Re: Workstation Productivity
This is strange, are you a recent uni graduate yourself? I ask because I am currently studying and my experience has been that reports could be written in anything and had to be submitted basically in a format that the lecturer could read. Most of the letcturers were open to installing standard/free software if need be. To me .doc, .sxw, .ppt etc are formats for authoring, but why would you submit a report in one when the marker has _no_ need to edit your work? PDF is a format that is ideally suited to the job and this is what I submitted in. Formats for assessment are an issue, but more so with Windows than with Linux. I've done a fair bit of external study and submitting your assessment items through web systems such as blackboard (or whatever that weird one is that UniSA use) often requires Microsoft formats. What's good about Open Office (for example) is that you can save in .DOC if you must, but you also have access to quite a range of other formats. If your T.A. wants .DOC then you can do that, if another T.A. wants .PDF then you can do that too. Aside from a list of alternate programs, which is a necessary requirement, I'm also interested specifically in productivity and usability benefits that come with using Ubuntu. For example, can a particular student perform a particular task as easily, or easier, on Ubuntu. Can a particular task be done quicker? What program options are available in Linux that aren't available in Windows? Simple case study. Student A is provided the task of undertaking a research project and needs to submit a literature review. This review should be presented in .PDF format with links between the table of contents and the relevant headings. A title page should be attached. The page numbers should be as follows: Cover Page: No Number Table of Contents: Roman Numerals (IVX etc.) Content: Standard Characters (0-9) Appendix: Roman Numerals (IVX etc.) It should include at least 50 references presented in the text and a list of references at the end in Harvard format. The table of contents should also provide a list of illustrations/images. Now, if the student were to undertake such a project in Ubuntu where would he or she start? What tools are available? How do they compare to any commercially available Windows alternatives? The list of recommended programs so far includes: a) Open Office.org b) Gimp c) Makefile d) Gcc e) Open-jdk f) Mozilla Firefox g) Zim (personal wiki) h) Eclipse i) gedit j) RapidSVN k) Pidgin -- Simon Ives E - [EMAIL PROTECTED] M - [EMAIL PROTECTED] W - www.simonives.info Please consider the environment before printing this email or any attachments. -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
Re: Workstation Productivity
Simon, One 'work flow' that I recently heard about for doing reasonably complicated diagrams (from Glen Turner, via LinuxSA) - draft in Dia - annotate in Inkscape - present in OpenOffice. There would probably be other cases where a chain of tools could be used a better job that any alternative single tool. Cheers, Paul On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 9:53 PM, Simon Ives [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is strange, are you a recent uni graduate yourself? I ask because I am currently studying and my experience has been that reports could be written in anything and had to be submitted basically in a format that the lecturer could read. Most of the letcturers were open to installing standard/free software if need be. To me .doc, .sxw, .ppt etc are formats for authoring, but why would you submit a report in one when the marker has _no_ need to edit your work? PDF is a format that is ideally suited to the job and this is what I submitted in. Formats for assessment are an issue, but more so with Windows than with Linux. I've done a fair bit of external study and submitting your assessment items through web systems such as blackboard (or whatever that weird one is that UniSA use) often requires Microsoft formats. What's good about Open Office (for example) is that you can save in .DOC if you must, but you also have access to quite a range of other formats. If your T.A. wants .DOC then you can do that, if another T.A. wants .PDF then you can do that too. Aside from a list of alternate programs, which is a necessary requirement, I'm also interested specifically in productivity and usability benefits that come with using Ubuntu. For example, can a particular student perform a particular task as easily, or easier, on Ubuntu. Can a particular task be done quicker? What program options are available in Linux that aren't available in Windows? Simple case study. Student A is provided the task of undertaking a research project and needs to submit a literature review. This review should be presented in .PDF format with links between the table of contents and the relevant headings. A title page should be attached. The page numbers should be as follows: Cover Page: No Number Table of Contents: Roman Numerals (IVX etc.) Content: Standard Characters (0-9) Appendix: Roman Numerals (IVX etc.) It should include at least 50 references presented in the text and a list of references at the end in Harvard format. The table of contents should also provide a list of illustrations/images. Now, if the student were to undertake such a project in Ubuntu where would he or she start? What tools are available? How do they compare to any commercially available Windows alternatives? The list of recommended programs so far includes: a) Open Office.org b) Gimp c) Makefile d) Gcc e) Open-jdk f) Mozilla Firefox g) Zim (personal wiki) h) Eclipse i) gedit j) RapidSVN k) Pidgin -- Simon Ives E - [EMAIL PROTECTED] M - [EMAIL PROTECTED] W - www.simonives.info Please consider the environment before printing this email or any attachments. -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
Re: Workstation Productivity
Hello Simon, Simon Ives wrote: % Hi All. % % I'm currently writing a document for my university outlining the % productivity benefits of using Linux for workstations. Before you get % too excited this isn't for the Uni's own workstations but as a guide for % those students who wish to use Linux (the uni would like to % 'unofficially' support Linux and would like to have a default list of % applications that they can refer to). I'll be using Ubuntu as the Linux % example. Great. % I'm wondering if anyone on this list has any suggestions for me? The % document will be geared towards increasing productivity from a % university student's perspective and be pretty basic. Things like what % features of Open Office are useful, how to us%e Tomboy Notes, how to use % Bibus etc. 1) I think not making students submit assignment in one format (.doc for example) will be beneficial. Openoffice formats (.sxw) are rejected simply because the markers do not think it's part of their job to install openoffice on their box. why? 2) When students do coding using different JDK (for example IBM/Open-jdk) and do not wish to use Sun Microsystem's Java, he/she should be allowed to do so and do so without having to to worry whether it may run on marker's box/laptop. Why should student have to chose to do their homework using some particular JDK by some particular software company? If it was a task of essence such as real product, then I can understand but for assignments? come on, gimme a break. Students are there to learn and so should be able to experiment and play around with different compilers of their choice. Same goes for C++ (MSVC++ on Windows platform). Why not Gcc or even if proprietary path Icc(x86 is common amongst student's laptop uni labs and they'll learn thing or two about optimisations)? Gcc-portable builds for windows are already available platform (MingW) and if the markers do not wish to use Linux, then it's their freakin problem. The university pays them to mark it for us. Not the other way around! The onus is on them, not us! 3) Free software that University should recognise should thus be - a) Openoffice.org and PDF(open standard now I think?) b) Gimp c) Makefile (and not some windows msvc++ crap project files!) d) Gcc e) Open-jdk f) Mozilla firefox (The code should work on Internet Explorer! what a crap!) g) Zim (personal wiki) % the rest of the Ubuntu community to enjoy too. Will be looking forward to it! 8-) Just my 2 cents :) Cheers, Elmo :) -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
