People generally have a strong preference when it comes to their desktop computer. However, bulk purchasing meant to cut costs determine the platform educational institutions use. Microsoft and Apple have been notoriously unfriendly to the bottom line of school districts for years.

In the back rooms of many school districts sit servers that have worked uninterrupted for years. They’re veritable workhorses that rarely need maintenance or have suffered infiltration by some vicious hacker. It’s a good chance that some form of Linux resides on those machines.

With pressure to upgrade, Linux is beginning to venture out of the back room and onto the desktop. Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 could very well be the answer to the school system at an operating system crossroad. It labels itself as 90% the functionality of Windows Vista for 10% the cost.

With pressure to upgrade desktop stations, Linux is beginning to look good to many schools.

If that’s too steep try the completely free Ubuntu and its variety of sub-distributions such as Edubuntu (the educationally pre-packaged version). This system customarily installs in about twenty minutes and is fast becoming the wunderkind of the Linux world. They’ll even send you a fully bootable CD of the system at their cost if you don’t have the time or the connection to download a copy. Don’t want to install it over your current OS? Run the complete version from the CD!

To be sure, the choice is one for the future as districts begin to look at ways to save the almighty buck.

Here are six compelling reasons to consider Linux as an operating system in your school district:

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