Thank you to all for the replies. I am not trying to eradicate MS or anything. Although I would like to. But in reality, it is nearly impossible. It is possible in a closed environment, like an office, where the IT manager is a FOSS enthusiast. But as far as school students are concerned, it is extremely difficult to remove MS, although I believe it is possible with the school's help.
Yes, I agree that 95% of the students are computer users rather than learners. But GNU/Linux today, especially distros like Ubuntu are targeted at the end-users rather than learners. With my observation, I've seen quite a number of students who are interested to learn and use GNU/Linux without any exam or curriculum whatsoever. A recent trend that I've observed among school students is that some of them have taken GNU/Linux as a status symbol. i.e. They are proud of using it. And most of these students are not CS students. They're mostly bio/commerce/economics students. If this trend continues, I don't think it would be necessary to have GNU/Linux in the curriculum, with exams and force students to use GNU/Linux. Another problem with forcing students to learn GNU/Linux, is that they would only view it as another burden rather than a OS that would ease their computer use. This is mostly because, any curriculum based on GNU/Linux introduces students with the command-line. And most students are afraid of the command line. This would make them view GNU/Linux as a step backward from Windows rather than a step-forward. So, I think it would be best to give the students GNU/Linux, and let them explore by themselves, probably with a set of Spoken tutorial DVDs for help. With Regards, ~~Kumaran R _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc