Comment 23 for bug 56880

Hugh Parker: most schools have sysadmins that know how to set environment variables for the system, so it won't really prevent schools from using Ubuntu. (Neither will the lack of those fonts, really.)

That doesn't mean it shouldn't get fixed somehow though...

I wonder if it would be possible to store the proxy config in NetworkManager and have NM change it system-wide (it could e.g. remember the proxy setting related to the wifi network you connect to)?