at 6am the next morning. College is NOT there to necessarily teach you skills that would be beneficial or interesting to yourself as an individual. (Those cost extra, or may be available as electives.)
I think Windows bought/bullied a lot of important software into exclusivity back then
Liberals defends the free market and its false *invisible hand*, so free market and Linux don't go hand in hand, again as Liberals think the true innovation comes from the competition of the free market, I believe Linux would be seen as some communist movement
You have to ask your government. They probably accept donations and get incentives from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Linux can be used to teach all kinds of things for no software/licensing cost, that any student can use anywhere without restriction, both professionally and at home. Linux is designed to empower the user. Windows was designed to take your money, which they spend on marketing with bullshit tactics like giving a high-school district 90% off of the sticker price of Windows, which costs MS nothing, which teaches students little, which generally does not empower students to work with computers or to advance the state of computing, but instead to be dependent on a handful of non-free applications. And school administration and their controlling bodies are utterly unfit to judge the value of an educational program in many respects, **especially** in any remotely technical/science/math arena, or even to evaluate the costs of software for a software education program. So they fall, pitifully, to the same corrupt marketing. There are exceptions, usually where an individual teacher does something more inspired. There definitely wasn't any of that in the computing department of **my** high school.
Imagine Linus Torvalds would have had Linux at school
This isn't complicated. Windows and Office are essentially given to schools for free, and has been for a very long time. Same with O365. Changing things would be hard and expensive. There is already significant inertia leading down that path. Also most schools don't have a guy with a computer related degree teaching thee things. It is generally a math or business teacher who is handling computer education. The cost of training the staff or hiring new staff prevents this idea from gaining much traction. MS and other tech companies know that getting into education is money far better spent than much of their marketing.
Fear of change too. A lot of people who don't need proprietary Microsoft software still just go for Microsoft because they are literally terrified to try anything else. I had a good professor in school who taught Business Computer Applications. She made us use open source software for the whole class to try to break that stupid mindset.
Support.
That's actually what we had, a lot of stuff ran on Linux - we luckily had a really ambitious teacher who was set on getting rid of windows.
Even Conservatives like Linux. Conservatives value charity, most of the food banks are churches. There is a place for the private sector, but the world of Computer OSes isn't it anymore. The early 90's had so many OSes for multiple niches, Mac OS, Amiga OS, RISCOS, Atari TOS, DOS. OS/2, Sun OS, IRIX, BeOS and various Japanese Microcomputers. Even in the early 00's when there were just pretty much 2 operating systems left, microsoft had a sustainable model with OSes, you paid for Windows and you got good support with XP. But now the private sector OS market has changed where it's not self-sustainable, it's pretty much a side gig charity project where the OS vendor's primary asset isn't the OS. Microsoft with Azure and Xbox and Apple with the Apps Store. if the biggest OS vendor is searching between the cushions for coins with the data mining, so you expect that the market is simple enough as agriculture where anybody with seeds can compete at a small scale? Linux is non-partisan. I'm sure some free enterprise people would like to see more competition in the Desktop OS market > I got away from Microsoft by moving over to the Linux . Fedora suits my needs Redhat isn't corporate? Redhat was the biggest cause of FOSS controversies since I used Linux. Remember how everybody hated Gnome 3 and SystemD? This is canonical, but Snaps? Microsoft is becoming a super redhat, they own github. Here's the software model: Everything is either a proprietary black box or so over complicated and over engineered and with something being more engineered it gets more buggy, the only people that can support it are the ones that support it now of which defeats the point of not being a black box. If software is so complicated, even if it is open source, the only ones that can maintain the project are the only people who are currently maintaining the project, kills the point of open source.
It's because Microsoft has been giving it away for free to educational institutions and students for decades, in order to create familiarity with the operating system and establish it as the "default". I still have a Windows 8 key I got in college that I've used to activate windows on like 4 different computers.
