Hello, fedoreans!!
Recently I shared in fedora-marketing channel element an idea about education and marketing for Fedora
I have been thinking about how to promote Fedora in schools and the educational sector in general. I noticed that many people tend to choose Debian-based distros (such as Ubuntu and its variants) for this purpose. They often cite stability and long-term support as their main reasons. But are these really valid arguments?
I think there are two issues here:
a) The term stability is often misunderstood. Some people think that stability means never having to upgrade or that the operating system will last forever. However, this is not true. Stability means that the system is reliable, secure and compatible with the hardware and software it supports. If you search for âbest Linux distro for your schoolâ, you will likely find many recommendations for Debian/Buntu family. But are they really the best choice?
b) Fedora has become very stable over the years. Yes, there are some cases where it can be challenging (such as Nvidia drivers), but they are becoming less frequent and easier to solve. I can honestly say that I donât remember the last time I had to reinstall Fedora because of an upgrade to a new release. Fedora also offers many benefits for the educational sector, such as cutting-edge technology, a vibrant community, and a strong commitment to open-source values. I think it would be worthwhile to spread the word about Fedora among teachers, educators, and enthusiasts.
To illustrate my point, I would like to share my personal experience. I am a sociology and computer-thinking teacher at a school where some computers use Mint and others use Linux Educacional (a derivative of Ubuntu created by UFPR, a great university in Brazil). However, these computers are very old (Celeron 2011 or Pentium dual-core) and the students complained about their performance. I tried other distros, but the best result for my case was Fedora-Budgie, which combines beauty with lightness. I configured dnf-automatic to download updates automatically and so far everything is working fine.
Iâd love to see more outreach in schools. We had an initiative around this several years ago, and it didnât really get traction â and I think we may have some lingering discouragement over that. Objectives/University Involvement Initiative - Fedora Project Wiki
We should probably get over that and move on â but maybe the history is useful.
I really believe in Fedoraâs potential for education. My grandmother said âSlowly, slowly to go fasterâ In the next few weeks Iâll be busy but I have some contact with the public educational sector in my State (nothing great, but an e-mail or SMS can be useful .)
The initiatives are a good indicator, but the majority of applications will not be used; usually, Linux educational distros are bloated. I comment on this based on my experience as a teacher. It is true that we have great applications for education, but often a school only needs a safe and reliable operating system with a modern browser (web applications here), an office suite (popular office suites like MS and Google with web versions are the chant of the mermaid), and two or more applications for specified use. I know my arm size; maybe I can reach my neighbor, my colleague, my city, and maybe with effort I can reach my state. Promote Fedora in schools, create local events like FLISOL, and talk about the benefits of Fedora.
Ah, I get your point. But it may be an already created spin that is an example to work from. For instance a spin or lab is really just a declarative selection of packages from the Fedora Repos that are installed on top of the base fedora system. Perhaps if you were to suggest the packages you would like to see a default for a mid school level education, then maybe there is enough interest to make a spin out of it, within the community. Then it could also just be a group for DNF or RPM-OSTREE to install.
