On Mon, Sep 18, 2000 at 11:52:35AM +0100, davef@gbdirect.co.uk wrote: <snipped>

My 3 'peneth on the offering (speaking as someone with recent secondary teaching experience):

Basically, linux in its raw state is no use to anyone in schools except for after-school tinkering by comp sci clubs or geeky physics/maths teachers, etc ... and there are not many of the latter with much time for play.

There are quite a few schools already making use of the complicated stuff like Squid, Apache and Samba. They're very keen on the savings on licensing costs. So I think your characterisation of linux in it's `raw state' being of no use doesn't quite tally with the facts.

In short, any offering must be completely and simply packaged (Mac-like) and fully supported.

Anything less will simply be a waste of time for both wylug members and any targetted schools/teachers.

Dave

P.S. Sorry for the stridency, but with the current state of UK teaching (i.e. shite pay, shite status, no time and the blame for all social ills) the usual bollocks which over-skilled Unix-gurus come out with in response to serious useability issues just won't wash

Please, if you feel compelled to remind me about the amazing efficiency and useability of "vee-eye" and the bash ... don't bother

Perhaps schools should not be educating their pupils in little more than an ability to push a mouse around and taking instruction from a paper clip. Shouldn't they perhaps be teaching them to use applications such as bash and vi to get a more solid grounding in how computers actually work? After all most can learn the GUI stuff at home or at school in their own time. Just my 2p -- Frank *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/