blog/draft/2013-skolelinux-klaus-knopper.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2013-11-12 09:50
   4
   5 <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
   6 but the <ahref="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
   7 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we had a
   8 new school show up on #debian-edu to share their good experience with
   9 installing Debian Edu at their school.  This time I have been able to
  10 get some helpful comments from the creator of Knoppix, Klaus Knopper,
  11 who was involved in a Skolelinux project in Germany a few years ago.</p>
  12
  13 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  14
  15 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
  16 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
  17 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
  18 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
  19
  20 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
  21 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
  22 projects like the <ahref="www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
  23 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
  24 <ahref="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
  25 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
  26 <ahref="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
  27 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
  28 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
  29
  30 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
  31 project?</strong></p>
  32
  33 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
  34 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
  35 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
  36 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
  37
  38 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  39 Edu?</strong></p>
  40
  41 <ul>
  42   <li>Quick installation,</li>
  43   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
  44   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
  45   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
  46     single company,</li>
  47   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
  48     experience and problem solutions.</li>
  49 </ul>
  50
  51 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  52 Edu?</strong></p>
  53
  54 <ul>
  55   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
  56   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
  57   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
  58   working again reliably.
  59
  60   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
  61   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
  62   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
  63   as their base.
  64
  65   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
  66   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
  67   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
  68   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
  69   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
  70   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
  71
  72   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
  73   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
  74   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
  75   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
  76   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
  77   schemes.</li>
  78
  79   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
  80   compared to Debian.</li>
  81
  82 </ul>
  83
  84 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
  85 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
  86 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
  87 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
  88
  89 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
  90
  91 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
  92 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
  93 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
  94 programming languages for teaching.</p>
  95
  96 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
  97 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
  98
  99 <p>Strong arguments are
 100
 101 <ul>
 102
 103   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 104     teaching and learning.</li>
 105
 106   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 107     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 108     conversion problems.</li>
 109
 110   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 111     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 112     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 113     science, not products.</li>
 114
 115   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 116     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 117
 118 </ul>