Schools should be using open source software
I was an IT manager in a school (not any more), and was asked by a parent why I wasn’t using Linux everywhere.<p>Our Microsoft licensing cost £1000 per year, and our MSP cost about £10,000 for remote support and a weekly onsite.<p>Using Linux, our licensing cost would have gone, and maybe we’d have gotten another year or two from desktop hardware, but our support costs would have increased massively - I couldn’t find a local msp who’d do desktop Linux support the same way we were getting. not to mention all the training for teachers, and the nightmare of finding replacements for things like smart notebook, custom assessment software, and windows only curriculum software.<p>Biggest headache would have been the teachers. Some of them found windows 10 too difficult to use, and pushing them onto Linux would have needed a full time techie on hand.<p><i>linux is better</i> is not always the case.