Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies, said the region’s Education Minister Nikolay Karpushin. The announcement was made in line with the report on ensuring “license purity” in the region’s schools.
According to Nikolay Karpushin schools would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps, Ekho Moskvi reports. “Buying business and commercial programmes from producers is quite expensive”, the Minister said.
Andrei Garkanov, Aflex Software Marketing Director thinks there are cheap, localized Russian Linux distributives in this country, “ASPLinux 11.2 for example. It has a user-friendly graphic interface, any documents might be created in it without installing special programmes, one can use the internet, listen to music and even learn the basics of Linux programming. It has a safe working environment because operational systems with plain code have a low virus probability”, said Mr. Garkanov. State educational facilities have a 50% discount on ASPLinux distributives.
However, not everybody shares Mr. Karpushin’s view. Oleg Zaplatinsky, teacher of computer science in a Moscow school thinks it is not so easy to switch over to Linux, because teachers do not know it, they can’t install it. Due to low wages at school there are no specialists there. An average teacher in Russia gets 10—15 thousand rubles a month ($400-$600) giving 4-5 classes 5 days a week. The wages are even lower in the province.
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