[plug] Linux laptops

[Phillip Twiss]

G'Day All, especially Gavin :}

	Surprisingly many of our web servers are actually Linux :}

	This sounds very weird; could you give me the link you were trying to access?  I can check it and forward it to the appropriate team to fix it :}

	As to DET forcing us to run Windoze desktops, well, Anyone who knows me knows my feelings on this :} ( I think it sucks, so much money wasted, I get sick of hearing people saying " Im doing Excel" or even worse " Im doing Powerpoint" when really what they are doing is spreadsheets and presentation software!! )

	Anyway enough ranting..  I would love to see the NSW government do OpenSource software in preference to closed source/proprietary software wherever possible, in fact, I think all government departments should be encouraged to do it :}

	Regards

	Phill Twiss

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au] On Behalf Of Gavin Chester
Sent: Wednesday, 15 October 2008 9:02 PM
To: plug
Subject: Re: [plug] Linux laptops


On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 19:41 +0800, Senectus . wrote:
> exciting if true, but I see this as a ploy to get MS to drop their
> pricing...

Yes, if it were only true ... and if it were only happening in WA education.

I'll give you an extreme example of how blinkered DET's syadmins are:

I'm just coming to the end of my secondary teacher training and
tried to complete my placement application (nomination
of school at which I want to teach) using DET's online system. But to do
it I was forced to use a windoze PC to compete the process! Where's the
employment equity in that?

Before I reached that desperate point, I tried running IE under wine,
and also konqueror doing it's very good job of masquerading its identity
as IE on XP, but the web interface at DET kept saying words to the
effect that "your operating system is not compatible". Hell, it was just
a standard asp form system with a few boxes to tick, but they set it up
so that you have to use MS! BTW: I think from memory that even firefox
on MS worked, so it was rejecting the operating system, not the browser.

Gavin.

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