Posted on 03/19/2012 7:37:40 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Linux. It’s really not a hard operating system to learn. In fact, that very first statement is wrong. Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel which is used as the very core to build an operating system around. But these are the things that children of today are not learning. Not in public school systems anyway.
When I was a teenager, I was very interested in computers. I looked forward to and really enjoyed my Information Technology classes. But it wasn’t just the computers that I was interested. The more I got involved with them, the more I wanted to know about what goes on to make them work. Or to be precise, the operating system.
It’s a long time ago now, but I remember when I was talking to my teacher one day he briefly said something about Unix. A term that I had never heard until then. But after that one time, nothing more was ever mentioned. At the time, I really didn’t know anything about it. But I was intrigued of what this ‘Unix’ could be. It was some years later before I got my first glimpse of anything to do with Linux-The accepted modern alternative to Unix. My first encounter with Linux was SUSE 8, which came free on a magazine at the time. I might mention, the magazine was not actually meant to be giving the OS away on the front cover as they were. But anyway, that’s a story for another day. But ever since my first experience with SUSE 8, I never let go of Linux and have always been involved with it in one form another.
Now as you all know and are well aware, Windows is basically the only operating system taught in our public schools these days. I understand that Windows is the industry standard and I can accept that. But I don’t believe teaching children how to use Windows, solely, is the way forward to a positive IT future. Or if Linux even got a mention, it would be progress. My high school years were well into 15 years ago and it is now 2012 and nothing has changed. Public schools are still teaching children Windows and (unintentionally) presenting it as the only operating system you’ll ever need to learn and use.
There arises many issues and setbacks with the aforementioned. One of the primary reasons, being the IT teachers themselves having no concept of how to use Linux or even being aware of it. There are many issues from many different angles.
We are very lucky in some ways that we live in a world of fast broadband access where anyone can download and install Linux for free. When I was in high school, a 56k dial-up internet connection was a true privilege and there was only one computer in the whole school that had internet access. I’m probably still on that list to use that computer as the list was always a mile long.
But all my 10 years Linux experience that I have today has all been self-taught. I have put myself through free courses and done plenty of tinkering, configuring and certainly my fair share of breaking systems. And my wife yelling at me because I’ve broken the computer once again! And that continues to this day. Why? Because Linux offer endless learning capabilities. And despite being a 10 year Linux user, I am still learning things on Linux on a daily basis and still intentionally break things to see how they work in detail. In fact, I am currently experimenting with Arch Linux. A very different experience from the usual mainstream Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora. But that is my point. There’s endless possibilities of learning when it comes to Linux. And perhaps that’s the problem when it comes to public schools and teaching Linux. It is such a large scale eco-system with so many different facets, where would one begin to teach. I see that as an excuse for not teaching it. And not a valid reason. Because even giving children a glimpse of Linux in their high school studies will no doubt have a flow-on effect to further private studies and courses.
Linux must be taught to future high school students. Otherwise we are going to experience a severe shortage of knowledgeable Linux administrators in the near future. We are already seeing the first signs of this problem. And unless we start arming the young nerds of today with the knowledge they require to make up their own mind, we are going to have problems. If things don’t change soon, I can only hope that today’s students come out of schooling as open-minded as I did and choose to at least give Linux a try and see for themselves the true raw power of free and open-source computing that is modern Unix, Linux.
It’s not really that different. All OSes have basically the same stuff they’re trying to do: organize files, apply security, give applications access to the hardware, manage memory. And there’s still stuff to be done in Windows on the command line, just solved an issue on the MILs Windows 7 box from the command line last week.
That would be 110 baud! Most acoustic modems could do up to 300 baud though. But for real fun - 029 Keypunch or 110 baud with a KSR28!
Writing this on a laptop running Fedora Verne; the kiddos run Fedora as well, even the youngest. We homeschool, though. It's very simple: Start teaching command line stuff as needed, and before you know it, you child knows more than you do :)
To be fair, comparatively few people understand the basic rules of grammar these days. Somewhere in the rush to push kids into science and math, we forgot how important it is to be able to communicate.
People balk at Linux for the same reason they’re afraid to use no-contract cell phone service: fear of change and belief of the misinformation they’re fed. Unless we can change human nature, Linux will remain a tool for geeks and the odd free thinker.
Sorry.
Not ready for prime-time.
Nothing like typing in
MAN RENAME
and then having to decipher twelve pages of rubbish.
That’s if you’re lucky and it’s ONLY 12 pages!!
Define "NEED". We didn't "need" to go to the moon or invent cures for diseases, strictly speaking, but we did because we have a desire for innovation and excellence.
Windows is the minimum. It's the floor, the bottom.