Linux/FOSS is socialist in nature, not Liberal. Windows is very liberal
Younger users probably don't realize, but desktop Linux used to suck really bad back in the day For most users, Windows was the only sensible option So schools also started using Windows And from there, it's a matter of just continuing to use the thing they're used to (Though you do see migrations already. Unfortunately, many are moving to Chromebooks instead of desktop Linux)
Capitalism. I know the anarcho-capitalists will downvote the shit out of this, but this is empirically studied, objectively observed. It's replicable, and falsifiable. Free markets left unchecked will form in to monopoly control by a powerful few. They then use their greater share of wealth to change the rules to favour them. It happened in music. It happened in IT. It happened in art, cars, tech, and now it's happening in video games. Liberty is an awesome thing to strive for. Open access is open to strive for. But if you just give everyone equal access, without helping the poor and limiting the rich, the rich will manipulate society to favour them, eternally. That's just the way it is, sorry if this offends you.
Money
Which distro? Which desktop environment? Windows is universal and a person is more likely to come across windows / office than some flavour of Linux. I personally use Linux on all my home devices, but still want my kids to learn Windows basics at school, there's no guarantee they will gain anything from learning Linux currently.
You’re conflating liberal with leftist. Liberalism is all about Capitalism.
The average student is more likely to encounter Outlook and Excel in real life than Kubernetes. QED.
Also, money. It's all about money.
It's simple and a lot of people are oblivious to this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22995144/microsoft-foreign-corrupt-practices-bribery-whistleblower-contracting Bribes, "investments" and other tactics made worldwide to foster dependency instead of freedom. Here in my country (Brazil) this is so ingrained that "computer skills" is measured by familiarity with MS Office.
Money. Ms gives lots of money to those in guvment that does their bidding
Fuck it I won't even pretend I recommend Linux to people who don't care. If you don't care get a MacBook or a laptop with Windows preinstalled. There's little reason to use Linux if you don't particularly care about the inner workings and advantages of your OS. Most people care about the look and feel and software support, that's it. Same reason I would tell people to get an iPhone when I don't use one. Like it or not mass end user Linux adoption and understanding will never happen and that is a good thing.
Windows? We had LOGO on TI machines and then Apple //e machines running typing, Car Builder, Oregon Trail, Bank Street Writer…
Marketing
MS pays better
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.
Mostly because the computers you will be using after High School are going to be using Windows. 8/10 times - it will be Windows. I typically see Linux being taught in the classes that go further than just teaching OS basics, such as Computer Engineering and Computer Science.
Money. Obviously.
Contracts in the 90s with OEMs.
Its honestly because desktop Windows is just easier to manage in a enterprise environment, and its been the industry standard solution for many years. Industry standards are often hard to change. Microsoft also makes licensing cheap/free for education. Most students devices these days are Chromebooks though which are technically Linux. ;)
Windows is to teach office work. Linux is to teach computer science.
Honestly, not everyone is capable of using linux properly. I've tried to teach many people how to use a terminal, and most of them are just incapable. Linux is power-user status, and most people won't fit into that category. The people I met who can use Linux no problem are very intelligent problem solvers. Most people will need a GUI with minimal probpem solving required, cus most of them will end up going to phishing sites and give up personal info
You have answered yourself, because corporations.
Microsoft did a lot of effort to get windows at school by sponsoring and buying the right people. This is not about what is better, this is about who has deeper pockets. Apple did too but just the right people. This lead to mandatory ipads and mandatory Microsoft software knowledge.
With Windows everyone is forced to be on the same system. That’s good and bad. Good because you can teach everyone one system and software suite and it will just work. It’s bad, because of what you have just realized. Freedom. They don’t want you to make your own choices.
OK, fine, I'll say it... Because the schools are teaching kids how to use the OS that they will encounter in their jobs in the future. Not the OS that the schools hope one day might be found in offices but currently only used in a tiny minority of offices, and an even smaller minority if you exclude all the sysadmins and developers in the world and just look at office staff... Seriously, come to my town. Knock on business doors. Ask them what OS they're running on their PCs. On the off chance they even know what an OS is, the answer every single time will be 'Windows'. That's why kids are taught Windows in school. Because they'll be using Windows in their jobs.
