Idea #2622: Work for interoperability with existing educational software

Written by Kent88 the 3 Mar 08 at 00:22. Category: Education.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

I am a university student, and I run a dual-boot machine solely because some university software will only run on windows or mac (mostly just windows). I'm not just talking about an office suite, there are other things, like lab paper submission software, special software used in engineering, math, and other classes.

Find out from universities what type of software their students need for classes. Work with these companies for real native Linux versions. I don't care if I pay a license fee for it, I just want to be able to do my homework without booting to windows.

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Auzy wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 08:12

Like have an Eduntu I assume.

Doable

Kent88 wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 10:24

I don't need any special new version of Ubuntu. If this idea gets taken up I'd want to use Kubuntu and just add the software, Edubuntu is geared to much toward children, its something I wish I'd had about 15 years ago.

jmphilippe wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 21:05

You'd rather run your windows inside a virtual machine such as VirtualBox. Maybe a good piece of software would consist in moving a real windows install into a VirtualBox image file if there is enough room on disk. Linux newbies will also all be happy to see their initial OS still working from Ubuntu!

Kent88 wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 21:35

No, I'd rather run everything natively in Linux.

I know a couple people who tried running windows in virtual machines, but they said that for the amount of time they spent setting it up it really wasn't worth it.

bescritt wrote on the 17 Mar 08 at 23:34

"I don't care if I pay a license fee for it"
is a rather reckless thing to say, don't you think?

erlyrisa wrote on the 29 Mar 08 at 17:53

strangely enough only less than 8 years ago Msoft was almost void in Australian Universities. Unix was the way to go..cheaper and maintainable (and the only real netwroking OS anyway)

dunno what happened?

some-how the salesreps at Msoft just beat Linux to the punch

(Msoft licenses for Uni's are practically free anyway so it really doesn't concern the Uni's budget - it's comparable to the price of a new paint job in a Dorm room: quit negligible)

Kent88 wrote on the 3 Apr 08 at 18:50

The reason I saw that don't care about paying license fees for my school-related software is that I feel it is the same as buying a book. No one WANTS to spend money on a lot of books they have to take back in a year, but we do anyway.

Plus this could save me money on future computer purchases. I might need a new computer in a semester or two, and I'd rather not have to fork over a lot of money for something that runs vista on it so I can dual-boot just to do homework. Everything balances out in some way or another, and I'd get to use my OS of choice.

I don't really care if special student licenses make M$ and windoze software dirt cheap, I want to use Linux. To me, this whole "special student licensing" is just a way to get people to learn and get used to Windows, and keep the monopoly going.

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