- <title>Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>In the Squeeze version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
-to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
-start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
-all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
-addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
-are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
-first time.</p>
-
-<p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
-labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
-default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
-to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
-
-<p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
-called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
-new setting.</p>
-
-<p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
-the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
-from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
-the second beta version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>. If
-you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
-configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
-machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
-school, check it out too. The full announcement is
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
-on the project announcement list.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
+publish another interview with the people behind
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
+This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
+years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
+details get right before release.
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
+Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly 20 years as
+certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
+international company for machinery and equipment. Since 2011 I'm a
+certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
+documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
+I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
+manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
+
+<p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
+it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
+home since 2006.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
+daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
+middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
+him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
+asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
+computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
+
+<p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
+running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
+gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
+network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
+and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
+to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
+building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
+Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
+being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
+costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
+school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
+people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
+prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
+managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
+the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
+Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
+for me as today.</p>
+
+<p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
+they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
+
+<li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
+cost.</li>
+
+<li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
+schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
+clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
+infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
+server</li>
+
+<li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
+school.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
+came up in this way:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
+now.</li>
+
+<li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
+have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
+because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
+
+<li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
+management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
+interfaces used in the past.</li>
+
+<li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
+different needs.</li>
+
+<li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
+
+<li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
+world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
+is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
+
+<li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
+solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
+their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
+whole municipality areas.</li>
+
+<li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
+enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
+politicians.</li>
+
+<li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
+computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
+use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
+KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
+need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
+screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
+
+<p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
+and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
+rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
+with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
+and the whole family. I probably forgot something.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
+Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
+countries and areas all over the world.</p>