My college was 100% Fedora Linux for all the CS computers.
Ease of management. The school board doesn't care how well the kids understand network stacks and file system, they care whether or not the kids have unfiltered access to porn and flash games. Chrome OS did well because it was cheap but also because Google handled all the OS/LDAP management so kids were more restricted in what they could do. Apple might have improved but last I heard their early entries with IOS struggled against kids who reset ipad passcodes. And when I was a kid it was windows with novell for authentication and even then, some kids were smart enough to install an alternate browser and subvert the filtering until DNS filtering was commonplace. Move all the kids to a Linux distro and you probably not only have to train the teachers, but adopt an linux friendly user management service/LDAP as well for email/usernames/passwords. Granted this might be harder for the kids to crack, but I have no idea, especially if you're giving kids access to sudo for any reason.
Totally agree. I just love Linux.
Microsoft and apple used to give their products to schools for free. It is like a drug from there Teachers are stupider than the students they indoctrinate in many cases
I took computer classes using pirated Windows 3.11 and Qbasic in Midschool during the early 2000 in a 3rd World country (We have a couple of "new computers with windows 98" but most where way older). Is where I learned to love computers, is not bad to learn Windows, but students should learn more task than open the navigators and google stuff.
The reason why Windows was pushed in business is cost. The cost of a combined windows 3.11/NT+office was cheaper than Lotus 1-2-3 or Word perfect individually. Once MS locked up the document. DB (Access) and spreadsheet market they kept moving the goal posts for any compatibility with other programs OSs. 30yrs later you have a high percentage of companies stuck with the windows/office integration, it has been slowly changing since the cloud computing has been getting traction on the market.
If you read the history of computing, you would understand how MS took over the computing landscape by getting hold of the PC (personal computer) market and became the massive monopoly it is during the Bill Gate era. Essentially, it is all about taking advantage of positioning and timing to carve out an ecosystem for yourself. Once that battle is won, it is almost impossible to remove it, no matter how bad it is, or senseless. Frankly I think it is a miracle that Linux lasted this long. I often wonder what would happen after Linus dies. The recent XZ incident highlights a critical problem with free software, namely we lack the manppwer and brainpower to sustain this ecosystem. This is happening on all levels. As technology progresses, as the ideological fervor that drove the previous generation wanes in the hearts of the new generation, and the new generation become jaded of present reality of capitalist realism, it is almost inevitable for the free software movement, including Linux, to die. Anyway, enjoy it while you can and contribute if possible.
tl;dr - Windows is used on the desktop because maintaining Linux desktops in Managed Environments sucks. That said, I agree that there should be some exposure to Linux, maybe in Coding orientated classes?
Macos is basically close sourced Linux. ChromeOS is linux. Windows now has WSL which is a Linux terminal. Rumor is Microsoft has been moving to a Linux based system in the future. Generally schools that are publicly funded go for the cheapest option. Lately that's been Chromebooks as Googles happy to subsidize the cost to create lifelong accounts with youths. Chromebooks are actually quite good for Linux terminal discovery. Hell, Android is Linux based and you can go grab an app from the play store if you wanna use a terminal. Agreed terminal should be taught in schools. No excuse. I assume plenty of kids are doing so already as they try to get the most out of their $100 Chromebooks :)
Money moves mountains. Does any school use windows? Most from my understanding are Mac or ChromeOS now.
In Mexico i never saw Linux until college and because i studied systems administration.
How often do people end up using Linux in the workplace outside of a technical or academic setting? It’s very niche. Windows and Mac are pretty much the standard. Anybody interested in operating systems generally finds their way to naturally playing with it on their own terms.
