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Linux in Italian schools - five months later
Back in September, LWN ran an
article about the FUSS project, which converted the entire computing
infrastructure for the Italian-speaking schools of Bolzano, Italy to Linux. When that
article was written, the FUSS staff had completed a major push to install
its own Debian-based distribution on over 2600 systems, but the true test -
the beginning of the school year - was still in the future. Now that the
new system has supported a few months of teaching, it seems like a good
time to go back and see how things went. Is Linux truly up to the task of
running a school system?
The FUSS organizers helpfully connected us with several teachers in the affected schools. These people, in turn, graciously took time out of their busy schedules to answer a long list of questions - and they didn't even complain about your editor's difficult Italian. The answers paint a picture of a not-entirely-smooth transition, but, in the end, the system appears to be coming together. More importantly, the new system, based on free software, would appear to have the strong support of the people who must make use of it to get their jobs done. School teachers everywhere tend to be busy people who are dedicated to their work. So your editor did not expect to hear them praise the way free software may have saved money for their central IT department or to talk about the ethical aspects of free software. It seemed more likely that these teachers would grumble about extra work, having to learn an unfamiliar system, and the glitches which are inevitable with a transition of this size. This expectation turned out to be only half correct. There were indeed some complaints. Printing was at the top of everybody's list; "cups" is indeed a four-letter word in Bolzano at the moment. One teacher described its administration tools as "delirious." Other peripheral devices - scanners, for example - were also problematic. It's not just that there were problems, but that these problems often required the intervention of the central FUSS staff (who received credit for much hard work) to resolve. Many of the teachers do not see a Linux-based network as something they can administer themselves. As one middle school teacher expressed it:
The FUSS group has done a truly excellent job, they have been well
prepared and quick to come to the school to resolve problems, but
this is insufficient in the long term. The schools need somebody
who works just to keep the system running. If this work gets
dumped onto a teacher (who may lack, as in my case, a technical
background) the system will never work correctly.
(All quotes translated from Italian by your editor). By most accounts, the key software - OpenOffice in particular - is working well for both students and teachers. The big exception is documents with macros; those macros must be rewritten to work on the new system. When asked what they would most like to see improved, most teachers talked about printers and related issues. There were also requests for better ease of use in general, and an interface closer to Windows in particular. A couple of teachers noted the relative scarcity of documentation in Italian, and one complained that Linux was bloated and slow. In the end, though, the transition appears to have been successful, and most of the teachers seem happy enough. Not one said that the schools should go back to the previous, proprietary systems. And these teachers - some of them at least - are beginning to see the advantages of free software. Here's a few quotes from various teachers:
Naturally some things still need to be fixed, but we maintain that
the change is important at both technical and cultural levels. The
benefits are not just the savings, but the fact that it opens a way
of access to technology which is more honest and aware.
The biggest advantage is the fact that it is free (libero) software. This has drawn a fair amount of interest from the parents of our students. I teach in a middle school and our kids are between 11 and 14 years old. They still don't really understand what free software means, but their parents do. I maintain that it's natural and obvious that the schools, as an institution, should use free software. The sharing of knowledge, the freedom of access to information, etc. should be at the base of any instructional process. It seems to me that the philosophy of free software rests on the same principles. The fact that you're not tied to licensing problems lets you move with a certain confidence; you're forever inspired to look for something which works better, which is closer to your needs. It's a great and beautiful thing. Of course, not everybody is quite so pleased. As one instructor put it:
For a teacher there is no advantage [to Linux]; just problems using
documents produced with other software and only partially
recognized by free software (example: Excel and Word macros, which
I use heavily in my teaching work, must be reconstructed).
How do the students feel about it? As we know, children tend to be more flexible, and, as a rule, they have smaller investments in old Word macros. So they seem to have taken the change in stride. Some amusement can be found in this article (in Italian); one school opened up a forum where 9-year-olds could post their impressions of the new systems. Here's a few:
Linux is cool it has programs which Windows doesn't have like
educational games...and it's also FREE (GRATIS)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The names are changed and with Linux I have done well and there have been some differences. And with Linux the CD's are free (gratuiti). When is my CD arriving? There's more things than we had last year. With Linux the programs are free (liberi). Changing the names of the programs gave me some trouble at the beginning but now I'm starting to get used to it. The programs are much better; there were good things in Paint but more good things in tuxpaint! With regard to payments the fact that you don't have to pay is beautiful. And being able to download it at home for free is even more beautiful! I think Linux is better than Ms Window because Linux is free (gratuito) and it turns us into a community. The theme should be clear by now. As can be seen from these comments, the students are not yet, in general, ready to think about where free software comes from and why it exists. Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano in the near future.
