A Reading List for Linux in the Classroom

Barton,

I too had an MSDN subscription in the late 90s, and it's really a good thing that Microsoft does. In fact, up until last weekend when I lost a CD case, I still had some of the CDs. I hadn't used them in years, but I always wondered whether I would find them useful (I still consult on multiplatform development). Your comments got me thinking.

The beauty of the MSDN subscription is that for about $1k a year, you got the latest updates and software. Period. But my ability to pay for that hinged on whether I was making enough to pay for the subscription; I did. And while most of the CDs were useless to me, I always had options within the proprietary software and platform.

So here's the thing: Most distributions do have the latest stable releases of things with every download. If you don't have them, you have the ability to download them. And while I was watching a friend install SuSE last night on a T22 ThinkPad, I got to see the updates in action on SuSE (I've never used SuSE).

So let's face it. The tools are available with every decent distribution, much like an MSDN subscription. And that's a cool thing to consider, because the corporate Linux end of things hasn't really spoken much about it - in fact, they probably don't *know* much about it. With Linux, it's irrelevant. Or is it?

Sneaking around on one of those CDS was the MSDN library - which is fairly useless until you figure out how to get what you want from it (my last experience being around Visual Studio 6.0; I always have seen .Net as DCOM in drag). But Linux severely lacks in this area, and unless you want vendor lock-in (a point of contention) you just don't get decent documentation.

Some recent discussions on email lists related to the Digital Divide have been talking about similar things... and have also been pretty hard on the Linux advocates, while inadvertently defending the MS advocates. The main argument is that the students eventually end up in the workforce. And Microsoft is a reality in the workforce.

The real answer is that more than one operating system should be taught in schools if we expect schools to be institutions of education. And that means both. While I love Linux, I have to deal with the reality of Windows in NGOs and other institutions. It's not that Linux isn't good enough, it's that Linux isn't the only operating system. It is increasing in use, and giving students options is what will make it a more popular operating system.

Interoperability is the key. But first, we need some good documentation.