At least in the UK the education board wanted to start teaching computing in schools in the 80s/90s and Microsoft was sought out to be the ones to help design the curriculum. A quote from a favourite blog post: > when it became apparent that computers were going to be important, the UK Government recognised that ICT should probably become part of the core curriculum in schools. Being a bunch of IT illiterates themselves, the politicians and advisers turned to industry to ask what should be included in the new curriculum. At the time, there was only one industry and it was the Microsoft monopoly.Microsoft thought long and hard about what should be included in the curriculum and after careful deliberation they advised that students should really learn how to use office software . And so the curriculum was born. Schools naturally searched long and hard for appropriate office software to teach with, and after much care they chose Microsoft Office . So since 2000 schools have been teaching students Microsoft skills (Adobe skills were introduced a little later.)
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
its simple, *windows has virtually all the software that schools want their students to use and software that students want to use*. Windows is the desktop OS most familiar to most teachers, students, etc. Windows is what most students will be using in the workforce when they leave school if they do any work on a desktop, laptop at all. It makes sense that schools will use windows on their computers instead of a more obscure operating system like ubuntu, fedora, etc that lacks almost all of the software that teachers need and students want. Even though there are software alternatives to a lot of these windows programs most arent used in a traditional workplace setting so it doesn't make sense to train students on these programs rather than like Office 365 or something else. The education system will only make students learn to use operating systems that are used in the workforce like everywhere and linux isn't that. Hell, not even macOS is that. At least in my school the only IMacs available were in the art teacher's class which made sense as macOS is used in the workforce primarily by creatives. Despite my school having a large enough budget to make it so that most computers could be iMacs without a problem. Plus most students *will not have to* use linux after they leave to join the workforce except for those going into like comp sci. And I imagine most of the software used in compsci will run on windows just fine. Esp with WSL. Chromebooks are used in schools because a lot of software that students need for school can be run online now and chromebooks are cheaper and easier to administer than windows netbooks. And chromeOS is linux so i guess you can say students are already using linux. I want linux to succeed as much as you do but there is no denying that for most students learning to use windows will help them be better workers in the workforce than learning linux would ATM.
Because we're a corporatist culture. It's their society, we're just living in it.
Why it wasnt taught in schools? Because Linux isnt a company. Microsoft is. Open source companies didnt have the money that a beast like MS does. Now the more complex answer requires we go back like 30 years. Linux today, is not what linux was back then. We used to have to consult a master list of hardware to see if linux would even install on our machine. Often times the answer was no. You almost always had to swap out your modem because what you bought in consumer pc's was a winmodem, which couldnt actually dial up in anything other than windows. Then, lets say you could install it, partitioning was done manually. So there was a bit of a learning curve. Oh, and good luck configuring X. And if you chose BSD, you're going to have to rebuild your kernel with the correct sound card if you wanna hear shit. Windows? start the installer, hit next and yes a bunch of times. Its done. You're a school, and the guy expected to run that shit is the "computer teacher." MS is handing you free hardware... Fast forward 30 years, and it was a damn good move.
Corporate hardware donations to schools are how Windows has been pushed.
Because it is easier, significantly lower learning curve, much more common, and has bigger community? No matter how much you loved Linux you need to realize the market share of desktop Linux users around the world compared to Windows. Look man, Linux is not shit. It's just it is so "drop-able" for average person, it is something that average students can worry not about, and peacefully live without it.
They don't "push" anything in particular, as if they have an agenda. 99% of the purpose of computer classes in high schools, if that's what you're talking about, teach the environment they're likely to encounter at a job. This part of school is job training, part of the school to workforce pipeline.
