Educating Tux: case studies of Linux deployments in high schools around the world

David M Williams
Wednesday, 05 March 2008 19:38

Opinion and Analysis

Linux has a lot to offer cash-strapped education departments. It’s free, for one thing. It is naturally secure with distinctly non-privileged accounts and it is easily centrally administered. However, the experiences by schools that have gone this route are a mixed bag. Let us investigate some and see what lessons there are.

Previously on ITWire my colleague Sam Varghese presented the remarkable tale of Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School. This school successfully implemented a large-scale Linux deployment across 350 workstations. The ability to spend on hardware was bolstered by a reduction in software and maintenance expenses as a direct consequence of switching to Linux (specifically Red Hat Linux, then Fedora.) The school reported a distinct decrease in administration work, a large reduction in downtime and no virus problems. You would think it was a resounding win.

Yet, six years later the school reverted back to Microsoft Windows. The reason for the change back was not technical nor was it financial. Instead the school’s staff pressed for Windows due to their own familiarity with it. Tragically, the same people who claimed unfamiliarity with Linux were similarly lost in the new Windows world of Vista and Office 2007.

This story struck a chord with Sam’s readers, some of whom expressed their disappointment that Strathcona had to return to their Windows roots with associated higher expenses despite the simultaneously reality of schools suffering from funding difficulties.

Strathcona is not unique in its experience as a school that has sought alternate operating systems and computing environments to tackle costs (and, dare we say, student mischief.) Happily, their subsequent experience of encountering pressure to revert is not as common. Here are some, and lessons that other schools – or indeed businesses – can learn.

One extremely positive experience came from the Lorien Novalis School in Glenhaven, Sydney. This school has 350 students and 38 staff covering kindergarten through to year 12. Interestingly, the decision to migrate was proposed by senior students rather than a decision formulated by faculty. The previous generation of Apple Macintoshes were due for replacement and the suggestion came to give Mandrake Linux a try.

There did not appear to be any initial strong impetus behind change beyond exploration but four years later the school weren’t looking back and in particular were embracing the open source ideological mantra of software freedom. To their way of thinking, open source software had a great deal in common with school education, both being about cooperation and sharing knowledge.

One very helpful factor in the school’s Linux experience has been lower hardware requirements, with two well used servers being the primary workhorses until finally in 2004 a new HP Proliant server was sourced. This said, the school were prepared to spend money to purchase Mandrake support and manuals and to reward and encourage the work of open source organisations.

One other matter which clearly influenced the success of the project was surprisingly in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom of tightly locking the standard desktop environment down. At Lorien Novalis students were encouraged to tinker.

Here, the students felt an ownership over their Linux lab and had a freedom to tinker, undoubtedly aiding adoption and acceptance. Although some legacy Windows and Macintosh computers remained, due to custom software needs, the school is working to migrate these to Linux and free and open source equivalents also.

Please read on to page two for more.

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