this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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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.

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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] 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Cool story bro.

Except the story is actually cool, and you're a real bro!

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Great job! Now it's a good time to learn a bit of Ansible so you can keep your fleet up-to-date and configured. It would also come in handy in case you get a permit to do more conversions in the future.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Linux is so good today. Windows is increasingly shooting itself in the foot and MacOS requires a huge premium (and also billionaires suck) which is increasingly incompatible with budget conscious sectors like education. Really great stuff if you're managing to get people to love it there.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago (4 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.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Does your school have an it department? If not maybe that can be a job for you. Someone will need to maintain that fleet.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (5 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days 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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (8 children)
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Sweet.

I would have gone with Fedora in order to deploy FreeIPA for an Active Directory equivalent, but this is a good start.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days 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!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Is linux ready for the education sector? Kinda depends on the tools involved.

If its a google classroom kind of workflow and or everything is done in the browser, absolutely. Theres a reason Chromebooks got popular for schools, not just cause they're cheap, but being more locked down and basically only useful for in browser work made them a good alternative to Windows machines.

However, some stuff specific to certain courses or classes may not be compatible with linux. Something like a photo editing college course that requires adobe (ew) would be an example.

I'd personally love to see Linux in the education sector more. With immutable distros, no licensing costs, and lower hardware requirements, Linux is likely going to be really attractive to schools that are looking for alternatives.

So sick that you were able to do this. Kudos for taking the initiative and making your community better.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Linux has been ready for education for a long time! Most of the public high school machines I interacted with in the mid 2000s were linux based. There was a dedicated Mac lab for creative work.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days 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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

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

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