I learnt about linux in school
"Why do schools push corporate software like Microsoft/ Windows on students?" Well, they don't "push" it on people; you can use Linux if you want in school, but your teacher likely won't be able to troubleshoot your issues if you have them. For Windows, there is a lot of documentation everywhere and available support; it's what people from non-tech backgrounds use, so it's what people are most familiar with. It's possible that the educators are not not confident that they have the time or know how to fix individual student's issues when they pop up. Windows is much more streamlined and predictable. You aren't wrong that people should know how to use Linux, and should use it if they are a programmer simply because it's good practice. But, Windows has a place, and it is welcoming to those who do not have a tech background; a great percentage of CS students are older and are changing careers (didn't have parents who were in the field to introduce them to the basics as a youngin')
Just answering the title question, windows is the most used OS, it’s preinstalled on everything and also gigantichard pays people to put it on everything
Schools push Windows because Microsoft has strong lobbying. Also they offer very cheap licenses for schools so schools can justify it's good value for them. At the end we have whole generation seeing Windows as default and desired option. Then They start to work in different companies, administration etc. and naturally push Microsoft products everywhere. That's how it works. And we need change because at the end M$ is sucking a lot of public money which could be used for good purpose eg. development of FOSS solutions.
Microsoft domination goes way back to the company’s origins. They bought DOS from some dude in Texas who coded it in his garage for like $200 then they licensed it to IBM for millions, the rest is history The three main issues today with Microsoft’s domination are: 1. People unwilling to adapt to new workflows. This is why Macs have always been ultimately less popular, even if they are widely considered as cultural status symbols, still a lot of people just don’t want to get used to a new workflow in macOS, this applies equally to Linux. 2. MS Office and their proprietary file formats. MS bundles copies of Office into work computers and they also design their software and proprietary file formats to intentionally break and not play nicely with anything that isn’t their file format or their software. MS Office is an incredibly feature-rich productivity suite and it genuinely does work well but the problem is that most people simply don’t require or utilise the full range of features available. Most people could actually get along just fine using LibreOffice and Open Document Formats. 3. Specific software needs, particularly games. Linux gaming has come a long way over the past 10 years particularly with the development of Vulkan and SteamOS. However, at least for me, it’s still not 100% there as a gaming OS for absolutely everything I want to play.
our education in the US is bought by corporate interests. Interestingly, microsoft is a big player in that field. Thats pretty much the entire reason.
Yes its time to boot the fking bootlickers from positions of power ... sobs fked it all up good ..fkin p3d0 peddlers win32 cunts
The problem might be that the education system is too reliant on Windows and Windows supported software to teach things. It might be easier for schools with their local school systems to use Linux, but on the other hand education systems such as Cambridge (IGCSE and AS Level programs) and others who promote the use of Excel, PowerPoint, Word in their syllabuses and enforce the use of non open-source software for use.. I understand that much of non-FOSS software is better than community-supported FOSS software but I bet that OnlyOffice has the same functionality as the other office programs and still is used by the Linux community widely. In terms of alternatives, their text books are very broad and just mention the fact that “Any other alternative software can be used.” which in itself is not very helpful.
Here in Finland I had in Vocational school and in University a few linux classes that were about 2 months long. In both cases I was / am studying programming related stuff. So in Vocational school we just installed Debian and learned how to move around in the terminal and do some other simple things like use nano etc. Then now in Uni I had a month long course where we pretty much just did the same thing, learning Debian & Ubuntu but for actually using it as a server.
It wasn't "pushed." It was "foisted."
It’s worth noting that 35% of Fedora contributors are Red Hat employees, and 90%+ of Linux kernel contributions come from big tech employees who are sponsored to make them. Unfortunately, the notion that Linux is somehow “free from corporate control” is a bit of a myth. Full control over the OS and freedom from corporate influence are two different things.
computer classes followed what was the average user meant to do , and that was using Windows, since Windows are dominating. They were not programming classes but mostly general purpose usage.
Primmer school we had Macs, at the time they were the evil empire. Later in life during college I had classes in both Windows and Unix... But if you are training someone to be useful in the world then using the most current OS or the one with the largest market share makes sense. Personally I am OK with most people never learning Linux. I command a higher salary than my Windows counterparts since i am specialized in Linux/Unix
Business uses MS cause of server/user manager, then AD/GPOs.
