Oh right, Ubuntu’s already doing that. Well … can’t complain, it’s what I use.

We could always do with another FLOSS workshop. Only – how many people actually use it after the workshop? Perhaps some sort of participant tracking is in order, though it hasn’t had all the best response in the past… dilemma dilemma.

Recent Linux kernels have kvm built-in, you could also try Sun VirtualBox, which has a nice GUI.

If your processor supports virtualization, you should experience near-native performance.

With support on the guest (virtual machine) for networking, USB devices, disk/partition access, VGA – you should be able to do most (if not all) Windows tasks comfortably.

Regarding networking connectivity: try wicd, instead of Novell’s NetworkManager.

2) is not available in . Okay, that isn’t a problem with Wine, but the average student can’t care less about installing a new OS and using an emulator to run a software with sub-par performance. Its like doing things in a convoluted way.

3) is too hard to learn. For example, Latex. Why would somebody learn markup language when they can just do the all-too-familiar highlight-and-bold-that-text routine. Yes it gives superior typographically pleasing documents but its too much of a hassle to find that damn package which lets you do non-intuitive stuff like wrapping text around the contour of a rounded image.

Generally, I think open-source software is more suitable for people who are more self-motivated to learn and troubleshoot. Most people just wanted something that you can press that power switch and let it run without any snags. Unfortunately that might not be the case for open-source, like that elusive wireless driver which I have to scour for after installing Fedora, or that bloody player to play your animes in matroska format. There are extensive documentation and self-help groups, but it is the user who has to be motivated to find these resources so that he can solve these problems in the first place. Sadly speaking from what I have observed, this is not the case for the general populace in NUS.

It’s my first sem starting out with FOSS (and intend to do so for the remaining sems)- I observed that courses which require set ups mostly provide for the Windows platform (docs, installation files, etc). Familiar FOSS users may not find too much trouble setting up equivalent environments on their own platforms, but I can see how a beginner could be turned off by this lack of support.

The issue is not whether students use a particular OS, but whether they are aware of the alternatives. I have an impression that most undergrad students (at least in ECE) do not even get to try any other OS, even till they graduate. Is this right?

@Hang Jian: I find Thunderbird somewhat cumbersome: I can’t see my NUS address book and search takes long (well it takes look in Outlook too).

@Amit Kumar: Indeed. I wish more Profs would consider the use of more FLOSS in their courses.

At least NUS webmail can be accessed using Firefox now. But accessing NUS emails using Thunderbird (through IMAP) is still the best way.

I am not sure how popular are NUS Online Communities nowadays http://u.nus.edu.sg/. It uses Microsoft Sharepoint as the backend, so does Firefox work properly?