Canadian British Columbia's School District opts for Debian GNU Linux
contributed by andremachado, published on Sun May 4 14:24:45 2008 in success-stories
Canadian British Columbia's School District #73 opts for Debian GNU / Linux
Kamloops Thompson School District #73, British Columbia, Canada, with 55 elementary and secondary schools, chose a majority of open source software on Debian GNU / Linux as it is easier to maintain and in their experience offers better support.
Dean Montgomery, network support technician and programmer for District #73, stated in an interview: "In 15 minutes I can update OpenOffice[.org] on thousands of diskless workstations. This beats ghosting [proprietary Operating Systems (OS)] hard drives."
Having used other proprietary OS and Linux distributions before, in mid 2006 they moved over to Debian GNU / Linux because it is significantly easier to keep up-to-date.
"We get better support with open source software: online wiki's, forums, mailing lists, etc, are much faster and better to get support than phoning up to [a proprietary OS company] and listening to someone read off answers from flash cards."
Even older kids get their work done on Debian GNU / Linux. "Once the students see how much they can customize and tweak KDE desktop and play with Beryl 3D [(now Compiz-Fusion)] desktop, they like Debian GNU / Linux more than [proprietary OS]."
"We give everyone FreeNX access to their Debian GNU / Linux desktop from home so they can get all the same programs without having to install [Debian GNU /] Linux at home."
Montgomery believes a crucial aspect of migrating to Linux or open sourced based software is training. And that student kids learn faster than technicians, secretaries and librarians. "If you don't know how to do something in Linux - just ask the students," he advised.
Read the complete interview at this page. Watch a sample video of Debian with Compiz-Fusion.
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