this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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I go to a programming school, where there were computers running ancient windows 8 and some were on windows 10, they ran really slow and were completely unrelaible when doing the tasks that are required, those computers in question had either i5-4750 (I think?) or i7-4970 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em, so long story short I decided to talk to the principal about it explaining why linux is so much better than windows and gave him reasons why linux will be better for us for education and he agreed after considering it for a bit, he let me know that some students play roblox or minecraft in middle of the lesson and he asks if linux would stop em from doing that, I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons. he gave me the green light to do it, so I spent like 3 days migrating like 20+ computers to linux (since I had to set them up and install some required applications for them) in the last day where I was doing a last check up on the PCs to make sure they are in working order, there was a computer having a problem of which where it didnt boot, I let the principal know about this to get permission to work on it, he said yes, so after some troubleshooting I realized the boot order was all screwed, so since Ive worked with arch before I knew how to fix it, I booted up linux mint live image, chrooted, and fixed the boot order and computer went back to life, prinicipal came in checked on everything to make sure everything works, told me to wait for a bit, and then came back and paid me for his troubles (was a bit of a surprised since I expected nothing of the sort), the next day I came to school, sat down, turned PC on, noticed something was in the trash bin, opened it, found "robloxinstall.exe" on it, told the principal about it, he was pleased with it, so now 2 weeks later he seems now to be confident about linux, as he told me there is another class he is considering to move to linux.

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

(considering now, that I got a win win situation, I get to use an OS that I like in school, students gets to focus on the lessons instead of slacking.)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

You are doing the lords work and I ain't even a christian

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I love Linux. I'm running Linux and love the experience.

But...

~~i7-4970~~ i7-4790 so running windows 10 with all its bloat was not going to be an easy task for em

What in the world are you talking about, man??

Even ignoring the silliness of the "bloat" - i7-4790 eats Win10 alive and asks for seconds.

I stated that as long as they dont know how to work with wine/lutris or know any specific linux packages that run windows games on linux they should not be able to play in the middle of lessons

So... No, you didn't stop them from doing that. All it takes for them to get back to playing games is to google "linux roblox how to" and 20 minutes later they're good to go. Windows has AppLocker, and GPO to prevent running unwanted software - have you researched alternatives for Linux?

does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

Well, depends on scale. The setup you did is fine for, what, a single classroom? Two classrooms? It's completely unusable for a larger school - for that you need an MDM solution, ideally with some form of IAM. In the Windows world that's SCCM/Intune with AD/EID (local/cloud). Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's only bare-bones equivalents in the Linux world for that, which would be the bigger a problem the larger a school you'd be dealing with.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Wow you really went out of your way to yuck OPs yum.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

There are many ways to skin the cat for centralized login in Linux, including using Samba-AD or just LDAP.

Patching is IMO less fun. Landscape can work for Ubuntu but it's finicky, and I haven't really found anything satisfactory (FOSS) for patch management if multiple Debian systems. Setting up "unattended-upgrades" does tend to handle most of it but that doesn't give centralized control or visibility.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

Well done! Protip: You can use double new lines to format paragraphs. And full-stops.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago

Nicely done! That’s pretty awesome :)

Though I should point out that it’s also not hard to lock down a windows install a bit more if you don’t make the default account an admin one. But moving to Linux is better imo for a whole host of reasons.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You just taught the next generation about compatibility layers! Well done my man

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

we agreed on mint, so I had to put that in since I was trying to get the principal to not use "windows is more familiar" excuse

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

For such a setup I think it Is a good idea to look in to freeipa/idm. Would make management a load more easy. centralized account control and being able to sit at any PC and login with your own credentials is one of the many benefits.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Cool but why do you ask the teachers? Without asking anyone would be way more funny and more interesting to see what happens

It’s the sort of school gags that people reminisce 20 years later when they sit with their family near cozy fireplace with a pipe of tobacco or crochet