One of the goals of the Linux transition was to give each student a CD with the software; that way, they could use the same tools at home and at the school. At this point, however, it seems that, while some students are using free software at home, most of them have not made that change. Part of the problem here is that the promised live CD distribution has not yet been made available. This CD is evidently ready to go, it's just waiting for the obligatory launch press conference with the education minister. Once this CD goes out (which could happen within a week), there may be more students using Linux at home. Another obvious question which comes up is: will other school systems follow the FUSS project's example? Bolzano has two parallel school systems: the Italian-speaking schools (which moved to Linux) and the German-speaking schools (which did not). If any group of schools were likely to be inspired by FUSS, one might expect it to be the German-language schools of Bolzano. Views on whether that might happen soon were varied, but a number of teachers noted that there is some free software use in those schools now, and that the German-language schools were certainly watching to see how things go. Most teachers seem to expect that change to happen sooner or later. Finally, your editor asked the teachers if there were anything they would like to communicate to the free software development community as a whole. The answers ranged from the short and simple ("Documentation, people, documentation!") to the lengthy, but most shared the same theme. Thanks for the work that you do, please continue and make it even better and easier to use. Oh, and, if you could, make the printers work please? (Log in to post comments)
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 4:13 UTC (Thu) by rkpagadala (guest, #6588) [Link] I think we should be expecting patches. I have seen kids in India do it.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 7:40 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Note also that if your funds are as limited as a child's, if it's not gratis it's generally *completely unavailable* unless you can get some adult to buy it.
So gratis matters to these people. I'd not expect libre to matter to nontechnical preadolescents, really.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 7:58 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > Note also that if your funds are as limited as a child's, if it's not gratis it's generally *completely unavailable* unless you can get some adult to buy it.
You forget about the pirate software. From my experience, most softwares installed on kids' home Windows PCs (often including the OS itself) are obtained illegally. Maybe in the US the situation is different.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 21:07 UTC (Thu) by amikins (subscriber, #451) [Link] No, it's much the same in the US.What's particularly interesting is the variance in viewpoints. Some of the children are aware of the cost of the software, and pirate because they can't (or won't) pay for it.. Some are honestly -unaware- that it's a 'wrong' or illegal thing to do, which is interesting. Some children in an elementary school I used to frequent shared software because it seemed the natural thing to do. When asked why his friend didn't just buy it himself, the child was puzzled. "But I have it. Why should he spend money on it when I've got it right here?" I've taken to believing this indicates that libre software is the more natural approach.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 22:37 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > Some are honestly -unaware- that it's a 'wrong' or illegal thing to do, which is interesting.
Right. I'd say it's a proof how morally wrong and unintuitive is the notion of non-free software. 99% of these young "pirates" wouldn't even think about stealing some real, material goods. Unfortunately, an astonishing majority of schools spoil our children by using (and effectively forcing them to use at home) MS tools and other proprietary software from day one; how can a child believe that his Teacher could have tought him something wrong?! Kill the Dragon...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Shvarts
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:11 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I'd say it's a proof how morally wrong and unintuitive is the notion of > non-free software. I'll give you unintuitive, but not morally wrong. While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true. When I was about that age, there was a problem with inflation and I was puzzled by how difficult commentators seemed to think it was. I said, "why doesn't the president of the US just mandate that prices won't go up any more?" Just because I couldn't see how disastrous that would be for everybody even if it were possible, that didn't mean that the free market is morally wrong. Copyright is a rather complex way to bring about certain good results. I don't expect a 9 year old to know how it works.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:30 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true.
No, it's not generally true, and neither did I pretend it was.
> Copyright is a rather complex way to bring about certain good results. I don't expect a 9 year old to know how it works.
