<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
+project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
+making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
+communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
+friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
+going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
+release (0.2).</p>
+
+<p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
+new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
+Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
+system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
+file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
+where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
+the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
+boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
+and build using
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
+with a user with sudo access to become root:
+
+<pre>
+git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
+ freedom-maker
+sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
+ mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
+ u-boot-tools
+make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
+</pre>
+
+<p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
+devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
+want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to <a
+href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
+vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
+kpartx call.</p>
+
+<p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
+method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
+the preseed values:</p>
+
+<pre>
+url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
+</pre>
+
+<p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
+recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
+currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
+'<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
+installation will get the installation going. This affect all
+installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
+
+Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
+us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
+irc.debian.org)</a> and
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
+mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
<description><p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
storing user home directories and data. The design for handling this
in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
-but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
-had a new school administrator show up on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
-his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
-time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
-Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
-Germany a few years ago.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
-engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
-the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
-freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
-
-<p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
-from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
-projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
-system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
-<a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
-(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
-<a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
-(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
-system supporting various operating systems).</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
-coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
-source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
-introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Quick installation,</li>
- <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
- <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
- <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
- single company,</li>
- <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
- experience and problem solutions.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
- the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
- a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
- working again reliably.
-
- <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
- little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
- similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
- as their base.
-
- <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
- configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
- not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
- configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
- and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
- network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
-
- <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
- contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
- distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
- Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
- future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
- schemes.</li>
-
- <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
- compared to Debian.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
-rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
-Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
-upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
-programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
-occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
-programming languages for teaching.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Strong arguments are</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
- teaching and learning.</li>
-
- <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
- home, and at their working place without running into license or
- conversion problems.</li>
-
- <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
- than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
- customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
- science, not products.</li>
-
- <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
- would you need proprietary software for?</li>
-
-</ul>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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