UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"... Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible. And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time? While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change. "Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

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UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge... Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be "more productive"... Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in the new unfamiliar environment because it's 'more productive', a conclusion often shaped by conventional wisdom or their 'gut' feeling. Decision makers may also mistake their own 'light-user experience' for universal experience and believe all platforms are fungible. And while it's one thing for a business to delay their delivery dates and increase costs of by introducing a switch in computing environments that's of unquantified and possibly dubious value, how about when a switch in computing environments is made that affects schoolchildren's ability to learn for a period of time? While a MacBook Neo is indeed cute, what might be the possible consequences of a decision to move 25,000 students off Windows and onto MacBook Neos...? Or even the impact on a single kid who moves from a MacBook school to a Windows or Chrome school (or whose home computing environment isn't aligned with their school). Or students whose teachers decide learning in their classrooms should now additionally require an understanding of the Minecraft computing platform/UI (used in over 40,000 school systems.). Learning Management Systems and now various AI Edtech tools used by schoolkids are also subject to change. "Even if students and schools eventually benefit from a new platform, one wonders how much learning is lost during the switch," theodp asks, "and what the financial and educational ROI and payback period look like." Are there bigger problems than we realize? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What are the costs of switching between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"I've been a Linux IT administrator for 30 years now," says crhylove (Slashdot reader #205,956), in a new video on his YouTube channel. "I used to be a data center architect, at one point I was the IT director for 13 school districts... I just haven't been happy overall with all the other operating systems out there... " I've been working really diligently for the last few weeks on a new distro called Spaced Linux that is exactly what I want to use. It's heavily focused on the [zoom-friendly 3D] Compiz desktop, very efficient using the rolling Devuan Ceres backend, and avoids dependency hell by promoting mostly Flatpak usage. It's still early, but it's already working great for me, it's been my daily driver for a few weeks now. There's also user-friendly themes — everything from Linux, Android, GeoWorks, and Mac OS X to Windows 11, Windows XP, and even Windows 3.11 (dark or light theme). And you can also run Windows apps under Wine. "And let me tell you, Nvidia runs perfectly on here now..." he adds in the video. "It just works really, really well out of the box." He's now working on voice-command features, bur argues that Spaced Linux "is already extremely usable, extremely efficient, extremely fast, and extremely reliable.... And it's only going to get better and better."

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