I beg your pardon. This has nothing to do with copyrights. When one borrows a proprietary OS CD from his friend in order to install the OS on his PC (he is NOT distributing it), this is a license violation, not a copyright violation. If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 4, 2006 3:40 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] This is totally about copyrights. If not for copyrights, there would be nothing to stop you from borrowing or lending the CD to install on another computer. The license involved is a copyright license -- i.e. a person who has the right under copyright law to stop you from making a copy of the software chooses to allow you to do so. If there were no copyright, there would be no license. A license is not something one can violate. When people say "he violated the license," it's a shorthand for "he violated the conditions of the license, therefore didn't have a license, therefore under copyright law was obligated not to make a copy." If the CD is ordinary proprietary software, then the kid has no license, conditional or otherwise to make the copy on the second computer; there's nothing to violate except copyright. Copyright law creates a quite unintuitive right to control who gets to make copies of stuff you wrote. The copying public subjects itself to such laws because in the big picture, it may cause more stuff to get written. That's what's not intuitive to a 9-year-old.
If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement. I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right. It's just copyright owner publicity that tries to draw the analogy between copying and stealing a bicycle, to persuade people not to copy.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 4, 2006 10:34 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > If there were no copyright, there would be no license.
This is true, but compare e.g. the MS EULA.txt with the couple of standard copyright protection lines found in any book.
> I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right.
IANAL, of course, but the general perception in public is certainly like software piracy == theft. Just google for "stolen sotware" and "illegally copied software" and compare the hit counts. Also, the notion is widely spread in all kinds of homebrew "explanations" of software fair use, e.g. see http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ethics.html ("... illegally copied software is viewed as stolen property"). I had to sign a very similar form myself in the past.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 7, 2006 5:32 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] Borrowing is not theft. The problem in your hypothetical situation is the duplication of the software on the CD, so that it is copied to the other computer. If it only ran directly off the CD, there is the question of portions in RAM, but aside from that you may have to click "I Agree" to a EULA when you install it which is basically a contract. In many places these are now enforcable as contracts so even aside from copyrights there could be an issue, but it still wouldn't be related to "theft".
EULAs and contracts Posted Feb 7, 2006 7:36 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I have a small correction. An EULA isn't just basically a contract -- it's completely a contract. The "A" stands for "agreement," which is a legal synonym of "contract." Clicking "I agree" is as good a manifestation of assent as various other ways people form contracts, including signing a piece of paper. I'm not aware that EULAs are especially unenforceable, or ever were.
EULAs and contracts Posted Feb 9, 2006 16:11 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] It very much depends on where you're from, actually. In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software your purchased (the USA is one of these, AFAIK), but it's not true everywhere - there are also countries where *purchasing* the software already gives you the right to use it, so the EULA is basically meaningless. I know Germany is in the latter category, and I wouldn't be surprised if other European countries were as well, so it might well be that the same thing's true in Italy.
On a side note, it arguably makes more sense that way, too. When I pay a thousand bucks for Photoshop, then I *should* have paid for the right to use the program - not just for a few (physical) CDs and a printed manual. I shouldn't be required to enter into another contract with Adobe just to use a piece of software I paid the dealer a grand for already.
EULAs and contracts Posted Feb 9, 2006 17:35 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software Careful here. You mean you have to have a license, with means you have to accept the EULA. (You accept the license too, but that is of no consequence since it doesn't commit you to anything). The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises. If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software. I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it. I know some publishers write the EULA as if you need a copyright license to copy the CD onto your disk or make a backup copy, but from what I've read, the jury in the US is still out on that, because it might also be fair use of the one copy the publisher gave you. I can believe that the courts have already decided that issue in Germany and elsewhere, making these EULAs superfluous. This is getting fairly academic, though, because if Adobe can't trade you a copyright license for those promises about how you'll use the software, Adobe can just change the wording and instead of having a license agreement, have a purchase contract. To get that CD, you have to pay $1000 plus promise to use it a certain way. There was a time when the license agreement was thought to be the easiest way to do a store-shelf transaction, but now that shrink-wrap contracts are enforceable in the US, a straight purchase contract would be as easy.
EULAs and contracts Posted Feb 10, 2006 19:53 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link] You say "I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it" which is true, but you also say "The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises" which basically means that they are affecting how you can use their product.
