+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building? Debian Edu need help!</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 5th June 2013</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
+We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
+hope to get released soon. The two problems require some with PHP
+skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
+the project:
+
+<ol>
+
+<li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
+ (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
+ <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
+ This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
+ Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
+
+<li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
+ using ldif nor using CSV files. The feature was disabled after a
+ major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
+ This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
+ #698840</a>.</li>
+
+</ol>
+
+<p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
+(<ahref="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
+irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
+</div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 4th June 2013</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>It has been a while since my last English
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
+interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
+pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
+time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
+in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
+professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
+mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
+probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
+
+<p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
+and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
+packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
+Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
+then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
+manual.
+
+<p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
+virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
+shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
+how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
+
+<p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
+ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
+by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>. What pleased
+me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
+there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
+to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
+artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
+<a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
+movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
+<a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
+
+<p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
+Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
+beautiful project.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
+community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
+fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
+
+<p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
+distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
+of educational free software.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
+project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
+not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
+solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
+is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
+
+<p>One can find support from a company by looking at
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
+wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
+companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
+Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
+for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
+consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
+support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
+most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
+scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am
+also using the mathematical software
+<a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about">Scilab</a> and
+<a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html">Sage</a> (built from
+source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
+
+<p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
+using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
+statistics?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
+university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">R</a> and
+Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
+geometry, there are nice programs:</p>