blog/draft/2012-04-skolelinux-ralf-gesellensetter.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2012-04-15 11:30
   4
   5 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
   6
   7 Ralf Gesellensetter
   8
   9 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  10
  11 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
  12 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
  13 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
  14 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
  15 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
  16 our computer network.</p>
  17
  18 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
  19 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
  20 (4 months).</p>
  21
  22 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
  23 project?</strong></p>
  24
  25 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
  26 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
  27 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
  28 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
  29 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
  30 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
  31 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
  32 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
  33 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
  34 approx. 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
  35 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
  36 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
  37 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
  38 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
  39
  40 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  41 Edu?</strong></p>
  42
  43 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
  44 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
  45 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
  46 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
  47 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
  48 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
  49 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
  50 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
  51
  52 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  53 Edu?</strong></p>
  54
  55 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
  56 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
  57 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
  58 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
  59 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
  60 option to run Debian testing or other distros - if they have the
  61 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
  62 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
  63 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
  64 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
  65 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
  66 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
  67
  68 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
  69
  70 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
  71 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
  72 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
  73
  74 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
  75 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
  76
  77 <p><ol>
  78
  79 <li>1. Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
  80 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
  81 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
  82 developing.
  83
  84 2. Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
  85 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
  86 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
  87 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
  88 share among German Skolelinux schools.
  89
  90 3. Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
  91 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
  92 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
  93
  94 4. Don't stick to free software as to be run natively. Everybody uses
  95 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
  96 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
  97 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
  98
  99 5. Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
 100 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
 101 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
 102
 103 6. Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
 104
 105 7. Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps for
 106 usb pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of Libreoffice
 107 rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And keep sending
 108 documents in ODF formats.
 109
 110 </ol></p>