After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the +Debian Edu and Skolelinux +community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is +Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of +this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time +administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was +conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
+ +Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+ +I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher +in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light" +university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning +Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with +IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I +got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry +labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in +the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self +training is anyway very important
+ +I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the +SPSE school (secondary) is a very +special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for +all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are +recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation. + +
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu +project?
+ +Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it +already several years ago. But since the system was still not +Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't +use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the +next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security +hole.
+ +What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?
+ +Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is +very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with +the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well +engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC +and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I +can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard +platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the +head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much +hassle.
+ +What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?
+ +The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less +flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but +there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the +need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some +devices that have specific software packages for another specific +distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only +Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient +and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
+ +Which free software do you use daily?
+ +I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with +mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad +combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that +Perceus +has the same...
+ +For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good +only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if +something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R +statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
+ +Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to +get schools to use free software?
+ +I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is +cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability, +just because they are normally not open to change.
+ +Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able +to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers +don't.
+ +We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own +laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use; +we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20 +machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been +reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official +repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux. +Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
+