You need to score all the silly memories while you still can.
People, remember the most important when you are young is to have fun. The responsibility and adulting will come for you anyway. You don’t want to be ‚mature for your age’. Have a heckin blast and take no prisoners

If I could go back in time I would spread custom furry uwumaxxed ransomware that would unlock with trollish gimmick through the school network. But when I got this good with computers I was already at uni so such things lost their luster.
Nowadays I would rather work in security and pentesting and get substantial amount of the adult green paper risk free. We get so boring with age don’t we. There’s nothing more boring than being a good, law obeying citizen but it is what it is if you have half a brain. You can always buy some expensive drugs or become motorsport adrenaline junkie

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

so my question here would be: does this mean linux now is ready for the education sector?

No, not for elementary/HS. You have to understand that schools aren't regular users. They will have 2 top priorities:

  1. Hardware vender support. There isn't any vendor that can/does support the volume and pricing that a school will do. While some major vendors are starting to offer Linux pre-installed, they aren't apart of their educational vendor options.
  2. They need to have a "drag and drop" security suite. Schools don't have large/well skilled IT department, so they rely on security suites that "tick off all the boxes". This allows them an excuse is suddenly little Timmy has porn on their school computers. (This is one of those reasons ChromeOS is becoming so popular. They can issue a device, have the student only have a Google Workspace for Education account, and then walk away. Easy and simple. And yes, there are many websites that can tell you how to get around it, but then the school gets to turn around and claim the student "hacked" it and is in violation of rules X, Y, and Z to which the parent can also be held responsible.)

Until these two issues are solved, Linux won't be ready for the public education sector. (When the parent issues the device, all rules are gone since it's up to the parent what limits to place, and all the school will say is that the device must be able to run programs X, Y, and Z.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Linux is kind of sort is already in elementary and high school use. Schools in my state are often issuing Chromebooks to students for use. They are cheap, easy to manage and get support for, and can do the things students need to do. And the only ones really using all those old Macs that infest schools are the teachers. Though in my local school, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades are using iPads but switch to Chromebooks in 5th grade.

One can complain about google being evil all you want, but they do offer all the free tools schools and teachers and students need for their lessons.And if COVID taught schools anything it was that we could teach classes online if necessary-- no more snow days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

maybe only ready for programming education sector then...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Now students got addicted to linux ricing instead of games, jk good job op and the principal is nice for letting you do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Used to run a whole small highschool on Linux Mint, worked pretty well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago

Did the same some years ago. It was for the gap between win7 and 10.

Everyone told me it was the best productive time. Because users can't install stuff and my network blocked a lot of dumb shit.

But now we got new win 11 PCs and every user is back on solitaire or shady websites.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

And if they learn about wine and lutris and manage to install Roblox, they'll probably get more out of it than by listening to the class in the first place !

I learned so much by circumventing the school security stuff. I probably wouldn't be in IT if not for the parental control limitations and school network blocks

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Back in the DOS and Windows 3.1 days, they tried to lock it down with whatever software they had. We found a way around it. Even the DOS based menu system, we managed to copy the menu software out with its configuration file. Then we experimented with the “encrypted” password in the configuration file and found out that if we removed it, the system would allow you to do anything but that also meant we could create our own password and look at the “encrypted” password. We quickly found out that it was just shifting the ASCII table. We then “decrypted” the school password. Such 12 your old hackers 😆

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago

yes exactly, its a win win all around

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

When I studied in university - all our computer classes were running Linux, and it was many years ago! Linux proved its effectiveness. When we had russian cyber attack on our banks (virus Petya)- our bank system survived thanks to Linux). Nowadays when twitter, facebook chose nazism - there is only one option to go to decentralized media

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

based, also I agree decentralized media is the best

its the based form of the internet

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I like the idea of free speech and we see that tech giants chose dark side of the world. They are not only spying on people but also manipulating their minds.... many still do not realize that they are living in matrix...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago
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