Open but difficult vs Easy but closed

STEM Chat
21

I would like to share my two bits:
If you are a professional, lets say a musician, I would suggest you to use a Mac and Logic Pro X. But if you happen to be an enthusiast, like me, you can use LMMS, Ardour, Hydrogen for production and Audacity for editing.

Since I’m a teacher and happen to have a language lab in my charge here’s what I did:

  1. The Lab must run on only a FLOSS OS, my choice - Lubuntu (Its easy, clean desktop environment, no viruses, no one installs games etc.)
  2. For creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations, we have Libre Office. We also have Firefox, Audacity, LMMS, Openshot video editor, Inkscape etc. These are the applications that a student needs. It suffices most of the tasks.
  3. I also give freedom to students to choose their own OS (we use Fedora, Suse, Mint, Elementary OS, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, UbuntuStudio besides multiple desktop environments) because:
  • They learn to appreciate FOSS.
  • They learn to respect freedom and also realize about piracy.
  • They also learn to install OS, basic sudo commands, and it builds confidence in them.
  • They become aware of a lot of other issues, struggle through multiple failures in installing OS, overcoming many difficulties, FOSS is just like life, for no reason it may simply not turn out as you plan it to be!
  • Most importantly, they feel alive, as if its their own lab and not something that has been forced upon them.

So, for Education it must be FOSS.

But, if you are a professional and earning your livelihood depends on the quality of your work and the ease and stability of the software platform, I would suggest you to spend some money and go for paid software.

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22

Thanks a lot for sharing your valuable insights. I am sure, this is going to be inspiring for lot of educators.

In the above, is this something you have observed in music domain or you are suggesting that paid softwares in general lead to quality work?

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24

I’ve a few students who are in the music industry. They started with Windows based software and moved on to Mac OS and Logic Pro. They vouch by it. The machine and the software are married so well, the tactile feel, the ease of use the stability of software, intuitiveness, they say its just amazing.
But then, it’s my personal view. If you are committed to free software movement you can use Foss as well.

As far as education is concerned, I can tell you, the way ahead is the Foss way.

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25

Quality work can also be done on Ardour. But it could be a bit overwhelming for new users. Many in the audio editing industry use Audacity, it is a very powerful tool.
I use audacity for recording and editing.

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