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] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Sober (flatpak) should work for Roblox :) it uses the Android version with some fixes, signing in was a little jank when I tried it but after that flawless!

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

oh I see, well I'll see what happens in like a month

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey OP, regarding Minecraft: It's a Java program that uses OpenGL for rendering. Therefore it's not a Windows game, but inherently cross platform. Here's the official .deb package https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

oh dang, that changes everything

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

Well for a .deb, the users would need sudo access.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school's IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.

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

not yet, might ask if I could be

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

the school’s IT

I wonder if that even exists. A mix of Windows 8 (EoL) and 10 (almost EoL) running on Haswells with students freely installing Roblox... all gives an unmaintained vibe.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Little side note

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

The i7-4790K is still quite powerful, so I'm pretty sure this wasn't the problem, at all. Perhaps they're running on an HDD, have little RAM, or you got the CPU wrong.

You can see the CPU and RAM by launching System Info from tbf start menu, and see if it's running on an SSD or HDD by launching Disks from the menu.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

we dont have the K, just the regular, eitherway these were fastest computers (lenovo thinkcenter) we have, but there weren't many of em, most were with the i5 (HP Elitedesk G1)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Or they could just have been infected. Especially the ones on Windows 8, which has been EoL for over a year.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

When I was in high school, computers had Deep Freeze setup, because kids would constantly break the OS and download malware. It's a software that resets the C drive to a known state on every reboot. You might consider using something similar on classroom workstations.

Also, it might be worth learning about network booting, automating the Linux installer and ansible to install things on every machine at once and automate configuration work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

my school also had windows with deep freeze before they malfunctioned or smth iirc from what principal told me

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

Yeah, that was also what was used in my school.

The only problem was, it was rarely updated so all the applications were always very outdated. And it was still possible to play Minecraft without any administrator privileges.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's an awesome story. If all your doing is browsing the Web or using applications that can easily and stably run on linux or have drop in replacements then linux would definitely be totally viable. On the other hand if you need to install specific proprietary applications and you have to rely on wine then maybe not.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

luckily its just VSCode, so I didnt have to install something thats too hard!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yoo that's wild man doing gods (Richard Stallman) work here man.

Great initiative nonetheless. Compared to 8 this much more secure and for programming it's a great choice too. Bringing more life out of some old PCs, saving a school money, and forcing some kids to get creative in order to play Roblox.

As for is it ready fr this application, programming, it has been for a while. For general, especially web based, applications it absolutely is. Of course, there are quite few things were it's just not but for the most part Linux is a great choice.

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

thanks, gotta push GNU/Linux a bit higher in marketshare huh xd

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Mint's a great choice for beginners, especially for those used to windows

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

I allways wonder why its mint and not kde, which seems more mature and even more like windows.

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

Mint's a distro and KDE's a desktop environment. You can install KDE on mint

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

this, people who are afraid of new things won't pick something thats too different to windows

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

Nice work, you did a good thing 😊

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