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The Case for Linux in Universities
Dan Kegel has written up a
lengthy document on why universities should be teaching Linux to their
students. It's a very good start, but he's seeking feedback on ways to
make it more complete and convincing.
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The Case for Linux in Universities Posted Oct 2, 2002 15:25 UTC (Wed) by dougm (subscriber, #4615) [Link] Wow! What an excellent and well-researched writeup. Kudos to Dan K.
Lab computers Posted Oct 2, 2002 16:47 UTC (Wed) by gtb (subscriber, #3978) [Link] <meta> Are you sure Dan wants feedback? His page doesn't say so, and it doesn't seem to feature his e-mail address either. </meta>Anyway, one aspect I couldn't find in Dan's otherwise excellent document is that Linux is a big win on the computers that control scientific experiments. Linux's most compelling selling points in this domain include: 1) stability: Experiments have to run for weeks without interruption, often on buggy, exotic hardware. 2) patchability: The hardware in physical and chemical experiments is often so exotic that people need home-made drivers to run it. With Linux, you are likely to find a kernel patch on the Web, written by a fellow natural scientist who depends on its operation just as desperately as you do. Windows drivers, on the other hand, tend to be crappy for exotic hardware, if they're available at all. 3) Realtime: If you have hard real-time requirements in your experiment, just apply the RT-Linux patch. On the other hand, the closest thing Microsoft has to a real-time operating system is DOS, which isn't for sale anymore. Hope that helps :-)
Lab computers Posted Oct 2, 2002 17:48 UTC (Wed) by ehovland (subscriber, #2284) [Link] > Are you sure Dan wants feedback?Yes, when he announced the document to the general community he said this was a draft and comments were appreciated.
No Email, some other suggestions Posted Oct 2, 2002 17:48 UTC (Wed) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link] I grepped the source of the main page, http://www.kegel.com and there is no mailto: defined. I clicked over to his Caltech alumnus linked University page,http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/ and there is similarly no email address. I get the feeling he definitely doesn't want to be bothered. I found his paper lacking in some necessary substance. I study in the Electrical (ECE) department, focusing on digital design. Our professors are of a practical nature. They've done the time to develop curiculae revolving around certain software, and that software must always be available. It is unreasonable to request they change from something they know, and more importantly, that they can practically accomplish work with. Work is more important than philosophy, to engineers. So, I would recommend adding a comparative analysis of university level applications. Some good pairs: MS Word <-> OpenOffice Some other applications which I use, and I believe they prevent the adoption of Linux because they are only available in Windows versions: MaxPlus is made by Altera, for use with their Alter FPGA's. They do not offer their UNIX version to students, and there is no equivalent hardware+software pair. I've used gEDA, but it doesn't cut it for many needs, still too immature (maybe it has been improved since I last used it). I've downloaded a couple of PSPice packages here and there, but none of them were up to par, or gave similar results to the DesignLab PSPice software. At the moment, I am very dependent on VMware to run these things, and I would not expect a University to pay $100/seat (or some negotiated academic price) plus a full copy of the Windows license. Also, my university has a site license - all students can download many MS products, price distributed over per-semester academic fees (some call this free). AutoCAD still costs a lot. Some days I feel like a Linux project waiting to happen, since I know hardware and C.
No Email, some other suggestions Posted Oct 2, 2002 18:57 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] For electronic CAD, all the leading EDA firms provide almost all their tools for Linux. For ASIC design, in fact, many tools are available only for Unix and Linux, and not for any Windows operating system. Do you think that nVidia and their like design their chips on Windows? Nope. They use Solaris or Linux, and increasingly the latter.
No Email, some other suggestions Posted Oct 2, 2002 23:55 UTC (Wed) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link] This is great news. Hopefully, when I enter the commercial world, I won't be bound to Windows. As for the electonic CAD stuff, I would be interested in some suggestions, specifically to the need:VHDL entry Currently, this is what Altera Corporation offers to many professors. The Alter in-house developed MaxPLUS program is very simple to use for students entering their first significant digital design class. The UPX student board has a large CPLD and 70k gate FPGA, plus JTAG input for a nice $150 US. Torsten
Another software package available under linux... Posted Oct 2, 2002 20:41 UTC (Wed) by newren (subscriber, #5160) [Link] Someone else already responded about some of the software you mentioned being available for linux. I didn't know about that, but I do know about another package you mentioned. You seemed to imply (I could be wrong, but that's how it came across to me) that a transfer from Windows to Linux would require a transfer from matlab to octave and gnuplot. However, if you have matlab for windows then there should be no problem in getting matlab for unix or linux. In fact, I've hardly used matlab under Windows but have used it a great deal under *nix. In fact, it was quite a while after I started using matlab before I knew it was available for windows (and maybe I didn't know about it because it really wasn't available--I don't know).Of course, it is good to point out octave + gnuplot, as the Mathworks (creators of matlab) have developed a monopoly and are becoming highly Microsoft-ish.
The Case for Linux in Universities Posted Oct 2, 2002 22:20 UTC (Wed) by kanchana (guest, #3734) [Link] Very nice write-up. Most people (Gartner, IDC etc) think that Linux in Desktop will not come anywhere near MS. I think they have to re-think about this. Markets such as China, India, South East Asia and Africa are just opening. The combined opportunity here is around 500-750million Desktops. With what Linux as to offer today and future, MS will have to fight hard to acquire these markets. My predictions are by 2010 Linux will have at least 30-40% of the desktop market. So I will not be surprise that MS decides to put MS Office on Linux.
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