The introduction of open source vocational education in secondary schools. Is it possible to?

This summer I got a job as an enikeem system administrator in one general school. The task was set: back in 2010 (or earlier), it was decided to transfer the school to secondary vocational education. My predecessor, a good man, but not so well versed in computers, performed the task unsuccessfully, and I redo it / finish it. The task was set and I, delighted , started.

What we have?

The entire fleet of vehicles is 34 PCs (mainly system units with amd 64x2 4200, 1GB DDR2, video cards mainly Nvidia (integrated and discrete), there is a pair of Radeon, built-in laptops from Intel).

Special features

1. No cables, only hardcore Wi-Fi (except for the computer science cabinet), a bonus is a diverse park of wi-fi receivers (pci, usb, various manufacturers, there are also non-N standards supporting).
2. Printers in the offices should work (also a good spread, mostly hp, canon).
3. There are a projector / screen in the classrooms (the same image should be displayed to show children).
4. Training discs are designed for Windows (* .exe).
5. The average age of teachers is about 50 years , the average level of PC proficiency is low, ranging from very low to below average (in Windows, of course). To teach a certain algorithm of actions is in principle realistic, but a step to the side leads to a dead end.

What I was guided by

Stability and simplicity. The fewer errors, crashes, fewer unusual situations, the better. I will give you an example - if Wi-Fi did not automatically connect, the Internet was “recognized” as inoperative (although you could just tap the network and connect, nothing more was required). And so, alas, in everything.
Support. Due to the conservatism of the teachers, a distribution was needed, which is updated as long as possible without reinstalling.
Good driver base. Because of the different fleets of equipment (Wi-Fi receivers, printers), the distribution must contain an additional bunch of drivers.
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My choice of distribution

With all the features, I stopped at Ubuntu 12.04 (since the version of LTS until 2017). Then various versions of the desktop environments were tried - KDE, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE, and their derivatives, for example Cinnamon, etc. Here Gnome Fallback most of all approached. Bezgluchny, fast, clear, that part of the teachers who sat on Ubuntu 10.04, did not notice the transition.
To summarize, now on almost all PCs there is Edubuntu 12.04 (where the Gnome Fallback mode is selected during installation).

Software and drivers

After installing the system, its Russification, removal of unnecessary packages and updates, the question of drivers arises. Most drivers for video cards picked up through the standard utility "Device Drivers". In some cases, the Xorg driver does not allow showing a mirror image on two monitors (does not pick up), moreover, when launching certain programs (for example Mozila Firefox) on most PCs with integrated video, a frozen screen with stripes was caught, it saved a reboot (hi, Windows :) ).

All drivers for Wi-Fi picked up from the box. For printers, you need to install drivers from the official site (to be fair, 1/3 was installed automatically), there were no unsupported drivers :).

As a replacement for MS Office, the standard LibreOffice was left. Unfortunately, the incompatibility of documents is quite significant. It is recommended to save documents in the format 97/2003 * .doc, * .ppt, and use less animation in presentations - some problems go away.

For audio / video one multimedia processor is needed. In my case, this was my favorite VLC. Having downloaded it from the Application Center, you need to make it the default player (System Settings - System Information - Default Applications). However, this solution did not work, so I cut out the standard Video Player, and Rhythmbox. That was enough :)

To install * .exe programs, PlayOnLinux is used, which greatly simplifies this process (by downloading libraries and versions of Wine).

Well implemented protection of Wi-Fi settings out of the box. Since, by default, when you start your PC, you enter the teacher account with normal rights, Wi-Fi connects automatically, but when you enter the settings, it asks for an administrator password (similar to UAC in Windows). High school students in Ubuntu 10.04 and above quietly climbed into the settings, watched the password and connected from their gadgets to the school channel. The speed, which was already small, was getting worse . Now there is no such thing.

The system at school is designed so that the children are constantly in their office (except for the younger ones), and the teachers come to them. The computer in change remained unattended, and was used for non-educational purposes (in other words, vk, facebook, youtube, etc.). Partly, the problem was solved by a filter, but it was decided to install a remote monitoring program. After comparing all existing solutions I chose Italc. In the repositories of Ubuntu 12.04 version 1.0.13 lies, and it stopped on it. Italc also stands in a computer class on the teacher’s main computer.

OwnCloud is installed as a network file storage, but it is rarely used. The reason is the human factor (the approximate excuse is better on a flash drive). Also in the computer class uses a shared network folder.

findings

A lot of work has been done. Selfless teachers daily told me about bugs, they often changed distributions (13.04, 12.10, 13.10, AltLinux, etc.), desktop environments (KDE, Cinnamon, and more) in search of the best, smoked a considerable number of manuals for all sorts of decisions, spent a lot of nerves, both their own and others.
It is theoretically possible to replace Windows in secondary schools with open source software. Practically, you are faced with the human factor of not wanting to learn anything (although not all of them), incompatibility of programs / documents, incomplete support for Linux techniques. But all the same is real. What and continue to do.