blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</div>
  24       <div class="date">27th May 2012</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
  26 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
  27 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
  28 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
  29 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
  30 since then, helping to make sure the
  31 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
  32 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
  33
  34 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  35
  36 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
  37 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
  38 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
  39 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
  40 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
  41 our computer network.</p>
  42
  43 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
  44 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
  45 (4 months).</p>
  46
  47 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
  48 project?</strong></p>
  49
  50 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
  51 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
  52 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
  53 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
  54 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
  55 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
  56 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
  57 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
  58 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
  59 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
  60 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
  61 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
  62 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
  63 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
  64
  65 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  66 Edu?</strong></p>
  67
  68 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
  69 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
  70 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
  71 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
  72 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
  73 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
  74 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
  75 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
  76
  77 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  78 Edu?</strong></p>
  79
  80 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
  81 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
  82 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
  83 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
  84 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
  85 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
  86 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
  87 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
  88 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
  89 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
  90 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
  91 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
  92
  93 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
  94
  95 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
  96 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
  97 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
  98
  99 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 100 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 101
 102 <p><ol>
 103
 104 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
 105 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
 106 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
 107 developing.</li>
 108
 109 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
 110 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
 111 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
 112 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
 113 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
 114
 115 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
 116 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
 117 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
 118
 119 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
 120 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
 121 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
 122 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
 123
 124 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
 125 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
 126 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
 127
 128 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
 129
 130 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
 131 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
 132 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
 133 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
 134
 135 </ol></p>
 136 </div>
 137
 138       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.</div>
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