X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/345cf2fb6db6894b8a6711fac26fbe480e150647..db17aeb9c07bf2d9dea4f52be2f63b99b1aaa499:/blog/index.html diff --git a/blog/index.html b/blog/index.html index f8cfac0120..01456ee1cf 100644 --- a/blog/index.html +++ b/blog/index.html @@ -19,6 +19,69 @@ +
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Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
+
8th April 2012
+

It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution +like Debian Edu / Skolelinux, +and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big +contributor to the +Debian +Edu Squeeze release manual. + +

Who are you, and how do you spend your days?

+ +

I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has +occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.

+ +

How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu +project?

+ +

I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only +reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang +around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things +they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep +through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of +"localisation".

+ +

What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?

+ +

What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?

+ +

These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I +had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the +education system.

+ +

I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up +as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do +everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend +money on the latest hardware.

+ +

Which free software do you use daily?

+ +

I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the +software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other +words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).

+ +

Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to +get schools to use free software?

+ +

Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning +with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked +you would hardly need a strategy.

+
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+ + + Tags: debian edu, english, intervju. + + +
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Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround
6th April 2012
@@ -593,97 +656,6 @@ Trond Mæhlum for innspill om skoler med Linux.

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Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby
-
19th March 2012
-

Debian Edu / Skolelinux -users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after -the -Squeeze release was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and -long time Linux user in United Kingdom.

- -

Who are you, and how do you spend your days?

- -

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.

- -

How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu -project?

- -

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.

- -

What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?

- -

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.

- -

What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian -Edu?

- -

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!

- -

Which free software do you use daily?

- -

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...)

- -

Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to -get schools to use free software?

- -

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.

- -

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.

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- - - Tags: debian edu, english, intervju. - - -
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