[GLLUG] My Tech Suggestions

[Karl Schuttler]

Steven,

I think your approach is nice in nature, but likely wont happen. I
agree highly with Clay. I've worked quite a bit with the tech
department at DeWitt school district and have found that while changes
to linux might be optimistic, it is highly unrealistic. One has a
rather good argument if you say that teaching kids linux versus
Windows leaves them unprepared, given the market share. If you want to
get Open Source involved, you need to do it one little app at a time.
Open Office seems like the best candidate, because it is well rounded,
can save to so many file formats, etc.

If you are interested in making this switch, I would suggest talking
to Sherry McVay (smcvay at>dewitt.edzone.net) and asking her what her
best approach would be, and also to possibly get her to speak to them
or write them a letter. Switching things like this really isn't as
simple as it seems; as it is a government organization, there is
always red tape to cut through, and I know Sherry cut through a lot of
it.

When you request/suggest changes, be very courteous.

Karl

On 9/27/07, michael at watters.ws <michael at watters.ws> wrote:
> > To me it sounds well thought out - I'm not sure what school system you are
> > in.
>
> Most of it sounds good, it could use some better wording though. Your NTFS
> example is invalid as well, NTFS does not fragment like it used to, it's a
> fairly robust file system with modern features (journaling, symlinks,
> etc.)
>
> I don't think the government not switching to Linux is because of Bill
> Gates. Sure they get price breaks (practically free) but the U.S.
> government is one of MS' biggest customers and it is THE standard for all
> users. The time it takes to reinstall the OS on thousands of systems and
> retrain users costs way more than just paying a license fee, they also
> hate change like you said.
>
> Windows is also C2 certified which is a requirement for government
> systems, I know one of the distros was working on this but it's not
> standard.
>
> For firewalls I'd just buy a cisco, sure they cost more but it's worth it.
> Squid would be great as a web proxy.
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