Re:Tell HN: My horror story as a student dealing with my Uni...
by sketerpot on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:30AM
(#537229)
> I also use a text login, fvwm2, and install things from source (albiet in Gentoo rather than Ubuntu). As a 19 year old kid, should I feel hard done by? :)
You're accustomed to using a command line, you probably chose fvwm2 because you were looking for a no-frills window manager, and Gentoo's emerge system makes basic installation from source as easy as using apt-get. People who aren't as nuts as you and I have every right to be ticked off at computer labs that act like your computer rather than computers for mortals.
Re:Tell HN: My horror story as a student dealing with my Uni...
by eru on Sunday March 29, 2009 @04:28PM
(#537747)
Slightly off-topic: I consider applying at Warwick for a PhD position. Could we get in contact to talk about your university? You'll find my email address in my profile. Please drop me a line. Thank you!
Re:Tell HN: My horror story as a student dealing with my Uni...
by DougBTX on Saturday March 28, 2009 @08:10PM
(#536939)
No problems at back at my undergrad at Bath Uni either. You could have graduated using just the Uni machines. Plenty of desktops spread around campus, good wifi accessible with a username and password.
Re:Tell HN: My horror story as a student dealing with my Uni...
by VBprogrammer on Sunday March 29, 2009 @09:46AM
(#537336)
Plain old Fedora at the The University of Edinburgh here. Pretty reasonable setup, a few things a bit out of date, default quota a bit on the tight side if you need to install your own version of anything large (like wxwindows etc) but all in all pretty fair.
Maybe it's different in England, but I've found my university's computer labs (Uni. of Warwick) to be useful, and not insane. I know from experience that if I didn't have my own computer (as was the case when it was broken during my first week), I could get by without too much frustration using the university systems. I can even use dvorak.
(Noone else seems to have problems with them either, so it's not just that the admins are as insane as I am.)
Not that this is meaningful data. But I'm not sure your experiences are either. Whether computer labs provide value depends on the labs and the students. There's no answer that will apply to all universities.