[ale] Linux "course" at GT?

[Chris Ricker]

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Rob Butera wrote:

> When I am setting up or hanging out before class starts, it is astounding
> how often I hear students talking about Linux.  What surprises me even more
> is a lot of them talk about it, but not many seem to actually have taken
> that leap to using it, despite its growing popularity.  I have seen similar
> situations in the GT bookstore: 2 students browsing the software, looking at
> a copy of Red Hat and saying "hey that's Linux. Someday I will get around to
> figuring that out."

Actually, I suspect you're underestimating Linux usage at Tech.  People who
work with resnet (the GT housing ethernet) have been estimating Un*x usage
among residents at 30% - 35% for the past two or three years.  That's almost
exclusively Linux, though there are the random oddballs running *BSD, Irix,
Solaris, NextStep, etc....

> So my question to the GT (or GT affiliated) people on the list: has anyone
> offered an Intro to Linux course? Not a class credit course, but some sort
> of optional "extracurricular" night class (like the GT Edge program), say
> one night/week for 4 weeks, that eases someone into using Linux.  It could
> even begin (or end) with an installfest.

Not that I know of.  There has been an attempt, from time to time, to have a
GT student LUG, but those have always been informal (eg, not officially
chartered student organization) so far.  These student LUGs have had a few
fairly successful installfests--my recollection is that they do one every
drop day?  If you pop into git.unix.linux some time, that'd be the place to
find the people who were involved with that.

I think Mike Kachline's point about one major barrier being the
non-platform-neutral formatting of stuff by professors was a good one.  My
undergrad was biology (molecular, class of '98), and there were a fair
number of Linux users in my major, but all had to either dual-boot, have
multiple machines, or use clusters / lab computers.  Sure, there may be
times when it makes sense to demand excel 2000 files from your students, but
there are also times when it isn't really necessary--any old spreadsheet
will do.

In addition to a class, another thing which could help a lot:  GT has an
"official" bundle of software for students.  You can get a Mac bundle, or a
Win bundle.  It's basically Maple, MS Office, Eudora, etc.--the standard
five or ten programs all (non-management, anyway ;-) majors at Tech will
require.  Constructing a similar bundle for Linux, either officially through
the bookstore (so you could include commercial packages like Maple and
Mathematica) or unofficially, would probably be of some benefit.  If you
know someone interested in doing this for an unofficial bundle of all the
useful academic-oriented free software (WordPerfect, Lyx, StarOffice, GIMP,
octave, the GT thesis LaTeX file, etc.), have them get in touch with me
privately.

As a complementary notion, some schools have customized Linux installation
discs--they just get, say, RH 6.0, add RPMs of WP, StarOffice, etc., set up,
say, Window Maker as the wm with all the useful apps on the menu and side
toolbar, and then distribute that.

later,
chris

-- 
Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
                                              chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu