Ask Slashdot: Linux Support In Universities? 432
An anonymous reader writes "I study Computer Science at a university in Melbourne, Australia. I recently went to a 'Directions of IT' seminar run by our central IT department, where students were invited to discuss issues with the senior management of IT. During discussion about proposed changes to our campus-wide wireless network, I asked if the new system would support Macs, Linux and other Operating Systems. Several of the managers laughed at this question, and one exclaimed 'Linux!' as if it was the punchline to a joke. The head of IT at least treated my question seriously, but I didn't get a concrete answer. So, I would like to ask Slashdot: Does your university/college provide support for Linux/BSD/etc users to connect to the on-campus wireless? How does IT support Linux users generally? Have IT staff ever ridiculed you for asking questions about Linux?"
Re:Dentist appointment next Monday :( (Score:3, Insightful)
... unless they use some weird connection tool (do those even exist any more).
You, you've never run across Cisco's Clean Access Agent? Lucky you!
ridiculed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Weird.
Linux was an integral part of my Computer Science education.
The first few CSC courses were all run from a lab with tons of Alpha terminals. Later courses were conducted in labs where all the machines dual-booted Windows and Linux. Almost all of our programming assignments were done in a Linux environment.
Plus, half the university's servers were running on some sort of Unix-like OS.
And you're getting ridiculed for asking about Linux?
Seems a little weird to me... Is Linux really such a marginal part of a modern university environment?
Re:Shouldn't that be platform neutral? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question that I have is what was meant by support. WiFi is usually platform independent so it should work for most devices. Do mean can you call them up and ask for help connecting? Probably not. Heck that is a support headache now for Windows. You have to deal with XP, Vista, and Windows7 plus manufactures often seem to want to add their own Wifi utility that you may have never seen before. On OS/X it just seems to work. Frankly on Linux if you have a good distro with on a system with a supported wifi chipset it also just seems to work.
But if you say you support every platform at a University you will get some pain in the rear that will be running Contiki on an old 386 notebook trying to log on to the network asking for help.
Re:All computer science programs should support Li (Score:2, Insightful)
Any CS department that doesn't acknowledge Unix in general is just retarded. This includes MIS types from the business school.
Maybe they laughed at your ignorance of networks? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure networking hardware and the software they use are platform-neutral with respect to client connections, and they took your issue as an instance of "THAT dude who thinks he's leet for using linux yet doesn't know how networks operate."
Re:Shouldn't that be platform neutral? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me (and I'll grant you I might be entirely to logical for all this University network overlord stuff), that a "public wifi" system in this day and age that won't work with iOS, Android, Kindles, B&N Android, PS3s and X-boxes (assuming it covers the dorms), and MacOS at the very least is pretty much pointless. Once you support all of that, you pretty much support all open standards anyway, so adding Linux into the mix shouldn't be an issue. There was a time (not so very long ago) when supporting Windows was enough to cover 95% or more of your users. These days I'd be surprised if Windows covered even 50%. Between all the non-PC devices that use wifi now and the popularity of Macs on university campuses, I can't see why you'd even bother to maintain a Windows only wifi system.