Wits gets Linux centre

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http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/business/2005/0503151216.asp?A=LIN&S=Open Source&O=FPT

"IBM SA has opened what it claims is Africa's first Linux Centre of Competence at the Wits University Johannesburg campus.

The centre, which IBM aims to use to boost adoption of open source software and open standards, was launched in partnership with Novell, Wits University, Obsidian and SAP."

MS can not be happy about this. They have had a 'monopoly' in our education system for some time now...
 
Good, Linux is a very good way to get students skilled & trained in their own localised language, as well as avoiding the hugely inflated M$ pricetag that accompanies that blue screen.
 
I can't speak for the whole of tWITS, but since I am part of the science faculty, it has been religeously run on linux since the late 90's, out of all the labs for use to Science students, one lab runs Windows, and that is only because there was a lack of linux apps for some facultys.

from the comp.Sci perspective, the one downside to not running Winbloze, (which many people would actually see as an advantage) is that VB has no place in Wits Comp.Sci degrees, In fact, Wits Comps faculty is extremely anti-windows, even slate it at any oppertunity in lectures :p .

For Wits, I don't think they are even happy to run any windows machines, from a cost side, theres no licensing on their Software, the machines they run in most the labs, are barebones (CPU RAM, VGA), Only the windows machines have HDD's, all the rest have been booting off LAN for as long as I can remember (It all works great till an entire class walks in at the same time for a lab exam and all try open mathematica simultaneously)

And I also once had the pleasure of crashing the LAB, when I was testing a really bad piece of multithreaded Java code, which basically had a loop opening multiple threads to speed computation -> until (OOPS , I forgot to set the stop criteria properly).

Lets put it this way, Linux saw its @$$, and so did the rest of the lab for 20 minutes!
 
Good - at least this assuages some of the disgust I've felt with every short-sighted decision made to pay M$ for cr@ppy product, ostensibly because 'everybody uses it'...
 
great for developers but if you are not a developer then its best to be a sheep and use what everyone else is using if you expect to get a job
 
It's got nothing to do with whether you're a developer, or wanting to be a developer, or not. It's got to do with being forced to pay exorbitant licensing fees for an 'operating system' that underpins whatever learning material is being used, to achieve the learning objectives concerned. To my mind, that's sacriledge, particularly when the investment would be far better used for additional learning material, augmented infrastructure, greater numbers of learners, etc. If *nix is used, there is also absolutely nothing that prevents you from acquiring the underlying skills required to use M$ products - in fact, it will probably equip you better to overcome its quirks...
 
yeah sure, but lets think about someone who isn't into computing and doesn't pay for the software at a company. Now most companies give thier users a familiar windows interface , I'm just sayign for this potential non-computing employee all they really need to know and all the employer really needs them to know is how to operate whatever tools are the 'standard'. Like a microsoft word or exel for example, things will change over tiem obviously and with soemthing liek mono we'll have more cross platform tools but right now things aren't liek that.
 
Like I said, there's nothing to stop you from acquiring the basic skills to use those products if exposed to a *nix environment. A spreadsheet cell is a spreadsheet cell, just as a font is a font and line spacing is line spacing, and the basic skills to work with those are the same, irrespective of the product. So if a prospective employer considers you unsuitable because you don't have specific M$ product exposure, they're actually short-changing themselves - I wouldn't want to work for them, anyway.

I have the same opinion of those companies/organisations that specifically want .NET or VB skills from developers - they have no idea that the world does not rely on M$, even though it may appear so. I would far rather take on a generic junior developer with some exposure to PERL, PHP, Python and/or Ruby, and let them grow over time, than somebody with a MCSD...
 
Ijust have to mention this...what with loyalty and all ;)

Stellenbosch Uni has had a *nix lab for a few years now...
 
yes mbs, you would take on that person because you are enlightened but lets not forget most people are not. as far as taking on a scripting developer over someone proficient in c++ using the .NET framework, i dont know, i think any c developer even if they are reliant on the .NT framework is a cut above somebody that uses interpreted languages, but it all depends what you were hiring them for, scripting languages do have thier place but not on my multi million dollar enterprise package :)
 
slimothy said:
... but not on my multi million dollar enterprise package :)
Click to expand...
Pleeez don't tell me you've also fallen for the BS spouted by so-called 'ERP' companies?! Definitely sounds like it - they're certainly multi-million dollar packages, and the ERP vendors are laughing all the way to the bank!

The question of 'scripting' languages versus any other kind of language is, IMHO, as irrelevant as previous debates about 'interpretive' versus 'compiled', or 'native' versus 'bytecode' in most business scenarios, with one exception - their use in embedded environments. Given the hardware resources available in usual business computing infrastructures, however, efficiencies to be gained are usually a resultant of the design architecture, and not the attributes of the language. Most commonly, such (in)efficiencies are able to be traced to things like underlying dbschema design, or comms issues. Come to think of it, if you're running a 'multi million dollar enterprise package', you're probably using what amounts to a 'scripting' language anyway - I would include ABAP (SAP), PL/SQL (Oracle), or Natural (ADABAS) in that category, to all intents and purposes.

Anyways, getting back to the thread topic - methinks any *nix facility in the hallowed halls of academia is a good thing, provided they stay vendor-neutral in terms of learning material, and despite the prospective conditional demands of the sponsors. If employers want M$ people, they should pay for their employees and recruits to acquire certification, and not pollute academic excellence with vendor-specific issues...
 
I am a longtime C developer for Linux/Solaris/HP-UX and other oddball systems with a bit of Windows experience thrown in (Win32 and MFC) but I still prefer to use XP for my personal desktop at work and home.

The religious anti-Micro$oft zealotry is for Osama bin Laden folks as I prefer to use the best tool for the job which will save me time and hassles.

I tried using Mandrake for about 6 months at work and home but got very tired of the KDE/Evolution/X Windows bloated crapware and managed to hose my kernel when I tried to add passive ISDN card support to the unsupported 2.6 kernel and k3b would sometimes do weird crap when buring CD's.

Also installing new software was such a joy with the rpm package manager and trying to match the correct libs with the correct revisions provided for many a late night of entertainment.

No thanks.
 
Nobody's being a zealot, and you miss the basic truth, viz. that academic freedom is paramount in the academic context. M$ does not countenance this, nor does any vendor that decries the open source philosophy, which is premised on basic freedoms including the right to view and change source code. Hence, their products should not be included in the learning environment - certainly not at tertiary level, IMHO. If you prefer to use the M$ environment because you went through dependency hell, that's your prerogative, and the more power to you, too. There are those, however, who prefer knowing what's going-on 'under the hood', so to speak, and I'm one of them. I've seen too many helpdesks/support people frustrated because of arcane problems that the M$ knowledge base does not address, or apps which crash for unknown reasons well after deployment...
 
yeah OK its good for research and development and I think thats exactly why IBM is behind it. The Big Blue loves to get students to solve thier smaller problems, like they do with thier annual Scholar Competition, at least now SA will be elligable for it.
 
From what Dorris said, WITS has been widely using Linux for some time now, so what was the real story with IBM, WITS & Linux...:confused:
 
ic said:
From what Dorris said, WITS has been widely using Linux for some time now, so what was the real story with IBM, WITS & Linux...:confused:
Click to expand...
It's actually just a profile issue, for marketing purposes. It's nevertheless still a good thing, provided the academics and students ensure that they're not prostituted for profit...
 
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