malcolm wrote:
I work in a school and we are thinking about Linux
I put some test machines out - Fedora, Suse and Ubuntu
The view of the students was Fedora was the best ..great so far
Then we did the KDE v Gnome thing - Gnome won ... even better
Then I asked the question - so what do you think of Linux ?
'It sucks ! ' was the almost universal response ( students aged 11 to
18 )
Why I asked .. It never falls over, XP dies all the time ... true they
said
OO is just like Office to use and doesn't munge up documents .. also
true they said
It will save the school £20000 per year, so why does it suck
Because we can't watch Yahoo music videos and that was it - Ok I did
point out that
they weren't suppose to be watching them at all really but that
doesn't cut much ice with
teenagers. So the problem is this - I am never going to get this off
the ground if I don't have
the support of the kids. Windows Media is my Linux killer -
Codeweavers are OK but
only support WMP 6.4 - I've never got gxine to work properly and the
Linux version of Real Player
won't do the 'universal player' trick that the Windows one does.
Even the most angst ridden teenager admitted that 99% of Linux was
better than the Windows
equivalent but not one of them wanted to use it simply because of the
lack of Windows Media plugins
If it is not allowed then you should support the policy and not allow
it. That said, technically speaking:
You could use the new VMware Player and create a controlled XP instance
that you copy to these FedoraCore systems. I've got the Linux VMware
Player but I've only used the Windows version (to show people the
benefits of FC4 on their work system). But it is really easy to use and
might be technical solution.
However, I think the enforcement of policy is your real problem. If you
not going to enforce it... Then why did you create the policy to begin
with? To show the kids that they can pick and choose what policies suit
them? That will be a big epiphany for them when they try that in the
work place.
