For cirka en måned siden
-ba
-jeg om begrunnelse på nektet innsyn i dokumenter om
-standardkatalogen fra Fornyingsdepartementet. I dag fikk jeg svar fra
-Fornyingsdepartementet, og tilgang til dokumentene. Jeg fikk både
-innsyn i vedlegg sendt fra DIFI, og også innsyn i et notat brukt
-internt i Fornyingsdepartementet:
Det bør nevnes at da jeg ble nektet innsyn hos mottaker
-Fornyingsdepartementet på høringsoppsummeringen som DIFI hadde sendt
-ut, spurte jeg DIFI om innsyn i stedet. Det fikk jeg i løpet av et
-par dager. Moralen er at hvis ikke mottaker ikke vil gi innsyn, spør
-avsender i stedet. Kanskje de har forskjellig forståelse av hva som
-bør holdes skjult for folket. Her er de tilsvarende dokumentene jeg
-fikk innsyn i fra DIFI:
Det jeg synes er mest interessant er endel av aktørene som
-protesterte på fjerningen (Kartverket, Drammen kommune), og hvordan
-høringsoppsummeringen ikke tar stilling til effekten av å fjerne ODF
-fra katalogen.
Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
+replacement
+for my trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much
+time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
+will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
+ended up picking a
+Thinkpad X230
+with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
+a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
+second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
+on that below.
+
+
I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
+important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
+listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
+feature at Prisjakt, which
+allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
+requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
+to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
+disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
+get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
+
+
So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
+X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
+significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
+hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
+good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
+I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
+needed a new laptop now. :)
+
+
Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
+visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
+
+
But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The 180 GB SSD disk
+lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
+with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
+I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
+reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
+default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
+reported to Debian as BTS
+report #691427 2012-10-25 (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
+Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
+kernel developers as
+Kernel bugzilla
+report #51861 2012-12-20 (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
+(SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
+Lenovo forums, both for
+T430
+2012-11-10 and for
+X230
+03-20-2013. The problem do not only affect installation. The
+reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
+on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
+problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
+There is even a
+small C program
+available that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
+minutes by writing to a file.
+
+
I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
+contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
+requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
+firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
+Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
+hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
+fixed. :)
For en stund tilbake gikk nyheten om
-Sandy
-Island, en øy som var dukket opp på noen kart, men som ikke var
-synlig når en sjekket den på satellittbilder. Dagbladet meldte for
-eksempel at
-«denne
-øya finnes på kart, men ikke i virkeligheten». Noe senere begynte
-jeg å lese
-historier
-om Ruffen til mine barn. Dette er historier om sjøormen Ruffen
-skapt av Tor à ge Bringsværd, som starter med følgende beskrivelse:
-
-
-«Langt ute i havet ligger en mystisk øy. Den er bare synlig hver
-tirsdag og fredag. Derfor står den ikke på noe kart. På denne øya
-ligger et slott, og i slottet bor en gammel, fin sjøormfamilie.»
-
-
-
Det virker åpenbart at Hr. Bringsværd tok feil når han trodde den
-ikke var på noe kart, og at noen tydeligvis har vært i nærheten en
-tirsdag eller en fredag og fått den med på et kart, mens
-satellittbildene er tatt på noen av de fem andre dagene i uka og
-dermed ikke ser øya. :)
-
-
I følge
-en
-senere artikkel i Dagbladet hevder Shaun Higgins, en forsker fra
-New Zealand, at et hvalfangstskip fra 1876 er opprinnelsen til at
-spøkelsesøya i det hele tatt havnet på kartet. Det fremgår ikke fra
-historien hvilken ukedag de var innom.
The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
+today. This is the release announcement:
+
+
New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
+2013-07-03
+
+
These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
+
+
About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+
+
Debian Edu, also known as
+Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
+out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
+network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
+services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
+and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
+environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
+the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
+installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
+database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
+directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
+desktop contains
+more
+than 60 educational software packages and more are available from
+the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
+and Xfce desktop environment.
+
+
This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
+this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
+Squeeze release.
+
+
Software updates
+
+
Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.
+
Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
+ submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
+ brings KDE in line with the others.
+
Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
+ they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
+ menu now that menu-xdg was removed.
+
Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
+ multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
+ X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
+ too.
+
Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
+ are too few to make the package useful.
Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
+ up for some language options.
+
Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.
+
Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.
+
Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
+ d-i is doing it.
+
Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
+ debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.
+
Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
+ script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
+ Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.
+
Update system to install needed firmware packages during
+ installation, to work properly in Wheezy.
+
Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).
+
Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
+ and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.
+
LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
+ work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.
+
+
Known issues
+
+
No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
+ available yet (698840).
+
Artwork not enabled for all desktops.
+
+
Where to get it
+
+
To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
Today the Isenkram
-package finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
-for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
-2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
-
-
Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
-install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
-up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
-is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
-the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
-BTS. :)
It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
+perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
+working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
+needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
+affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
+controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
+Isenkram package
+including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
+process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
+they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
+debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
+
+
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
+info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
+info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
+info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
+info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
+info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+Preconfiguring packages ...
+Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
+(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
+Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
+Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
+#
+
+
+
When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
+printed instead:
+
+
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
+info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
+#
+
+
+
It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
+me some time when setting up new machines. :)
+
+
So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
+kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
+the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
+download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
+the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
+requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
+non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
+apt-get install. The end result is a slightly better working
+machine.
+
+
I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
+this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
+finally fix BTS report
+#655507. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
+firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
+from the nearby Debian mirror.
For noen dager siden nevnte jeg at vi jobbet med å typesette en
-novelle med DocBook. I dag ble
-utgivelsen annonsert med følgende pressemelding fra Elektronisk
-Forpost Norge), som jeg gjengir i sin helhet:
"Riktignok er det ikke påbudt å ha mobil," sier Thomas Gramstad,
-leder i EFN. "Men vi holder på å lage et samfunn der det blir så
-upraktisk eller tungvint å ikke ha det, at man i praksis ikke slipper
-unna. Og disse lillebrødrene sladrer hele tiden til staten (og til
-mange andre) om hvor vi er, hva vi gjør, hva vi bryr oss om, hva vi
-liker..."
EFN oppfordrer andre forfattere om å gi ut sine gamle tekster med
-en fribrukslisens, slik at tekstene ikke blir glemt og for å stimulere
-lovlig deling på nettet. EFN kan være behjelpelig med digitalisering
-og utlegging på nett, i den grad det finnes kapasitet blant EFNs
-medlemmer til dette. Vi mener at nyutgivelser av tekster under frie
-lisenser kan øke interessen rundt forfatterskapet, og vil gjerne bidra
-til dette.
-
-
EFN utgir og deler med dette en novelle fra den digitale
-informasjonsteknologiens tidligste barndom. En novelle som fortsatt er
-full av vitalitet og aktualitet, og som derfor kan bidra til, og gi
-ettertanke i dagens debatter om IT, personvern, overvåkning og
-individets frihet og integritet.
i flere forskjellige formater, for ulike plattformer. Per idag
-finnes novellen i disse formatene: EPUB, MOBI, XML, HTML, PDF og
-txt. Det kan bli flere formater senere, og evt. frivillige
-bidragsytere til dette er velkommen.
-
-
Kontaktperson for denne pressemeldingen,
-
-
Thomas Gramstad
- thomas@efn.no
- 4817 6875
-
-
-
-
EFN arbeider for dine borgerrettigheter i IT-samfunnet, for
-nettverks- og delingskultur, personvern og frihet fra overvåkning,
-åpne standarder, brukerstyrt programvare, retten til å kopiere, og
-styrking av det digitale sivilsamfunnet m.m.
- www.efn.no
-
-
-
-
Jeg håper flere forfattere ser verdien av å gjøre kulturen
-tilgjengelig for flere, og slår følge med Hr. Bringsværd i å gi ut
-sine verker med bruksvilkår med færre bruksbegrensinger enn
-opphavsretten legger opp til. Selv om jeg gjerne skulle sett at han
-hadde brukt en Creative Commons-lisens som tillot avledede verker og
-kommersiell bruk.
In the Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux project, we include a post-installation test suite,
+which check that services are running, working, and return the
+expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
+test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
+installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
+operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
+online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
+configured, which is the topic of this post.
+
+
The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
+Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
+complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
+happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
+suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
+cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
+When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
+using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
+working packages to get it working. And ad the packages changed name
+from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
+debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
+packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
+would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
+right after we got the ISOs operational.
+
+
Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
+administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
+test suite using /usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install and see if
+any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
+the problem.
Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
-time, without much sacrifice? A small step could be to change the
-font you use when printing.
-
-
Three years ago,
-Ars
-Technica reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
-changed their default front from
-Arial to
-Century
-Gothic to save money. The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
-than Arial to print the same text. In other word, you could cut your
-toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
-by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
-prints.
-
-
But it is not quite obvious how much one will safe by switching.
-The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
-on ink and toner cartridges, according to
-a report from
-TwinCities.com, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
-per year by asking staff and students to use a different font. Not
-all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
-sources will most likely still use a different font. Also, the
-Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
-more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
-depend on the documents printed.
-
-
But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
-the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
-and save some money in the process.
The Debian Edu and
+Skolelinux distribution have users and contributors all around the
+globe. And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
+our IRC channel
+#debian-edu and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
+worked. We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
+help us with translations. And today I managed to get an interview
+with him, to learn more about him.
+
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+
I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
+which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
+party, I had a very nice beer discussion with a
+friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
+country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
+community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
+began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
+constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
+field.
+
+
A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
+provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
+activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
+of FundaÈia Ceata, which is a free
+software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
+the only one we have in our country.
+
+
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?
+
+
The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
+even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
+it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
+educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
+love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
+technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
+ways to contribute.
