[geeks] Q: Regarding Linux in K-12 education

[Nate]

On Jan 17, 2010, at 12:43 AM, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:

> Not knowing Windows would put an applicant at a disadvantage, even if they
> were applying for a job to answer the phone and make appointments.

What I was trying to get at, but failing to explain clearly, is that I've seen
a homogenization of the GUI computing experience over the last 20 years, to
such an extent that for the basic productivity-type work most people do on
computers, I don't think there is a significant difference from Windows to Mac
to Linux.

In fact, I think it might even be possible that the Windows 7 experience could
be closer to the OS X 10.6 experience than it is to Windows XP.

Certainly (and sadly for me) the deep differences between the GUIs of Mac OS
7, Windows 3, IRIX, NeXTSTEP, etc. are no longer present in the marketplace.
And all this is being further eroded by the amount of stuff people do on the
web (and 'cloud computing' as it's own type of platform, certainly something
Google is going to be trying to push even more in the not-too-distant
future...)

Sure, when you get under the hood, there are some significant differences
still, but so much of it is abstracted away into something which is becoming a
sort of lingua franca, and the general computing resources in terms of
hardware available to most platforms is now the same and at a much higher and
in some ways consistent average level, so most skills are very similar or at
least easily transferrable across platforms.

My personal gripe as someone who uses different operating systems every day
both at work and at home is that when I try to be a 'power user' and use
keyboard shortcuts, I have to do some significant mental adjustment, much more
so than when mousing around.

Also a side-note regarding computers and education - there are days where
sometimes I wonder if everyone should be receiving a better practical
computing education so they can gain the knowledge to protect themselves from
adware, viruses, scams and bad software, as well as understanding basic
network security such as firewalls, port mapping, DHCP, and wireless security,
encryption and packet sniffing.  Maybe it could be reinforced with a license
or somesuch (like a driving license), something people could get re-tested for
so everyone stays up-to-date.  That way, the botnets would have a really hard
time taking root in the first place, and the black-market platforms of
compromised systems would dwindle because people would know how to protect
themselves.  Of course, I'm not sure I have faith in our elected officials,
most if not all of which are ignorant of these things themselves, to implement
such an educational reform on a large scale...