The Universal School Desktop

or how the future is being 'Windows Proofed'

The one thing that you really need when teaching something to a group of children, students, adults, whoever, is to ensure that they are 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. Put less metaphorically, they all need to be accessing the same text book or work sheet during the lesson. If not chaos is sure to follow. Any teacher who has blithely asked a group to 'turn to page 22' only to find there are two versions of the text book in the class will know what I mean. If in an ICT context for example you are demonstrating the use of formulae in a spreadsheet or mail merge in a word processor/database with the aim of transferring these skills to the class, then this means everyone needs to be able to continue using the same spreadsheet/word processor.

And at this stage in the process I mean the very same product and the same version of that product. It does not matter in terms of teaching the principles of spreadsheet formulae which software you are using.

For most school-work on, say spreadsheets, MS Excel, OpenOffice Calc, or Gnumeric will do the job equally well, but it really does matter for any teaching or training scenario that everyone is using the same software. The need for the 'same hymn sheet' for teaching/training purposes simply will not go away... so it is the notion of the standard desktop that forms the basis of this post.

A Windows-Proofed Future, so no standard desktop there then..

Desktop PC sales have stalled world-wide, in schools they have more or less stopped the only area of real growth in any area but especially schools are sales of the new netbooks or mini-laptops.

A quick survey of current netbooks however reveals just how diverse is this early part of their evolution.

The list below sets the scene. All computers here have their own custom Linux OSes installed; some better than others.

EeePC:x86 CPU;
Dell Mini:Intel Atom CPU; 
InkMedia:Via C7 CPU;
HP mini:Via C7;
Elonex ONEt:32 bit RISC CPU;
Dium-Mandriva:64bit MIPS CPU.

You might get Windows XP working on a few these devices but in effect the future has been proofed against MS's products.

I mean, good grief, such a range would tax even the Debian nuts who are obsessed with platform compliance...Win CE anyone?

Why bring this up now? Well, way back when, thanks to Microsoft for a while we almost arrived at a standard, albeit a de facto standard, desktop in schools and this was of course good old Win 2000/XP -Office 2000-2003.

During this time (as it happened) most examination syllabuses were also created. Now understand this: schools would be very happy if stuff simply did not change. They had 'done' computing like they had 'done' chemistry (mostly late 19th century if you want to know) so small changes could be tolerated as 'modern' but not big ones. Schools now had ICT suites with standard desktops (thank you Norton Ghost), all was well.

Unfortunately IT business models require an upgrade cycle. Stuff cannot remain the same if vendors are to stay in business. If desktops PCs are not in vogue let's promote laptops as the future (so goes the marketing rhetoric). Thus.. no surprise..

The decline of the ICT suite

Recently that icon of modernity, the network room, has fallen out of popularity and many schools prefer to use laptops in the classroom (fools, you can't see what they are doing behind the 17” screens). The move to student laptops presents its own problems not least when schools want to specify which computers the students are allowed to use (sorry, BUY) and what software they run.

Thus the ICT suite standard is superseded by the personal laptop equivalent and which because you have started off down this route, will be superseded by the personal very cheap mini laptop. It's equivalent to letting a genie out of a bottle. The mini-linux laptops will destroy the de-facto XP desktop.

Baby with the Bathwater?

A desktop that can be standardised for corporate or pedagogical use remains not only desirable but in many cases essential. Therefore the question is 'how is this to be done in the future?'

There are ways to provide a standard desktop experience for the user, independent (within reason) of their hardware.

In order of ease of ease of achieving a standard:

1. The Web-Top desktop via a browser. A consistency no-brainer: Google Docs for example looks and feel much the same whether using a browser on any PC or netbook and don't get me started on Chrome.
2. PXE boot the user's computer to a server which will provide the desktop environment. Cooler than you think when you see 3D apps running on an EeePC acting as a thin-client.
3. External Boot (USB/CD/SDFlash) the computers into a standard desktop provided by the school. Hardware recognition magic as espoused by Mandriva's USB boot distros mean one key unlocks multiple hardware platforms with a consistent desktop experience.

So there are ways of getting a standard desktop other than going back to the brief reign of XP. To summarise the issues:

• Corporations and educational institutions have legitimate business and teaching imperatives that require a uniform desktop for its users.
• The days of the Win 2000/XP quasi standard are past and are not set to resume with Vista or Windows 7.
• A standard multi-platform UI will surely evolve to meet a real need. Cross-platform free, Open Source applications are set to dominate the 'local' software and Chrome mediated free 'web-tops' will dominate online. Pick your favorite technology from the three contenders.

One things is sure the existing model has to change. The meteor has struck.