Enquiring minds want to know - why no Linux for NSW high school laptops?

David M Williams
Sunday, 05 April 2009 16:17

Opinion and Analysis

If the Lenovo/Microsoft solution exceeds $500 and does not meet the DET specifications then what are the ramifications?

Will the amount allocated to deployment and other expenses be reduced? Does this mean the quality will suffer? Or will it go over budget too? And by goodness, no matter the technology, if the project is going to exceed $2,245 per student then the taxpayers will definitely want to know!

What I also want to know is whether Linux was actually considered.

Let me get one thing straight: this isn’t simply some sort of militant Linux question? I ask with earnestness. To me, Linux makes sense.

Firstly, it gives the full amount to hardware without a “Windows tax” involved.

Secondly, it gives students a full and rich suite of legal software to use without having to pay more money or resort to piracy.

While DET staff may be more familiar with Microsoft Windows a survey of Linux deployments in high schools around the world has consistently shown students have no difficulty in adopting Linux and open source software.

I think it is safe to say Microsoft recognised – particularly with the tabled price-point – that Linux was going to be a strong option here. Imagine their horror at the thought of a couple of hundred thousand Linux-based laptops being issued to the future workforce and decision makers?

It doesn’t surprise me that Microsoft would have pursued this tender with aggressive pricing and negotiating. However, unless the software is being given away at no cost whatsoever it involves a necessary sacrifice on hardware to cover the Windows bar tab.

Even if Microsoft is giving its goodies away (which I doubt) the decision to use a Microsoft platform still hampers students. They will by necessity require resource-stealing anti-virus software. They will be confronted with expenses if they wish to upgrade to newer versions of Microsoft’s products.

I want to know who submitted Linux based proposals. I’m expecting innovative hardware makers like ASUS to have been in on the act. It was they who created the netbook market single-handedly with the ASUS Eee. I’m expecting budget manufacturer Acer – of Acer Aspire One fame – to have put in. I’m expecting Novell to have submitted SUSE Linux as a potential, and similarly from Red Hat and Canonical (Ubuntu.)

Then again, could it be that Linux advocacy is so grassroots-focused that the request for proposals on this scale was completely missed and overlooked? What an epic fail it would be if it simply turned out everybody expected a Linux solution to be submitted and nobody actually did it!

Or, could it be that DET heard the old adage “Nobody got fired for choosing IBM” and applied it to Microsoft?

Were the Microsoft and Linux solutions compared based on price and performance? Or did a DET official just choose the “safe” choice, to the detriment of education and taxpayers state-wide?