Thank you to all for the replies.
I am not trying to eradicate MS or anything. Although I would
like to. But in reality, it is nearly impossible. It is possible in a
closed environment, like an office, where the IT manager is a FOSS
enthusiast. But as far as school students are concerned, it is
extremely difficult to remove MS, although I believe it is possible
with the school's help.
Yes, I agree that 95% of the students are computer users rather
than learners. But GNU/Linux today, especially distros like Ubuntu are
targeted at the end-users rather than learners.
With my observation, I've seen quite a number of students who are
interested to learn and use GNU/Linux without any exam or curriculum
whatsoever. A recent trend that I've observed among school students is
that some of them have taken GNU/Linux as a status symbol. i.e. They
are proud of using it. And most of these students are not CS students.
They're mostly bio/commerce/economics students. If this trend
continues, I don't think it would be necessary to have GNU/Linux in
the curriculum, with exams and force students to use GNU/Linux.
Another problem with forcing students to learn GNU/Linux, is that
they would only view it as another burden rather than a OS that would
ease their computer use. This is mostly because, any curriculum based
on GNU/Linux introduces students with the command-line. And most
students are afraid of the command line. This would make them view
GNU/Linux as a step backward from Windows rather than a step-forward.
So, I think it would be best to give the students GNU/Linux, and let
them explore by themselves, probably with a set of Spoken tutorial
DVDs for help.
With Regards,
~~Kumaran R