33 German Universities Migrate to Suse Linux

Article : http://www.linuxwins.com/33-german-u...to-suse-linux/
Around 560,000 students in 33 German Universities will soon be running
SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop Platform! Covered at ComputerWeekly.
The move is designed to give the colleges a cheaper sytem whilst also
giving them a more flexible IT architecture when compared to other
proprietary software.

-humanclone
USC los Angeles
www.nachofoto.com

humanclone schrieb:
> Article :
> http://www.linuxwins.com/33-german-u...to-suse-linux/
> Around 560,000 students in 33 German Universities will soon be running
> SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop Platform! Covered at ComputerWeekly. The
> move is designed to give the colleges a cheaper sytem whilst also giving
> them a more flexible IT architecture when compared to other proprietary
> software.
>
Well, the context is important.

When I was at university (~1994, in Germany), most desktop computers
available to the students ran HP-UX, Solaris or similar. MS-Windows was an
option at the second university I attended (dual-boot). Another (mostly
non-technical) university a friend attended at had SuSE5.x driven computers
some years ago.

UN*X and clones are there in German universities, I think all universities
around the world, for a long term now. MS-Windows wasn't suitable for the
software they need until ~1995. In the time between 1995 and now, a lot of
academic software became available for MS-Windows, so some universities
moved to MS-Windows because of cost reasons (x86 PC running MS-Windows vs.
Workstation/Mainframe running UN*X).

But the people at the computing centers are mostly the same than 10 years
ago (it's public service, so what do you expect?). No wonder they like to
switch back to UN*X, now that Linux dropped the cost to or even under the
MS-Windows level.

Kind regards

Jan

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:38:33 +0200, Jan Kandziora wrote:

> When I was at university (~1994, in Germany), most desktop computers
> available to the students ran HP-UX, Solaris or similar. MS-Windows was an
> option at the second university I attended (dual-boot). Another (mostly
> non-technical) university a friend attended at had SuSE5.x driven computers
> some years ago.

I was surprised to read this! I have some fleeting familiarity with
Frankfurt/Main but mainly one Fach. years ago (seven or more?) the
secretary was using some kind of DOS machine.

right now everyone I know (in two or three Fächer) use Windows XP. (it's
not that I know tons and tons of people so the sample is small.)

I guess it was really different in different parts of Germany. or maybe
it's the difference between technical disciplines and social sciences and
humanities?

Felmon

humanclone wrote:
> Article : http://www.linuxwins.com/33-german-u...to-suse-linux/
> Around 560,000 students in 33 German Universities will soon be running
> SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop Platform! Covered at ComputerWeekly.
> The move is designed to give the colleges a cheaper sytem whilst also
> giving them a more flexible IT architecture when compared to other
> proprietary software.
>
> -humanclone
> USC los Angeles
> www.nachofoto.com
>
What are these Germans doing?

We all know that all PCs come with MS Windows and an assortment of other
products from the MS stable. Since industry and commerce uses MS
products, it is natural that the universities that provide the training
grounds for such enterprises SHOULD use MS products. QED!!

Some how the students at these 33 universities are going to only use the
computers provided by these universities. Not from my experience. Most
university students today have there own PC. Some how SuSe is going to
jump onto the MS-ready PC. Interesting. I would like to know how this
is accomplished.

I did my graduate work in computer science at a 'research university' in
Australia. Windows was used not only in that department, but throughout
the university. When I arrived at that university I was staggered to
see C language programming being tought using Windows. Nobody, or very
few people at the university in general, had seen this relationship:
Standard Open source
--------------------------------
Word vim/LaTeX/acrobat
Powerpoint beamer/acrobat
Excel gnumeric
mathlab maxima/octave
SPSS R
Photoshop gimp
Endnote bibTeX
.. ..
Despite the price for the open source product being of the right price,
they were never used. Instead active support was/is provided within the
university for the 'standard' product. Now I am tutoring Un*x operating
system internals at that same university, and am having difficulty
getting a stable platform on which the students can perform the
tutorials. Of course the platform must be built on Windows. Even dual
booting is considered dangerous to the university's network. But
students come from around the world to that university to learn and be
exposed to the best practise; something to carry into the future. Is
the contradiction that I see becoming clear.