Which gets me to the other thing you say "If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software" because it does not only affect your right to copy but a host of other things that are commonly found in EULAs, like Microsoft saying that you MUST upgrade if they tell you to or you lose the right to use the product.
So we get back to what I understood is the norm in several european countries:
- the first is that you can not add restraints or additional requirements AFTER having bought the product. You are only bound to the requirements known to you at the moment of the sale. In that case a judge would most likely agree with the buyer ignoring an EULA.
- the second is that sometimes EULAs require you to make promises which go against certain rights given to the buyer by local laws and in that case local law trumps EULAs. The interesting thing would be to see if a judge would agree with a buyer selectively ignoring parts of an EULA or that you can only accept or reject the whole of it.
Of course IANAL, just relating what I think I heard a vague friend of a cousin of mine say at a party where we were all lying stoned around the swimming pool. But it could be true though :-)
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 2, 2006 19:23 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] But I'd expect there to be some technical preadolescents, and these would find it neat to be able to change some small thing and get a result. And that makes a good trick to show off to their friends.
Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano Posted Feb 3, 2006 21:45 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Exactly. Sixteen years ago or thereabouts, GCC 2.4.something and Emacs hooked me in pretty much that way...
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 7:16 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] Those printer setup woes are in essence solved&gone in other distributions, e.g. SUSE's YaST. I was not aware that the problem ("naked" CUPS admin tools) still existed elsewhere. How is this handled in Ububtu?
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 15:50 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] One thing I havn't yet worked out is: Given this current world where every PCI and USB device identifies itself, why do I have to specify the driver? Why isn't when you plug in your USB printer it tells you which PPD file to use?
Maybe it's the case of my USB file being out of date, but it would be nice...
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 17:14 UTC (Thu) by carcassonne (guest, #31569) [Link] Since last year (at least), SuSE 9.3's YaST suggests a PPD file. I tried it with a networked printer and a USB printer and in both cases the suggested PPD was the right one. What happens when the printer is out on the market since last Monday ? I don't know.
It's important to choose a 'good enough' distro to show Linux to people. As developers and technicians were hear buzzwords flying. Like 'Ubuntu' and 'Kubuntu' for instance.
- Did you get your NTP client working ?
- Just Excellent ! I just had to create this config file and bootscript...
This of course is not good (and certainly not factual regarding 'K/Ubuntu) since I haven"t tried it).
A good way to make people stick with Windows ? Introduce them to Linux using Slackware.
I think a highly configurable-user-firendly updated distro should be used for this purpose, which is not necessarily the latest developer's buzzwords.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 17:32 UTC (Thu) by musicon (subscriber, #4739) [Link] Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not a Linux expert by any means. I've played around off an on since '94, and am comfortable with man and editing /etc as needed. But my day-to-day work and home systems are XP. On my Ubuntu system (either Breezy or Dapper), I have _yet_ been able to print to an SMB printer. And (at work), since all queues are hosted on W2K servers, and no one has local printers, it means I print from my XP system. I've had other strange SMB authentication issues as well, such as one time being able to access SMB shares, and the next receiving the very helpful GNOME message "The folder contents could not be displayed." This is apparently a quirk in Ubuntu - I can reliably mount SMB shares using the exact same commands on other systems, but Ubuntu displays (again very helpful) "SMB connection failed". man is no help. Googling is no help. It's just broken, and I work around it, hoping that each new update will fix it.
Linux printing Posted Feb 7, 2006 19:19 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link] On my Ubuntu system (either Breezy or Dapper), I have _yet_ been able to print to an SMB printer. And (at work), since all queues are hosted on W2K servers, and no one has local printers, it means I print from my XP system.Do none of these printers have network ports? Generally speaking, all you need is an IP address and you're set (insofar as most work printers have PostScript engines in them and speak "lpd"). That W2K server is just a nicety for the Windows folks. Greg
Linux printing Posted Feb 9, 2006 8:49 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] If it's like mine, it has a USB port ... mind you, I might be blaming ZA for my inability to print from my laptop...
