- <title>Debian Edu interview: Yvan Masson</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It has been way too long since my last interview, but as the
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
-community is still active, and new people keep showing up on the IRC
-channel <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> and
-<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">the debian-edu mailing
-list</a>, I decided to give it another go. I was hoping someone else
-might pick up the idea and run with it, but this has not happened as
-far as I can tell, so here we are… This time the announcement of a new
-free software tool to
-<a href="https://framagit.org/Yvan-Masson/WhosWho">create a school year
-book</a> triggered my interest, and I decided to learn more about its
-author.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>My name is Yvan MASSON, I live in France. I have my own one person
-business in computer services. The work consist of visiting my
-customers (person's home, local authority, small business) to give
-advise, install computers and software, fix issues, and provide
-computing usage training. I spend the rest of my time enjoying my
-family and promoting free software.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What is your approach for promoting free
-software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>When I think that free software could be suitable for someone, I
-explain what it is, with simple words, give a few known examples, and
-explain that while there is no fee it is a viable alternative in many
-situations. Most people are receptive when you explain how it is
-better (I simplify arguments here, I know that it is not so simple):
-Linux works on older hardware, there are no viruses, and the software
-can be audited to ensure user is not spied upon. I think the most
-important is to keep a clear but moderated speech: when you try to
-convince too much, people feel attacked and stop listening.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I can not remember how I first heard of Skolelinux / Debian Edu,
-but probably on planet.debian.org. As I have been working for a
-school, I have interest in this type of project.
-
-<p>The school I am involved in is a school for "children" between 14
-and 18 years old. The French government has recommended free software
-since 2012, but they do not always use free software themselves. The
-school computers are still using the Windows operating system, but all
-of them have the classic set of free software: Firefox ESR,
-LibreOffice (with the excellent extension Grammalecte that indicates
-French grammatical errors), SumatraPDF, Audacity, 7zip, KeePass2, VLC,
-GIMP, Inkscape…
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>It is free software! Built on Debian, I am sure that users are not
-spied upon, and that it can run on low end hardware. This last point
-is very important, because we really need to improve "green IT". I do
-not know enough about Skolelinux / Debian Edu to tell how it is better
-than another free software solution, but what I like is the "all in
-one" solution: everything has been thought of and prepared to ease
-installation and usage.</p>
-
-<p>I like Free Software because I hate using something that I can not
-understand. I do not say that I can understand everything nor that I
-want to understand everything, but knowing that someone / some company
-intentionally prevents me from understanding how things work is really
-unacceptable to me.</p>
-
-<p>Secondly, and more importantly, free software is a requirement to
-prevent abuses regarding human rights and environmental care.
-Humanity can not rely on tools that are in the hands of small group of
-people.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Again, I don't know this project enough. Maybe a dedicated website?
-Debian wiki works well for documentation, but is not very appealing to
-someone discovering the project. Also, as Skolelinux / Debian Edu uses
-OpenLDAP, it probably means that Windows workstations cannot use
-centralized authentication. Maybe the project could use Samba as an
-Active Directory domain controller instead, allowing Windows desktop
-usage when necessary.</p>
-
-<p>(Editors note: In fact Windows workstations can
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Buster/HowTo/Samba">use
-the centralized authentication in a Debian Edu setup</a>, at least for
-some versions of Windows, but the fact that this is not well known can
-be seen as an indication of the need for better documentation and
-marketing. :)</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Nothing original: Debian testing/sid with Gnome desktop, Firefox,
-Thunderbird, LibreOffice…</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Every effort to spread free software into schools is important,
-whatever it is. But I think, at least where I live, that IT
-professionals maintaining schools networks are still very "Microsoft
-centric". Schools will use any working solution, but they need people
-to install and maintain it. How to make these professionals sensitive
-about free software and train them with solutions like Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux is a really good question :-)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Half a year ago,
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html">I
-wrote</a> about <a href="https://jami.net/">the Jami communication
-client</a>, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication. It
-handle both messages, audio and video. It uses distributed hash
-tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
-other, which in my book is a plus. I mentioned briefly that it could
-also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
-educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
-conferencing solution. I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
-software, due to their <a href="https://zoom.us/terms">copyright
-license clauses</a> prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
-to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
-Zoom meetings with free software clients.</p>
-
-<p>Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
-password set on the room. The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
-(approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
-conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
-is not a great. I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
-without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
-until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base. But
-another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected. I
-could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
-dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
-Zoom. I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
-Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
-through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
-be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
-connecting via SIP. There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
-Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end. I got help from a
-very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part. And being a
-very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
-Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
-connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.</p>
-
-<p>So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now. The
-trick is already
-<a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip">documented
-from Zoom</a>, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
-password. What is most surprising about this is that the
-automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
-connect via SIP do not mention this. The SIP address to use normally
-consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
-of the Zoom SIP gateway. But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
-room ID in front of the at sign. The format is "<tt>[Meeting
-ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]</tt>", and you can hear see how you
-can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
-presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
-The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
-then look like this (all using made up numbers):</p>