If we want to produce engineers and scientists, we need to teach Linux. Students need to know how their computers work and how to manipulate them.
If we want to produce critical thinkers, we should encourage the use of operating systems which require critical thinking and problem solving.
Nah - Sentence Number 1 is a true statement - more accurately, The Linux GUI is not a hard thing to learn.
Sentence number 2 is merely an indicator that the author is a follower of Richard Stallman who got apoplectic about the fact that HIS BABY got renamed, and he didn’t get all the credit.
For the record - from someone who has been using Linux since BEFORE the SLS distribution - Linux is both the Kernel AND the collection of tools on top of it that make it a useable computing environment...it’s not gnu/linux.
As for the original article’s point. Uhm - he forgot that most schools are actually Apple territory! And now-a-days that is Unix too!
How about Lubuntu?
The ELISP variant of LISP is used to customize EMACS and Xemacs and I use it a fair amount.
I actually answered that question in the very next sentence, perhaps you should have read the entire post.
Students DO NOT need to know how their computer works. You’re in the old pre-appliance thinking, we’re in the appliance age of computing. The computer is just a tool people put data into and get data out of, the average person doesn’t need to know how they work anymore than the average person knows how microwaves, florescent lights or the internal combustion engine work. They need to know how to USE it, but you don’t need to know what’s behind the buttons to use something.
Not teaching OSes that the students will almost certainly not encounter in adulthood isn’t preventing critical thinkers. If they want to go learn other OSes they can, nobody is stopping them, and you don’t need to know ANY OS at all to be a critical thinker. It’s just an OS, not a religion, in spite of what some Nix-weenies and Mac-heads want you to think.
God, we sound like old guys sitting on the front porch. My career has 15 more years. Talk about a business that has just grown like a damned weed.
Well, that was a waste of time and a DVD. I downloaded Ubuntu 10.04.04 and burned it to a DVD on my main Dell laptop. At reboot, it recognized my wireless card. But, I’d want to run it on my Toshiba which is about 6 mos newer than the Dell, and still in warranty.
I booted the disc on the Toshiba. It does not recognize my wireless card, a Realtek RTL8188CE, 802.11n PCI-E NIC.
I’m now downloading Mint and will put that on a stick, so if it doesn’t recognize the card as well, I’ll not be out another DVD.
This is what I meant in my remarks about Linux.
Kermit forever!
>>>Driver’s ed teaches only how to (hopefully) safely operate the car;little or nothing is taught of what goes on under the hood.
This analogy doesn’t fit: there are two types of computer classes. One for the majority of students who just want to learn Microsoft Word, etc. (the one that fits your analogy). And another group of eager students who want to learn to program and hot rod their own game computers (the case that doesn’t fit your analogy). For this second group (any programming class) should learn how an operating system works under the covers.
I’m now downloading Mint and will put that on a stick, so if it doesn’t recognize the card as well, I’ll not be out another DVD.
This is what I meant in my remarks about Linux.
Generally speaking, you'll want to look up wireless network cards to determine if they are supported by the distro you want to use. Wireless network cards are problematic because some manufacturers of the wireless chipsets are very unhelfpful to the Linux developers who maintain and develop drivers for them.
I'd put the fault on the manufacturer rather than the Linux developers. I don't buy stuff that's not supported. I figure its best to vote with my dollars.
You probably also want to use Google, as it can really be your friend in such things. From the first link on a google search of "Linux Realtek RTL8188CE", you'll find this...
Both the windows and Ubuntu drivers are at:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...true#RTL8188CE
A little further down the page is this...
After some trial following instructions on this post this is what worked for me:
1) Go to Rhttp://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...true#RTL8188CE and download the tar.gz file
2) open terminal and do 'sudo apt-get install build-essential'
3) Follow the readme file's instructions:
When I logged in again I was on WiFi....
- sudo su
- make
- make install
- reboot
Give PCLinuxOS a try. I had no experience in Linux when I began experimenting with a number of distros last year. PCLinuxOS was the most user-friendly for me. I installed it on six computers — three desktops and three laptops. No connectivity issues with any of the installs.
They have a good support forum also for newbie questions.
But I AM an old guy sitting on the front porch!
The analogy works, because most schools (or school systems; it's not at every campus) also have classes in auto repair. The basic class teaches a basic life skill that everyone should have, the advanced class a job skill that some students may wish to pursue.
Yes, and all those appliances are built by elves. Certainly not by people who were in high school years ago. And the future of those "appliances" certainly won't be built and coded by people who are in high school now.
Besides, it's not like the next generation of code hackers won't be there if they don't learn it in American high schools. They're learning it in Korean, Chinese, Indian and Japanese (and even Russian) high schools.
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