Cheers,
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 19:12 UTC (Thu) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link] I fight printing issues for end users with Ubuntu - but not exactly setup issues. Setup is easy, it's things like duplexing, choosing paper types, choosing trays (e.g. for letterhead, second sheets, plain - let me send a job to tray 3), orientation (landscape setting anyone?), envelopes, quality settings and sizes for photos that frustate the end users I work with.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 22:52 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > Setup is easy, it's things like duplexing, choosing paper types, choosing trays (e.g. for letterhead, second sheets, plain - let me send a job to tray 3), orientation (landscape setting anyone?), envelopes, quality settings and sizes for photos that frustate the end users I work with.
Erh? The issues you mention mean you have NOT setup CUPS properly (wrong PPD or like). Otherwise, all these options would have appeared in the printing dialog of any CUPS-aware application (and in most legacy apps simply replace lpr with e.g. gtklp; for a desktop box it's probably safe even to softlink lpr to gtklp).
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 3, 2006 2:54 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] Cool trick. If you are using KDE, you can do the same thing with kprinter.
On a Debian (or ~-derived) system you can move lpr out of the way gracefully like so:
dpkg-divert --local --rename --add /usr/bin/lpr
You can then create a symlink at /usr/bin/lpr that dpkg knows not to overwrite, the next time the package containing lpr is upgraded.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 13, 2006 12:50 UTC (Mon) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] Or just install cupsys-bsd?
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 9, 2006 8:47 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] I've just updated SuSE to v10. My HP LaserJet is about 3 years old. CUPS recognises but refuses to configure it ...
My previous experience with CUPS (SuSE 8, I think), was even worse. Having told it NOT to scan the network, it went ahead and did so anyway - I ended up using the Big Red Switch to stop it, iirc. And I had great difficulty forcing the system to install old-fashioned lpd so I could actually get a working print setup ...
Cheers,
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 7:52 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] CUPS is certainly an example where an excellent functionality is plagued by an awful configuration (interestingly, this seems a recurring theme with software that's dual-licensed and/or differently packaged commercially). KDE makes it better a bit, while Gnome bravely brings the CUPS configuration right to the next to unusable state. And Ubuntu marked the record in disabling the native CUPS web interface at all (90% of my negative impressions from Ubuntu come from the absolutely insane printing configuration). YMMV, of course.
As to the scanning, I've never gotten a major headache with SANE (provided that the scanner was supported, of course). CUPS, on the other hand, makes attaching a perfectly supported device a true PITA.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 13:37 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Printing in Linux is still a PITA.
The problem isn't CUPS so much. It's two fold..
Try something like going and using a multi-form printer to print pages back to back and use multiple pages sizes and such. Get it working with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, and some Koffice applications. I expect something like that to be fairly difficult even for a advanced Linux user.
I can't blame CUPS for this because OS X uses CUPS and I've never heard any complaints about that operating system being difficult with printers. So if linux desktop uses CUPS and OS X uses CUPS and Linux desktop is very difficult and OS X is very easy, then were does the problem lie?
With that OSDL conference a while ago there was a company that was doing major conversions from Windows desktops to Linux. Something like 20000 systems or something insane like that. They said that the number one reason that they couldn't replace Windows with Linux in many situations was that in places with many different types of printers it was too difficult and expensive to get the Linux desktop to work properly. (something along those lines)
I think that the problem comes from the fact that most computer geeks and programmers don't generally give a crap about printers unless it involves printing out photos or other images for display or odd small documents here and there. I know I don't have any use for my printer. It's been months since I last touched it and I am sure the ink is dried up by now... Printing is so 'backwards' almost.
But with some businesses you are constantly printing out reports or documentation. Pretty much non-stop. When I started my current job I was amazed at just the massive amount printing and the different sorts of printing that goes on. It's just all the time. I couldn't imagine the same thing being done well with a Linux system with all the sorts of extremely non-technical people you find at a average small to medium sized business.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 14:18 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link] > most printers don't work
No, I'd say most printers do work. It's often the question of properly choosing a PPD. The ppd's installed with cups/foomatic/... are a minor part of the whole supported base, unfortunately.
> the desktop UI is bad
AFAIK, there is no CUPS UI (except for the web interface) as such. What you see is either KDE or Gnome add-ons.
> Get it working with Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, and some Koffice applications.