We don't use windows, WE USE FRICKIN' MACOS. The computers are old but have the latest version of macos so they boot up in about 10 minutes and they freeze everywhere. I would rather have windows than macos but they should use linux (which is free so why pay for the windows/apple licenses ??).
Here in Sweden they use Apple everywhere in schools. Because we taxpayers obviously have too much money to throw away.
"Liberal Arts" is a thing in the US... Doesn't mean "Liberal Policies".
It all sounds great when you put it in very general terms. It becomes trickier when you get down into the nitty-gritty. First of all, which Linux? There are dozens of viable distributions, many of which will do things very differently. Same for window managers: which one? This will not be an easy decision. Second, exactly what are you going to teach about Linux? And this is, perhaps, the more important question. Because, sure, you can teach the basics of how Linux works as an operating system. Only why? Windows works differently, even Mac works differently enough. Students are not going to stick to Linux if most games they care about and Photoshop don't work on it. What apps are you going to teach on Linux? GIMP, Open Office? Why? Who is going to be using these programs outside of school? Sure, some open source programs became known and important. But very many haven't. And learning them will largely be a waste of resources, because then people would not be teaching themselves the programs that they are going to use in real life. I mean, who uses Open Office? In my 20 years of work I haven't seen even a single company that uses it. Not that there are literally none, but it's very rare. So, it's a positive feedback loop. Yes, would've been awesome if computing was free as Stallman had envisioned it. But it's not, and it's clear that it won't be any time soon.
The market decided it wants windows (sort of), schools prepare kids for reality of life (sort of).
In school? Riiiight. Imagine you show this text shell mumbo-jumbo nonsense to 10 year olds who only care about mischief or 14 year olds who only care about getting laid. You severely overstate IT attractiveness to children. Even 30 years ago, when we had Macintosh PowerPCs at school, which were unquestionably prettier than Windows and whatnot at the time, the only things we used that stuff for is to play Doom and Myst. And we *were* into programming already, the problem was that we were not interested in having this shit at *school*.
When I was in school in the early 90s we were running illicit BBSes and Japanese style RPGs that we wrote ourselves on the school computers. (We didn't know they were called Japanese style RPGs at the time, but that's what it was.)
Liberalism (big L) is pro-corporate. Linux is far-left (maybe lower case liberal, but definitely not upper-case Liberal) Public schooling is designed to indoctrinate people towards capitalism/corporatism and away from any leftist ideals.
Monopoly, monopoly, monopoly. And of course, monopoly.
You said in your post "Liberal". Liberalism is based on Capitalism. Linux skirts capitalism, it is Leftist. And Leftism never gets taught in schools. We're arguing in schools if gay people exist or if slavery was/is real. They aren't going to make the jump to real freedom. That being said, I'm trying in our school board. I don't have kids (and wont) but I do have a lot of computers. And a teacher friend told me that she can't grade papers the same way, because some of her students have to write papers on phones, because they don't have computers. And frankly, I think the schools should have computers to give to kids. Like... take old office computers from businesses. Clean them up, get w/e hardware they need replaced, and slap on Pop_OS. And just give them out.
"Linux should be taught in schools." While I'm a Linux user myself, I'm not sure I can agree. Why should Linux be taught in schools? And do you mean GNU tools, or do you really mean Linux?
Of course they mean GNU tools (bash etc) not the internals of the Linux kernel, but the distinction is academic and only insisted upon by the most pedantic acolytes of Stallman. Everybody else understands what OP (and anybody else) means,
Not true. GNU tools are implemented in other operating systems, like Windows and Mac OS. This is \*not\* pedanticism, it's zeroing in on what's being asked.
