- <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description>
-<p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
-mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
-desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
-parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
-issues.</p>
-
-<p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
-implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
-do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
-are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
-indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
-tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
-through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
-this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
-time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
-Debian.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
-plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
-currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
-should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
-and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
-advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
-Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
-it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
-type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
-license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
-more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
-make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
-not the browser for any missing features.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
-handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
-it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
-should search for a package that would add support for it. This
-happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
-and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
-plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
-gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
-the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
-explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
-displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
-start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
-in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
-know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
-latter behaviour.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
-upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
-it do not matter much.</p>
-
-<p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
-Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
-maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
+users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
+Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
+long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
+Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
+author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
+contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
+encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
+years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
+weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
+installations.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
+London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
+just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
+along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
+mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
+well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
+have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
+LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
+these things we decided to try it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
+from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
+goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
+would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
+low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
+that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
+Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
+proprietary software everywhere.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
+how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
+various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
+English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
+users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
+OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
+desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
+use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
+that counts...)</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
+and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
+the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
+applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
+constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
+XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
+iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
+longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
+realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
+putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
+first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
+
+<p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
+free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>