12-02-2019, 02:45 PM
[member=7067]JanetBiggar[/member]
It is very likely that whenever someone works in industry, they will be forced to work on a Windows platform. When they take a class on Excel and work on a Windows platform at work, they will likely be incompetent at learning anything else. But if they start off on Linux or LibreOffice and still have to use Windows or MS Office at work, it's like they become bilingual by default. And THAT is more important to their career in the long run. The ability to see options instead of only obstacles is omnipotent.
Having Linux at ones disposal gives THEM options. If they think they only have MS Windows as an option, when their computer frustrates them, they will think they need a newer computer...an MS Windows based computer. Lack of money to make the purchase (or the right purchase) stunts their personal computing growth. What I mean by right purchase is newer isn't always better. You can literally get a newer computer with hardware specifications worse than what you had before. That can easily happen to the person not familiar with what to look for in a new purchase. For example, they still sell computers with 5400 RPM hard drives. I also saw a computer newer than mine running Windows 10 on 32 GB of NVMe storage. Six months ago, it ran out of space trying to install an MS Windows 10 update. Very little personal data was on that drive, so it was the operating system (Windows 10) that stopped the computer from running Windows 10. For that friend, I installed Linux. It runs better than new and they have plenty of free space, even on that 32 GB NVMe drive.
I'm a late Linux and LibreOffice learner, but I know I became a better engineer when I started my Linux journey in late 2014. I'm not hearing a real reason to only stick with MS Windows or MS Office in this case. If the students have a class where the computers are being provided, chances are they don't have personal computers. This doesn't sound like a "Bring Your Own Device" environment. But when they want their own device, the financial bar to get a personal computer with an updated office suite in Linux is lower than the financial bar to get a personal computer with an updated MS Office suite.
For this situation, if these students want to learn more faster, consider starting with Linux and open source. LibreOffice is perfectly fine for this class. The students won't be useless in industry if they know LibreOffice first and are forced to use Excel at work.
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