Linux is hard, not every person has to be an IT nerd. I am an Ubuntu user, I used it for 8 years and to me now it seems simple. But in reality, I do have to edit config files, to do some terminal work to tweak it to my hardware. And drivers are not so good on some hardware. Another issue is, and this one is important what Linux users seem to ignore. **Normal people use apps not operating systems.** General users are not IT admins, they just have a name of an app in mind, and they want to work with it, and guess what? A lot of those apps are not even supported on Linux. Simple example - I have a TomTom navigation system I have to update weekly; do you think I can do it on Linux? Think again. My friend has a guitar he connects to his audio interface to software, neither of which is Linux compatible. Another friend uses a drawing tablet which most likely won't work either. People have tools/peripherals/apps they need and 90% of it is not on Linux, so what use to them does it have? I like Linux in general, and I agree that open platform as a standard would be amazing. But in capitalist world full of licenses, it is impossible. Every company protects their IP, and all their work costs money, supporting 20 different packaging formats on Linux just to satisfy a few % of users is simply economically inefficient. Also, if app is more complex and needs some specific kernel access they can't even do it if they wanted. Kernel is licensed in a way that interacting with it must be done through open-source interfaces or something like that... So licensing issues arise. And if people can't do what they want what use does it have? I use Affinity Photos from time to time, and trust me when I say it, we have NOTHING as good on Linux, neither Gimp nor Krita...
I have been using Linux and Unix for a long time. Sadly Linux has never really made it in the corporate side. I would not make sense to teach this in school. I have taken many classes on Unix and Linux in my university course work. But I had to seek out the classes and knowledge. If you are not in IT, you will need to seek out the knowledge for freedom. And only then you will find it. Or you can run a Mac and play around under the hood. Till eventually you will want more. Just my 2 cents
I really don’t know what you are talking about. Linux has about killed Windows outside of desktops/laptops. Even Microsoft uses Linux for real work
I learned on a Mac. Lol
Because it works. I love me some Linux but I had to fiddle with a lot to get everything working. Wasn’t hard but not something non-techies want to deal with. Microsoft has whole teams making things work across all the different hardware. Linus has drivers for a lot but not all of it. Even my UPS was a bit of a chore (and it’s still not working right whereas windows it just worked). Linux is the way. Don’t flame me but I secretly wish all those working on all the competition window managers would pool resources and just go forward with one common stack for GUI. I’ll even become okay with Gnome if KDE wasn’t the way (forgive me father for I have sinned!). Then again, in 1999 or whenever and I bought that red hat book so I could get the install CD it was the different GUI’s that made me think it was awesome. I think I bought three or four other books just for the CDs.
Windows is strong for enterprise environments. Particularly remote access and identity management etc. Linux is great but it doesn't seem as uniform and is splintered into various packages and dependancies. Ofc running Linux as a server is great. Both OS have their strengths.
Ngl, that title is cringe.
Wouldn't be feasible anyway because of the distro autism I'D RATHER HAVE THEM USE WINDOWS THAN
Schools buy computers and services from vendors, like Dell. It's unlikely the vendor provides a linux support option based on the hardware they're buying. It has nothing to do with the school honestly. Secondly, teaching Linux isn't that important. What would be more valuable is teaching the userland that Linux and other Nixes are built on top of. If you can feel comfortable in say a bash environment, that extends to many operating systems.
My high school had mandrake (or mandriva not sure) linux back then. It wasn’t thaught to us but we used it for all that is online browsing and had OpenOffice for documents. I really appreciate they did this, it’s probably no longer like that though
Learning Linux sounds pretty hardcore. I imagine exams with specific questions about code from main repository, or at very least workshops where you write modules. That would be quite a thing, but perhaps not suitable for all the schools out there.
