this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
1422 points (98.6% liked)

Linux

53752 readers
1870 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
1422
I swapped the entire school computers to linux mint (europe.pub)
submitted 1 day ago by Ace120C@sopuli.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml
310 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.)

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

Is there not some kind of RMM software you could be using to install the same setup on all of them simultaneously? How about monitoring? Firewalls?

[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 minutes ago

Wish I could do that when my school computers had Dos and Turbo Pascal. Ah, the good old himem.sys times. Miles better than W11.

[–] Jocker@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 minutes ago

Liberation

[–] Alaknar@lemm.ee 14 points 1 hour ago (2 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.

[–] the_q@lemm.ee 8 points 43 minutes ago

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

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 3 points 59 minutes ago

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.

[–] andybytes@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 9 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 hours 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.

[–] towelie@lemm.ee 22 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 hour ago

thanks!

[–] aqua_cat@pawb.social 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Would Edubuntu be a better fit?

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 12 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 27 points 8 hours ago (3 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.)

[–] Littux@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

Every government school here uses Linux. And there's no security (password is "password" even for root account). The only reason it works is because everyone has common sense on what they shouldn't do. The worst any kid could do is visit a "bad" site on a browser because no one knows how to do anything else.

Even the exam software assumes you don't know how things in Linux works:

  • The scores and answers are stored in simple non-encrypted SQLite3 databases at a directory in /usr/share.
  • During the exam, the panel for launching applications is hidden, so you can't cheat on questions like "What does this tool do in GIMP?" by opening GIMP. But you can just do Ctrl + Alt + T to launch the Terminal and Alt + Tab to switch to it.

I easily qualified for a State level competition where the education minister visited and had big news agencies visiting that made up a lot of nonsense. You can probably guess what the average student will be like from this

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 2 points 6 hours 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Biyoo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours 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

[–] vandsjov@feddit.dk 1 points 1 hour ago

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 😆

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 6 points 7 hours ago

yes exactly, its a win win all around

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

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.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 9 hours ago (6 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

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 35 points 11 hours 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.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 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... it all gives an unmaintained vibe.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 5 points 8 hours ago

And this is supposed to be a tech school....

[–] ThelastfingerofH@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

They probably are, At the UTP in Panama they will contact some students (based on what idk presumably on impressions of performance) to do IT for them, it's not technically an internship it's a regular job that's part time

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 hours ago

not yet, might ask if I could be

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 hours 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.

[–] tibi@lemmy.world 24 points 11 hours 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.

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 1 points 54 minutes ago

I was thinking more like using an immutable or atomic os instead, like bazzite or bluefin. At least then you get regular updates, and core functionality is safely protected.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] bonnashejve 7 points 9 hours ago (3 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

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 16 points 11 hours ago (4 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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] harcesz@szmer.info 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago

based

[–] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 19 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Bill Gates is responsible for Common Core which has enshitified the education systems of many states. Anything the schools do to stop giving money to Microsoft is a good move.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 30 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Roblox in the trash AHAHAHAHA

Beautiful effort!!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] termaxima@programming.dev 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That’s pretty cool !

If I had to do this myself, I would probably choose NixOS, so that I could write up a config on one of the PCs, and the deploy the exact same thing on every single one and be certain the build is perfectly reproduced.

Though I’m sure there are similar tools for other distros, but that’s what I know.

[–] Ace120C@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago

I considered it but prinicipal said no its "too hard" for them, maybe next time

load more comments
view more: next ›