Don't know about Koffice, but the rest you mentioned are NOT using CUPS natively - this is the real problem. Each of the above implements a (more or less) dirty wrappers around the century-old printcap/lpr stuff. Personally, in all such apps that at least allow to define an alternative to "lpr" command, I use gtklp. This helps resolving 99% of printing issues. I wish there would be as nice a distro-independent CUPS configuration utility as well. So far, setting up networking printing at home between two Ubuntu boxes was the most challenging printing configuration task I've ever undertaken (comparable only to making linux talk to a mainframe-attached IMAGEN printer 10+ years ago...). In general, I rarely share ESR's views, but this one (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html) I wholeheartedly agree with.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 14:59 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Ya...
Most printers are going to work if they are proper printers and can take postscript.
With lower-end consumer style printers (think winmodems) produced by Brothers, Lexmark, or Cannon they are generally NOT going to work. Most HP and Epson printers will work, especially with HP stuff... but even then it's hit and miss sometimes.
This isn't so much of a problem for businesses as they get nicer printers generally, but for normal users it's very frustrating.
If you run down to the local walmart or office store and randomly buy a printer for under 150 dollars I figure you have about a 20-30% chance of having it work in linux without major headaches.
"AFAIK, there is no CUPS UI (except for the web interface) as such. What you see is either KDE or Gnome add-ons."
Exactly. CUPS is system software, not so much desktop software.
On OS X you still have the web-based CUPS ui perfectly avaible and fully functional. (at least in 10.2.x series and I expect up to 10.4.2 were its disabled, but still aviable), but 99% of Apple owners (even fairly advanced ones) are not going to even realise that that it even exists! This is because they don't have to know it exists.
They even use the same pdd files time to time and use the same text-based configuration files that Linux does. They even can use gimp-print (now gutenprint) to get higher quality drivers then those that are provided by the printer vendors themselves. This is all stuff that was developed for Linux systems that is superior to what would otherwise be aviable for OS X.
Don't think I am a OSX lover though.. I still prefer Linux despite printing issues. (like I noted before I have virtually no use for printing outside of work)
"Don't know about Koffice, but the rest you mentioned are NOT using CUPS natively - this is the real problem. Each of the above implements a (more or less) dirty wrappers around the century-old printcap/lpr stuff. Personally, in all such apps that at least allow to define an alternative to "lpr" command, I use gtklp. This helps resolving 99% of printing issues. I wish there would be as nice a distro-independent CUPS configuration utility as well."
I agree with you 100%
It's hilarious that when you go into Firefox and try to print on Linux you still find items like this for the printer preferences:
That stuff is insane.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 3, 2006 3:01 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] Well, with Firefox 1.5 on Debian, I can choose between CUPS/Deskjet-950C* and PostScript/Default--so it appears things are getting better. Unfortunatly, Firefox still insists on using its custom print dialog boxes; one of the reasons I prefer to use the Epiphany browser is because it uses the standard Gnome printing system.
* a printer attached to another computer on my network, that CUPS detected and configured automatically ;)
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 9:26 UTC (Thu) by glynmoody (subscriber, #34032) [Link] Your point that "the students are not yet, in general, ready to think about where free software comes from and why it exists" is an important one, especially against a background where the music and film industries are trying to inculcate in children a warped sense of what copyright and fair use really mean.Success stories like Bolzano notwithstanding, I worry that not enough is being done by the open source community to reach out to children to explain what free software is and why they might care. The danger is that they will grow up equating the Web with Internet Explorer, email with Outlook, productivity software with Office and computers with Windows, since Microsoft's software is the default for most schools that I know about.
Education Hegimony Posted Feb 2, 2006 22:00 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link] Good gracious, you're right! Apple once dominated classrooms in the United States. Many childred equated computers with that brand. As a result the Macintosh is now a desktop monopoly that will be nearly impossible to dislodge and...
Oh, wait.
Education Hegimony Posted Feb 2, 2006 23:12 UTC (Thu) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link] While your point is made and true, this is, however, not slashdot, so the "oh wait" style of writing very sarcastic replies sort of misses the mark with the LWN subscribers I would think.
In short: please just state your point in the future instead of trying to get +5 Funny ratings ;)
Get over yourself Posted Feb 3, 2006 13:32 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link] I was trying to make a point with a bit of levity. I make no appology for that whether you're amused or not. Your remark about a rating system on some other website is an example of the same thing, so you're in no position to police my comments.
