Linux.com

The reason few are using Linux in School Districts is nobody is selling the apps to them. How many "Linux Application Salesmen" are calling on IT departments at US schools? Few to none. Contrary to popular opinion, the way you get people to use/buy things is have somebody sell it.

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Exactly right. My sister is a high school science teacher and is on a technology committee which wants to save money in software as they cannot afford buying new computers every 3 years. She asks me where to look to find this. I told her to follow the money - they already work with IBM for software, so I told them that was one company that wanted to switch people from commercial Windows software. The main problem is they need support and need a lot of hand holding to walk them through.

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Too many folks looking for a prepackaged solution for their needs?

I work at a university and there is a core group of us promoting Linux for all sorts of uses but there is ALOT of resistance from people who want there computer to LOOK the same all the time. The newest MS Office looks different and some folks are really complianing about having to look for the features. Meanwhile I am putting open-source software everywhere I can. The computer might have MS Office but when I get done with it, the computer also has OpenOffice and Abiword and about 10 other FOSS titles so folks get some exposure to the alternatives. I am hearing folks talk about these alternatives in a positive way now so it's helping.

My hopes are that these students will install FOSS for their families when somebody needs a browser, office suite or a photoeditor. If you start out on something free, why buy the expensive software at the store when every dollar counts?

Anyone ever been able to break down FOSS usage by age group? Seems like alot of students using FOSS and older folks sticking to the store bought solutions. Wondering if change will be brought by the younger users as they get older.

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