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] 70 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

Just a funny story, but, I use an Ubuntu laptop as my work computer as a teacher, and once, while I was helping another student with work, a student opened my laptop and began trying to install Roblox. She got far enough to figure out it wouldn't work, and started searching for how to install it. When I came over she was trying to figure out how to set up Wine. She got pretty close to getting it working before I came over. I was secretly pretty impressed with how fast she figured it out. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That’s super awesome

Buuuut my guest gaming machine is a 4670k machine and I can confirm that not only does Windows 10 run very smoothly on it, but it also runs most modern games at 60+FPS! CPU-bound games can struggle. We finally got my partner a new computer and made that one the guest machine when Persona 5 went from 80FPS down to 5FPS when they got off the train hahaha

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

oh haha I see, I've been using linux for 5 years so far and I have been ONLY gaming on linux, I have ditched windows for good, this switch was very easy to me cuz I dont have any windows specfic apps/games dependency, everything I want is there, and the ones that aren't, there are alternatives that are the same or better than the apps I've used on windows!

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

Oh and I should specify my old guest machine does have 16GB of RAM, solid state drives, and an RTX2070, so it’s probably a bit better equipped than school machines hahaha

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

Ugh I would love to switch solely to Linux but I have ONE GAME that I play online with friends that’s an incredibly ridiculous install process and it is impossible to run on Linux without issues. It’s amazing that it even runs on Windows nowadays. (The Specialists, a mod for the original Half Life.)

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

ancient windows 8

😠

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

* Angry in 20 year old Edubuntu *

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

windows 8 is 13 years old.....

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

13 years old is ancient to you?

My mouse is older than that...

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

idk, windows 8 is super dated to me as it tried so hard to appeal to the tablet crowd, however dated or not this wasn't the point of the post....

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Don't forget to test updates and make timeshift backups when needed, I never had a bad update but it really helps.

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

A delayed update schedule really helps for environments like this. Keep your ear to the ground for critical updates, but I've done this sort of thing a few times and waiting a week or two to update is a really great solution.

One thing I've almost done before is to choose a computer as a test subject, update it before anything else, and if all things are good you're probably fine.

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

I shall offer this to the principal, thanks for reminding me!

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Linux was always ready for the education sector. I think already for 10 years now.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

fair enough, I just hope at some point schools and organizations switches to the cool penguin.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

Back in my days I was also disappointed that schools weren't using Linux. So I totally agree with you.

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

How did you install them? One by one? Wouldn't this be the perfect case for fedora's atomic distros?

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

yes, one by one, and I choose mint because It was approachable, and thats what I showed to the principal to convince him to let me do this in the first place, and oh I didnt know there was an atomic version of fedora

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

I don't judge you for the choice. It's an honest question since you take care of a lot of computers and with ublue you have good control over the machines

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

oh no make no mistake, I was not implying that, I'm just explaining why I choose mint, I now learned that there are distros that can be deployed on multiple PCs at once thanks to you, so thanks a bunch!

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

Holy shit if there’s that much dust on the front grille of the computer I can’t even imagine how much is caked on the internal heat sinks. I bet you could literally double the speed of these computers with a vacuum or air blower.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

probably but I wasn't allowed to open them (Its too much work for 20+ computers) but atm they got double the speed compared to before with windows

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

They really need to clean the computers out or they may eventually cook themselves and then nothing will run on them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

might tell the principle that tbh, we'll see what he's gonna do about it.

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

The issues are probably gonna pop up when teachers and students bring incompatible ms office documents from home, and start complaining. Excel is the one I have run in to most, not always being compatible with libreoffice.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

we are a programming school we dont use word processing software, however as for the teachers, we decided to keep windows for them

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Next month: The principal complains that the students play SuperTuxKart now. :)

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

lmaooooo, well they have to touch the terminal or figured out that there is a software store first.....and know the sudo password kek

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

they are newbies, who are accustomed to windows, I doubt they'll know how to get games on linux yet, however they might figure it out if they learned how, and thats lowkey also good cuz they get to know how to use the OS

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

I wouldn't be shocked if more schools start looking for open source options as their funding gets cut by the current regime.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago

Germany already moved their tech stack to FOSS alternatives for their government assigned computers!

there is actual progress that's being made 🥳

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

Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:

  • LibreOffice can create really nice documents and presentations too. Heck, some tasks are more straightforward in LibreOffice than MS. 99% of schoolwork is done in Office suite, so this is nice. Win for Linux

  • For stuff like coding in C or Python, it is even easier in Linux: download a compiler, open a text editor, type some codes then use terminal to run the codes in 10 minutes. In Windows, you need to download the stupid Cygwin and mess around with environmental variables to get Cygwin to recognize the libraries.... Or if you want to automate things, MS Visual Studio will do that. The only downside is you will lose > 10 GB of space. Linux wins here again.

  • Anything more advanced will unfortunately Windows land. I'm talking about advanced image programs like Photoshop or professional video apps. But again, if you need them then might as well get a Mac. Another hiccup would be in CAD software: Linux just doesnt have a good app.

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

tbf with all due respect Screw Adobe, idek why people even use their products, KDENLive and GIMP serve well, for the tasks I doing, and even if you want something more advanced, there is davinci resolve, it's proprietary software but its forgivable if KDENLive isn't cutting it for you

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And IMO if one of those students can get Roblox working on Linux, they have solved a harder problem than any homework they would be given 😆.

I'm curious how ootb mint works out for this usecase. Any chance we could get a 6mo update later? I'm particularly curious how well it holds up against non-admin users who may constantly be trying to get root-level access. There's almost certainly going to be one student who figures out a local privilege escalation.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure! I might even make a follow up to explain the whole thing in detail, however I fear it may be too long for one post, should I perhaps make an entry in a neocities website I just finished making? I could probably make it like a diary with detailed entries and stuff, idk if yall up for it, otherwise I'll just post it here in parts.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

but right now, I'm tired, so I'll probably write it tomorrow.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Minecraft Java Edition runs natively in Linux. But kids these days are probably playing Bedrock... chumps.

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

probably, I haven't been paying that much attention to them on class tbh lmao

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