Sorry for the Danish post i hope you can translate it.
The Ministry warns that Microsoft programs can create problems for written exams for students with Mac computers.
Users who have updated the programs to the latest version may experience the programs running slowly, freezing and crashing. This means that the examinees are delayed in their work and that parts of the answers risk being lost, write the Agency for Education and Quality and the Agency for IT and Learning in a notice to schools.
In the Scandinavian countries this sort of software is usually provided by the school/university, so the students don’t have to buy it. You may however be (essentially) forced to use that software, since other options aren’t supported. The exam software my uni uses for instance only runs on Windows & MacOS.
Yeah, and nobody thinks that is a seriously bad idea? Here, please allow is to lock you into all our products so we can ensure you have to use them life long, like it or not.
why is it a bad idea that studenst get some tools, free of charge, that they are free to use (or not if they choose open source or whatever else)? As far as I know, at least in uni, exams can be submitted in different formats, one of those being pdf, which is pretty universal.what would be the alternative?
The tools aren’t given just out of the goodness of Microsofts heart. Make everyone use word so now if i don’t use words I might run into compatibility issues. Make everyone use Microsoft teams, so well, little options there to even use a competing product.
The issue here is that Microsoft does it to force people into using their products whether they want or need to or not
Microsoft doesn’t give out shit. The schools pay for it.
You don’t seem to know how that works.
Microsoft will gracefully give lower licensing costs for students if the school opts in Microsoft and opts out the competition. It’s been a while (10 years ago) but I saw this in universities where then students had the choice, windows or mac because Microsoft forced it.
In my school they used A1 (or some other A) licences for students. They are probably cheaper than other licenses but they are not free.
I have no idea if they have opted out the competition (whatever that means).
Our class never used any normal windows client OSes (on bare metal anyway). We primarily used Windows server evaluation or Linux depending on the course. I think the other classes primarily used VDI.
Do you have a source for this:
And what do you mean by opt out? Do they sign a contract saying that they won’t use Linux? That seems extremely unlikely, why would they even care? Seems more likely to be an IT policy because they want to manage the devices or they don’t want to provide support for non Windows or Mac devices.
If you have no evidence or source, do you know for sure that it’s happening (as in you worked in IT or similar role for the university) or it’s a rumour you heard?
University in Mexico, at least 10 years ago but I wonder if things have improved much.
With opt out I mean that they are not allowed to promote Linux in an official capacity. Can’t use it on their own computers, etc. everything official must use a Microsoft format that sort of thing.