I just want to recommend reading a blog post I found on KDE: A school in the southeast of England, began switching its student-facing computers to GNU/Linux. Stuart Jarvis interviewed the school’s Network Manager, Malcolm Moore. I think it’s an excelent case study to refer to.
Here are some gems:
To the question what caused the descision to switch to Free software: “ultimately something had to give and professional pride would not let it be the quality of the systems we support.”
“politicians don’t seem to get the saying ‘If you think education is expensive, try ignorance’”
“We wanted to offer the best IT systems and education possible with the funds available. Money spent on essentially promoting Microsoft Windows and Office to students can be better spent on old-fashioned things like teachers and actual education.“
the UK government threw out the old ICT syllabus, which was based largely on teaching students how to use Microsoft Office, and told schools to go for a more computer studies-based syllabus, which meant that we were in a position to hit the ground running so to speak
We specialize in science and engineering and want our students to go on to do great things like start the next Google or collapse the universe at CERN. In those environments, they will certainly need to know Linux.
Has it given me sleepless nights, yes. Has it nearly driven me insane, yes. Would I do it again… in an instant!
Now, go read it! And don’t forget to share! 🙂