Ah, then, yes I wholeheartedly agree. A student should be able to work in whatever operating system they wish. I don't feel it *should* be staff members' duty to provide support for shall we say "unusual" operating systems (although it would be great if they could), but at the very least, any student who is comfortable enough working with Linux or any other modern operating system should not be actively prevented from doing so. That's just a basic courtesy.
But despite my accidentally countering a point you didn't make ... is it worthwhile coming up with a list and then perhaps a brochure and/or website with a recommended set of free applications for us to recommend to university administrators to install on standard images? What did people think of my list?
I'd add -vim -emacs -vlc -iced tea not java - parts of java are still proprietary, iced tea replaces
On 24 February 2012 15:11, Matt Giuca <matt.giuca@gmail.com> wrote: those -a separate debugger - haven't used them enough to know what to put on I think the list would be as useful as we make it - it depends on the number of people that are shown it and how it is used.