Good day, dear Habr users. Recently, I've been concerned about a question: how long will the monopoly of Microsoft in the software supply sector for many educational institutions in our country last (it has effectively been occupied by the corporation since).
Let me give a specific example: I attend a relatively popular IT club for high school students at the local university N (this university is quite prestigious in my city), where we study a number of subjects:
- "Fundamentals of Informatics and Computer Technology" (already completed).
- "Computer Organization…": OS, the internal workings of PCs (completed).
- "Working on a PC": basics of Windows Explorer, CMD, MS Office (just finished).
- "Basics of Programming": PascalABC.NET (thank God it's not Turbo Pascal).
And now some criticism on most points:
1. Probably the only subject that somewhat satisfied me. Number systems, binary logic, etc. Here we managed to avoid using any OS or software, so it's not directly related to my post.
2. This is where it gets interesting. Firstly, almost everything we covered was the history and capabilities of MS-DOS and Windows (all versions, however, regarding Windows XP, since the presentation was done in the early 2000s), they briefly mentioned the existence of systems like GNU/Linux, *nix and… that's it. I did not see a coherent history or capabilities of *nix in this presentation. Secondly, in the lecture, we discussed in detail the differences between Windows 3.11 and 95 and 98; recalled the existence of IDE mode; got acquainted with FAT12/16/32 and NTFS (though the lecturer didn't say much other than explaining the acronym "NTFS"), but I heard nothing about EXT2/3/4, BTRFS, UDF, not even about disk formatting — silence! The same situation occurred with BIOS: they explained the function of Legacy-BIOS, but forgot even about UEFI, not to mention Coreboot and other BIOS implementations. At the same time, the instructors talked about the "power of the latest" Pentium 4 and DDR2, the gradual obsolescence of floppy disks, and the advantages of Windows XP over ME and 98 (again a report from 2003-2005).
3. Well, everything here is quite clear: everything is outdated and/or proprietary. I can't critique the specifications of the PCs themselves: 0.5-2 gigabytes of RAM and a Pentium 4/D is sufficient for a client computer, just like our Windows XP and the central file server, which partially unloads the load on the system HDD. However, I could only find a couple of free programs out of the hundreds on these PCs: Notepad++ and a very old version of OpenOffice. Everything else: Google Chrome, MS Office 2007/2010 (unactivated), Adobe PDF Reader, antivirus programs, proprietary compilers, Turbo Pascal… By the way, on some PCs (with at least 1 GB of RAM), Kubuntu 14.04.x is installed, and neither the system nor the repositories have been updated since installation. And it was frankly installed just for show: I have never seen a single student using Linux. Moreover, the people who installed the distribution did not set a password for root or the bootloader.
Therefore, it's easy to find the Rescue Mode option in GRUB2, automatically gain root privileges, remount the root in read/write mode, and execute passwd. In fact, that's what your humble servant did twice. And the entire OS is fully at my disposal. So what's the point of password protecting Windows, installing antivirus software, setting up proxies, when all this "protection" isn't worth a dime? Moreover, when I told the teacher about this vulnerability, he replied that he wasn't very interested in the issue. But how is that possible? They prohibit using USB flash drives without antivirus scanning, yet ignore an issue that is right in front of them. By the way, there is hardly any software on these Kubuntu installations. No gcc, no g++, no fpc, nothing but the basic system.
Speaking of the office, my use of LibreOffice and open document standards resulted in most .odt files opening incorrectly in Microsoft’s product, and vice versa. Although MS Office (IMHO) is a very user-friendly product, LibreOffice, especially as a free project, is also quite good. In principle, if it weren't for the proprietary nature and closed-off aspect of MS Office, the need for its alternatives would be greatly minimized (again, in my humble opinion).
Despite the fact that I agree with , I understand that some important software only exists for Windows, and in the coming years, this system will definitely not be replaced in these areas (for example, from programming some microcontrollers to running software for managing alignment and suspension test stands), but every year, such software is becoming less and less. Moreover, these are quite rare fields, and *nix systems are rightly considered good for learning the basics of programming.
The moral of the story: unfortunately, I must state that at the local university (probably not just this one), there is a preference for proprietary and closed products, even when they have to be used illegally. Other software is often ignored, as there is no incentive for teachers to improve both their own knowledge and the students' knowledge (‘Teachers do not want to learn’). It is worth noting that, in general, free software is ready for users, but the users themselves do not want to use it and/or develop themselves if ‘it's good enough as it is.’
P.S.:UNIX in the USSR My grandfather told me that from 1986 to 1988, as the head of the organization UPRCENTRZAPCHAST, he, along with other colleagues, decided to transition personnel at their base in Stolbtsy and in Tashkent to Mini-EDP 'Robotron' and other computers produced in our country, with a central server computer. According to his descriptions and Wikipedia, Unix was installed on this server, and some of them were of the Soviet version. So, so to speak, there was still potential for studying *nix.
Source: habr.com