Now there is an indication that such practise may not be best. Quiet
.... don't upset the system. Don' upset the apple card. Let sleeping
dogs lie. etc. etc.

Ross

On Aug 30, 3:14 am, felmon davis <dav...@union.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:38:33 +0200, Jan Kandziora wrote:
> > When I was at university (~1994, in Germany), most desktop computers
> > available to the students ran HP-UX, Solaris or similar. MS-Windows wasan
> > option at the second university I attended (dual-boot). Another (mostly
> > non-technical) university a friend attended at had SuSE5.x driven computers
> > some years ago.
>
> I was surprised to read this! I have some fleeting familiarity with
> Frankfurt/Main but mainly one Fach. years ago (seven or more?) the
> secretary was using some kind of DOS machine.
>
> right now everyone I know (in two or three Fächer) use Windows XP. (it's
> not that I know tons and tons of people so the sample is small.)
>
> I guess it was really different in different parts of Germany. or maybe
> it's the difference between technical disciplines and social sciences and
> humanities?
>
> Felmon

i think you mean in the 60s or 70s by <back-then>.
Germany and Holland are one of the first countries using open
softwares.
imagine that once i went to get a new glasses back in 2000 from an
optician in Delft and they were using RH on all their systems.


zaher el siddik

felmon davis schrieb:
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:38:33 +0200, Jan Kandziora wrote:
>
>> When I was at university (~1994, in Germany), most desktop computers
>> available to the students ran HP-UX, Solaris or similar. MS-Windows was
>> an option at the second university I attended (dual-boot). Another
>> (mostly non-technical) university a friend attended at had SuSE5.x driven
>> computers some years ago.
>
> I was surprised to read this! I have some fleeting familiarity with
> Frankfurt/Main but mainly one Fach. years ago (seven or more?) the
> secretary was using some kind of DOS machine.
>
In accounting and such, things were not different from company computing ==
DOS->Windows. I talked about computers for academic purposes.


> right now everyone I know (in two or three Fächer) use Windows XP. (it's
> not that I know tons and tons of people so the sample is small.)
>
Yes. But I think it's changing again. At least for the academic software.

Kind regards

Jan

On 2007-08-30, Ross Maloney wrote:
> humanclone wrote:
>> Article : http://www.linuxwins.com/33-german-u...to-suse-linux/
>> Around 560,000 students in 33 German Universities will soon be running
>> SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop Platform! Covered at ComputerWeekly.
>> The move is designed to give the colleges a cheaper sytem whilst also
>> giving them a more flexible IT architecture when compared to other
>> proprietary software.
>
> What are these Germans doing?

The right thing.

> We all know that all PCs come with MS Windows and an assortment of other
> products from the MS stable.

I know no such thing. No computer I have ever bought has had
Windows on it (including x86 boxes).

> Since industry and commerce uses MS products, it is natural that the
> universities that provide the training grounds for such enterprises
> SHOULD use MS products. QED!!

Industry and commerce are using and have always used a great deal
of non-MS OSs and software.

> Some how the students at these 33 universities are going to only use the
> computers provided by these universities. Not from my experience. Most
> university students today have there own PC. Some how SuSe is going to
> jump onto the MS-ready PC. Interesting. I would like to know how this
> is accomplished.

Put a SUSE CD/DVD in the drive and reboot.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author | <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes: | My code in this post, if any,
A Problem-Solution Approach | is released under the
2005, Apress | GNU General Public Licence

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:17:48 +0000, elsiddik wrote:

> On Aug 30, 3:14 am, felmon davis <dav...@union.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:38:33 +0200, Jan Kandziora wrote:
>> > When I was at university (~1994, in Germany), most desktop computers
>> > available to the students ran HP-UX, Solaris or similar. MS-Windows
>> > was an option at the second university I attended (dual-boot).
>> > Another (mostly non-technical) university a friend attended at had
>> > SuSE5.x driven computers some years ago.
>>
>> I was surprised to read this! I have some fleeting familiarity with
>> Frankfurt/Main but mainly one Fach. years ago (seven or more?) the
>> secretary was using some kind of DOS machine.
>>
>> right now everyone I know (in two or three Fächer) use Windows XP.
>> (it's not that I know tons and tons of people so the sample is small.)
>>
>> I guess it was really different in different parts of Germany. or maybe
>> it's the difference between technical disciplines and social sciences
>> and humanities?
>>
>> Felmon
>
> i think you mean in the 60s or 70s by <back-then>. Germany and Holland
> are one of the first countries using open softwares.
> imagine that once i went to get a new glasses back in 2000 from an
> optician in Delft and they were using RH on all their systems.
>
>
> zaher el siddik

