Open Source in Education

It’s as easy as Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal and type in a command (option) or filename. You can access folders and servers throughout the world, move files, open, close, and force quit applications, create files and folders, and everything else you might want to do on your computer. You can do more in the command line than you can in the GUI (the graphical user interface–Windows/Vista, OS X for Mac, and Fedora/Gnome).

FLOSS Manual–Linux Command Line

The GUI is simply a pretty and user friendly way of doing what is done in the command line behind the scenes. When you click on an application or folder, the computer runs that command through a click instead of using a typed command line. The GUI prevents you from seeing files that you don’t need to use the computer. If you can do simple “command line” stuff, you have truly graduated to being a “geek”, one step away from becoming a “hacker”. Remember a “hacker” is a geek using command line to solve programming problems. A “cracker” is a person with hacker skills using her/his talents to do bad things.

While in the FLOSS Manuals, check out all the other great open source user information.

Linux refers to Linus Torvald’s operating system kernal that is free and available for all to use. Free means more than as free in “free popcorn”. It also means that the source code in which the software is written is available and freely accessible. FLOSS (free/libre and open source software) and FOSS refer to all the software programs that have been written for free consumption. This includes Linux distros (distributions) that serve as the internal operating system of a computer and software that one might use to wordprocess, view video, chat, web browsers, etc.  With FLOSS/FOSS software, you can copy it, change it, adapt it to your needs, and even sell it. The source code is available to you to use or change it as you wish. You can learn more by going to Wikipedia’s descriptions of Linux , FLOSS, FOSS, and the GNU GPL.

We hope that this blog and linked wikis can assist educational decision-makers as consider open source solutions.  Free does not mean cheap.  Free does mean that you own your software and can do with it what you please just like most things that you buy.  Proprietary software does not allow the same privileges.  Those vendors only allow you to use it and even limit the number of  computers on which you can load THEIR software (that you paid for!!).

Gaining energy from Professor Tim Hart’s University of Maine course titled “Open Source in Education”, students in the graduate level class have decided to use this blog and linked wiki pages to provide information about Open Source software and its implementation into the teaching/learning process.

Please stay tuned for more information.