"Students at King Saud University and King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
(KFUPM) are getting to grips with Linux the open source, "Unix like" operating system.
Both universities have integrated Linux into their academic curriculum and their IT
infrastructure, enabling both educational institutions to run a limited number of computer
labs on the freeware OS."
"The 50 machine Linux lab inside King Saud University has been up and running for three
years, where it was introduced by an enthusiastic Dr. Khaled Al Ghoneim on his return
from the US. Now King Saud's Linux environment is the initial computer-programming lab
encountered by students and everything is done to encourage students to make the most
of the freeware in their studies. "On my return from the States I started to preach about
the benefits of Linux," said Dr. Al Ghoneim."
"At that time we had just received 50 new PCs, which we were planning to install
Windows NT on. But I went to the Dean and told him about Linux. He asked me to install
Linux on the 50 machines before school started, so I cancelled my holiday and working
with the team from the computer centre we set-up the lab in two months. We made an
environment that we properly couldn?t do with NT at the time, with very few problems.
We had only one problem in the first month."