I wasn't sure if you were replying to me or not but just a comment: all of
this evidence is 'anecdotal' and so it isn't worth very much so, for what
it's worth, the last time I was in a German bank talking to a consultant,
the consultant was using WinXP. this was HypoBank in December.

but I had this funny joking conversation with one of the security guys at
the airport who pulled me aside to check my laptop for suspicious chemical
substances (he didn't care what _I_ was on!); he wanted to run some kind
of detector over the keyboard and I joked that I hoped he wouldn't delete
my data to which he said, "yes, it wipe your data and then install Linux
on the computer!"

I think he meant by the joke ("install Linux") that my data would not only
be wiped but overlaid by something 'cryptic' but it was nonetheless a
surprise to me he knew something about Linux. of course the 'serious'
business at hand prevented any further chat.

I am sure Linux is used a lot in German universities, for instance the
servers at Frankfurt are some kind of Linux (or Unix), but in my
experience the desktops are, in the disciplines I've visited, Windows
throughout.

Felmon

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:52:54 +0200, Jan Kandziora wrote:

>> I was surprised to read this! I have some fleeting familiarity with
>> Frankfurt/Main but mainly one Fach. years ago (seven or more?) the
>> secretary was using some kind of DOS machine.
>>
> In accounting and such, things were not different from company computing ==
> DOS->Windows. I talked about computers for academic purposes.
>
>
>> right now everyone I know (in two or three Fächer) use Windows XP. (it's
>> not that I know tons and tons of people so the sample is small.)
>>
> Yes. But I think it's changing again. At least for the academic software.

I am not sure what you mean by 'academic software'.

the people I know in Germany do various kinds of research. none are
however technicians or natural scientists. they all, with a couple
exceptions, use Win XP. they mostly write things so it's Word.

for browsing a lot of them use Firefox. I offered one friend OpenOffice a
couple of yrs ago but it didn't work well enough for her (on Win XP) -
problems with footnotes and font irregularities.

anyway, they (my acquaintances) are well aware of 'free' software but
Linux hasn't penetrated through to them.

I guess, since the server is Linux or Unix, you could say they all have
used Linux for years as 'academic software'!

but I am sure it is different in different länder and in different
fächer.

Felmon

felmon davis schrieb:
>
> I am not sure what you mean by 'academic software'.
>
> the people I know in Germany do various kinds of research. none are
> however technicians or natural scientists.
>
I mean e.g. FEM and simulation software. This is serious computing stuff.
Other people probably are probably happier with paper and pencil, thus
avoiding endless frustration with computer problems they don't know (and
don't want to know) how to fix.


> they all, with a couple
> exceptions, use Win XP. they mostly write things so it's Word.
>
Math people would prefer LaTex. Ok, I knew some law students, too. They use
a word processor, as it is simple to use (like paper and pencil), and you
get the benefit of unlimited undo. Usually this is MS Word, but as MS Word
is notoriously unable to work on long documents and has various problems on
footnotes, chapter and section title sorting and indexing and such, some
indeed *are* frustrated with it.

BUMMER: The most important frustration comes at the end, when they want to
get their thesis printed. Another friend of mine works at a digital
printing shop and knows about the most absurd problems you can run into
with stuff the people want to have printed. Expecting the (color) printout
of their thesis would look like the MS Word stuff on their TFT without
supplying its ICC profile (what's that?) or even know only the model is the
latest news from printing hell.


>
> for browsing a lot of them use Firefox. I offered one friend OpenOffice a
> couple of yrs ago but it didn't work well enough for her (on Win XP) -
> problems with footnotes and font irregularities.
>
Well, this usually is caused by importing MS Word documents and expecting
OO.org to get it right without further tweaking. If MS Word doesn't get its
own footnotes right, how is OO.org expected to do it?


> anyway, they (my acquaintances) are well aware of 'free' software but
> Linux hasn't penetrated through to them.
>
ACK. Free as in beer.


Kind regards

Jan