Linux in U.S. Schools: Why the Resistance? (IT Management)

I don't know about primary or secondary education, but at least in university the Microsoft stuff is essentially free. I've heard it equated to cigarette companies hooking teenagers, or drug dealers giving free samples the first time; if you can get students used to using your stuff when it's free then they'll either cough up the money for it, steal it, or have a hard time switching to something else once it's no longer free.

Microsoft has tons of educational "outreach" deals. My university had a bunch of brand-new Dell/WinXP boxes that were donated (by Dell/MS, I believe) that mostly went unused, and some older Linux boxes that more often than not were all taken although they were slower and more numerous. On top of this, we had some MSDN educational deal where we could request educational licenses for any Visual Studio stuff we wanted for free (although nobody I know actually did).

So I don't think it's entirely the fault of the schools; it's really shoved down their throats.