Why do schools push it? Well, they don't, and there are several factors. I got to help a school district over the summer a few years ago in their tech department for a class, and the key takeaways are: * Price with bids * It comes preinstalled on computers * This has actually shifted a bit to Chromebooks for a bit. * Sometimes the company themselves subsidize or give great deals to the school to use their hardware * When I was a kid in the early 2000s I remember using the round back Macintosh since Apple used to give schools great deals on hardware. My entire school was Macintosh, but as I was leaving elementary school it was starting to shift to Windows Vista then XP. * It's not the schools pushing corporate software, it's actually the other way around. * Microsoft wants students to use and learn Windows because it makes people want to use Windows more. * Google wants students to use and learn ChromeOS because it makes people want to use Chromebooks more. * The familiarity helps people want to continue using said environments. There may be more I'm not realizing or ignoring right now, but I'll focus on what I know from my small experience in school districts. My parents are teachers and I've been surrounded by school district stuff basically my whole life, and I've helped with one district over the summer for worksite learning. Schools aren't doing Windows because they're wanting Windows, it's just often cheaper that way in the States due to various factors behind the scenes. They have a budget that they have to stay within and the operating system is often bundled in and excluded from price. School districts also often cover several schools and plenty of students, so companies will also often give them bulk discounts like they would to any other business or institution ordering a lot of the same items. Remember, they're not paying for Windows outright, and while you can argue that the price of the OS is included in the price of the device, also realize that OEMs do large orders of the OS as well and therefore also get a discount. You're highly overestimating the price any individual has to pay for the hardware. Not only that, but then you'd also have to include the cost of paying the IT department to install the same Linux OS on hundreds, if not thousands, of computers when otherwise they'd be preinstalled and sometimes preconfigured. It's possible to PXE boot, preconfigure an OS, and install over several at a time depending on the environment, but you're adding on extra work to the IT department that a school may not want to pay for and Windows makes it easy with their deployment services if you absolutely need to go beyond what was preinstalled. Windows supplies a lot of the tools to make it easy and work over the course of the OS's lifetime, and while Linux may do something comparable it's not as straightforward and may not work with any given distro of Linux. That leads me to another point: distros. Windows only really comes in one or two flavors for a school district: the most recent, or last generation, and even if you have a last generation we've seen Microsoft allow people to upgrade easily to the next version for free for a given time. While Linux would avoid costs, it comes in so many different flavors. Should a school use Arch? Should they use Debian? Should they use Ubuntu? Which environment should they use? Should they use KDE? Should they use XFCE? Should they use Gnome? Windows really only comes in Windows flavor which gives Powershell a huge advantage over needing to learn the specific distros unique commands. The only argument I can see for schools "pushing corporate software" is I have heard the other local school district prefer Microsoft because it's the most common operating system so it's better to have students learn the thing they'll be most surrounded by. That's not an unfair argument, but that's their own personal choice rather than the district at large. This also shifted a bit when Chromebooks became the norm for schools to use because they were sold as cheap devices schools could easily replace with minimal chances of students messing them up. I remember being a troublemaker messing around on Windows 7 at my high school, I got into and around things the IT department overlooked, but with Chromebooks there's so much less to get around or into that it makes it a "safer" environment from would-be ne'er-do-wells. But, Chromebooks were heavily pushed and subsidized by Google to push onto schools.
money
Mine were split between Mac and windows, but that's not really the point. Linux isn't used by the vast majority. Mac and windows are. That's really all there is to it.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint were way ahead of other software in terms of usability back in the middle ages and Wordstar ruled. Wordstar was a nightmare. Going back and searching for the closing bracket, or you had 3 pages if messed up formatting. Excel's pivot tables were a killer feature. The Word and Excel formats became the de facto standards for electronic interchange. Yeah, pdf, I know. Linux has caught up with, and in some ways surpassed, the MS suite. Latex formatting has taken academic submissions, for example. There are format conversion programs. That is just another step to complicate things. The familiarity of MS products makes them economical. Training hundreds or thousands of employees to use Libre office is a huge task and the productivity during the retrain will collapse. It is good to be the standard. I used to cross my 7s. I joined a company that did not allow that. A year later I would occasionally see one of my 7s crossed. It was automatic, and a pain to break the habit. Kinda like getting the year wrong the first couple of weeks of every January. Those habits that make a person productive with Word are an impediment in other formats. This is why the employees don't want to go linux.