In short: get over yourself.
Education Hegimony Posted Feb 2, 2006 23:42 UTC (Thu) by glynmoody (subscriber, #34032) [Link] I'm not saying this approach leads to a perpetual desktop monopoly, simply that it's a good way of seeding later sales. Apple once dominated classrooms, and soon did well in the business sector. But it failed to consolidate its position in corporates with the Apple III and Lisa, and PC/MS-DOS took over before the Macintosh could get established.
Apple lost its dominance, and Microsoft may do the same. But only if somebody comes along - as IBM/Microsoft did with Apple - and takes it away. At the moment, I don't see much evidence of that happening, and this worries me.
Education Hegimony Posted Feb 3, 2006 0:40 UTC (Fri) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link] however, do you think that the mac would have survived at all if all those schools had been running PC's exclusivly?
Education Hegimony Posted Feb 3, 2006 13:35 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link] That's a perfectly unanswerable question. Suppose I say yes. Exactly how will you prove me wrong? But even so, my point was only that education marketshare does not lead to irreversable desktop dominance, not that it isn't desirable.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 2, 2006 20:22 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link] One choice that helps with printer problems is to choose a good print dialog application. Make sure to use "XPP": http://cups.sourceforge.net/xpp/ . It works wonders for printing options (duplexing, papaer trays, output quality, etc.), and its organization is pretty intuitive. So far, the only application I use regularly that it does not work wih is silly OpenOffice, which insists on Doing Its Own Thing and has an internal, non-changeable, inflexible printing engine.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 3, 2006 4:11 UTC (Fri) by stock (subscriber, #5849) [Link] debian and cups? forget it.cups and RedHat, SuSE, CentOS, Mandrake, Mandriva? a solid working combination. period. CUPS is the best thing which happened to UNIX printing ever. I would not be surprised if M$ was trying to breakup cups in one or the other mysterious method. Same holds for the C++ 'standard' so it seems : "Visual C++ 8.0 Hijacks the C++ Standard" http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=cplusplus&... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060130092823950 "Microsoft's C++/CLI Language Specification is an ECMA Standard (ECMA-372) and they are trying to fast track this document to be an ISO standard. The problem is that the language specified is very different from C++ and so is likely to create a great deal of confusion. Details can be found in the UK objections, which suggest that a name distinct from C++ be used for the proposed language."
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 3, 2006 8:20 UTC (Fri) by grouch (subscriber, #27289) [Link] " debian and cups? forget it. "
Bull. I use nothing but Debian and CUPS. Samsung ML1710 -- works perfectly. Samsung ML1740 -- works perfectly. HP Photosmart 7350 -- works perfectly (from letters to glossy photos). Star NX2420 (yeah, it's a relic, but nothing beats a dot matrix for mule work) -- works perfectly. Epson Perfection 600 -- works perfectly.
I've had to set up a couple of small local businesses (sole proprietors) with Debian systems. In each case the pointy-haired boss ran out and bought one of those cheap little HP all-in-one inkjets. All I had to do was use the 'drivers' recommended by http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net (which amounted to apt-get install hpijs but you can use synaptic if you have to have something to click) and use the CUPS web admin tool (http://localhost:631/admin), choose the interface (each was USB) and a name. No problems. Surprisingly, Xsane noticed the scanner side of each right away, too.
The only problem I ever had with CUPS was trying to get a dinky Lexmark inkjet to work. I failed, but even Lexmark can't figure out how to get those things to work; they are nothing but Win-junk.
Libero vs gratuito Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:16 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I'm really curious about the one 9-year-old who commented on the fact that the software is libero. Since every other child mentioned that it was gratuito, and I doubt that a child that age would be interested in societal aspects of software distribution, I suspect he was referring to the fact that you don't have to pay for it.I know nothing of Italian, but if the two concepts get mixed up even in a language that goes to the trouble of having separate words for them, maybe free beer and free speech aren't as different as Stallman says they are.
Linux in Italian schools - five months later Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:27 UTC (Sat) by jbreiden (subscriber, #7090) [Link] What brands of printers did the district have? I ask because this is the sort of news article that a printer manufacturer might read, and then get motivated to do something to help.
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