+
+
My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
+configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
+haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
+areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
+software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
+one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
+environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
+for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
+from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
+have a pretty consistent starting point.
+
+
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?
+
+
Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
+maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
+took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
+Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
+time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
+with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
+out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
+it comes to managing a school's network, for example.
+
+
Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
+availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
+scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
+only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
+lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
+project.
+
+
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
+disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
+project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
+a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story. I'd like to see
+Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
+ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
+lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
+opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
+to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!
+
+
Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
+with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
+to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
+on.
+
+
Which free software do you use daily?
+
+
I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
+daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
+am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
+Enlightenment project a lot!),
+Claws Mail due to its ease of
+use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
+Redshift, which helps me
+get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
+stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!
+
+
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?
+
+
Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
+now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
+that:
+
+
+
+
schools would like to get rid of proprietary software
+
+
students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
+ experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
+ of teenagers more?
+
+
there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
+ be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
+ other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
+ them!)
+
+
more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
+ lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
+ person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)
+
+
+
+
I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
+example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
+it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
+people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
+very hard to convert against their will.
As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
-provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
-Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
-DocBook processing framework to
-generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story. The tools to
-transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
-distribution of choice, Debian, so
-all I had to do was to use the
-dblatex,
-dbtoepub
-and xmlto tools to do the
-conversion. After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
-xsltproc/fop (aka
-docbook-xsl),
-to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
-nicer <variablelist> typesetting, but that is just a minor
-technical detail.
-
-
There were a few challenges, of course. We want to typeset the
-short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
-control over the layout. The original short story have three
-parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
-the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
-that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.
-
-
I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
-single star in it, ie <para>*</para>, but it made sure a
-placeholder indicated where the scene shifted. This did not look too
-good without the centring. The next approach was to create a new
-preprocessor directive <?newscene?>, mapping to "<hr/>"
-for HTML and "<fo:block text-align="center"><fo:leader
-leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/></fo:block>"
-for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
-switched at this time). The HTML XSL file looked like this:
Finally, I came across the <bridgehead> tag, which seem to be
-a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced <?newscene?>
-with <bridgehead>*</bridgehead>. It isn't centred, but we
-can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
-enough.
-
-
I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
-linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
-directive <?linebreak?>, mapping to <br/> in HTML, and
-<fo:block/> in FO/PDF. I suspect there are better ways to do
-this, and welcome ideas and patches on github. The HTML XSL file now
-look like this:
One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
-per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
-structure in the DocBook source. No idea how to do this, so we ended
-up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
-page.
There is a certain cross-over between the
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project and the Edubuntu
+project, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
+effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
+Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.
+
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+
I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
+days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
+getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)
+
+
I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
+opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
+each other.
+
+
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?
+
+
I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
+first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
+[Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
+London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
+Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
+it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
+was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
+day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
+over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
+been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
+still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
+we'll get there one day.
+
+
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
+it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
+that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
+very high quality work.
+
+
I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
+set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
+with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
+helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
+community members and commercial suppliers to support.
+
+
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
+separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
+what I originally rambled on about)
+
+
The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
+project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
+think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
+content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
+on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
+years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
+concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
+more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
+myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
+currently.
+
+
I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
+for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
+their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
+educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
+have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
+much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
+autonomous.
+
+
Which free software do you use daily?
+
+
My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
+Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
+some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
+particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
+so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)
+
+
Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
+git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
+which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
+while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
+Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
+it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
+up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
+X.
+
+
I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
+using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
+people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
+it :p)
+
+
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?
+
+
I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
+many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
+don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
+that.
+
+
I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
+problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
+advantage of that.
+
+
I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
+some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
+Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
+general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
+Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
+that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
+best solution for them.
+
+
To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
+educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
+make a decision that would work for them.
I
-siste
-høring om
-referansekatalogen
-for IT-standarder i offentlig sektor, med høringsfrist 2012-09-30
-(DIFI-sak 2012/498), ble det foreslått å fjerne ODF som obligatorisk
-standard når en publiserte dokumenter som skulle kunne redigeres
-videre av mottaker. NUUG og andre protesterte på forslaget, som er et
-langt steg tilbake når det gjelder å sikre like rettigheter for alle
-når en kommuniserer med det offentlige. For noen dager siden ble jeg
-oppmerksom på at Direktoratet for forvaltning og IKT (DIFI) og
-Fornyings-,administrasjons- og kirkedepartementet (FAD) har
-konkludert, og oversendt forslag til regjeringen i saken. FADs
-dokument
-2012/2168-8,
-«Utkast til endring av standardiseringsforskriften» datert 2013-02-06
-har følgende triste oppsummering fra høringen i saken:
-
-
-Det kom noen innvendinger på forslaget om å fjerne ODF som
-obligatorisk standard for redigerbare dokumenter. Innvendingene har
-ikke blitt ilagt avgjørende vekt.
-
-
-
Ved å fjerne ODF som obligatorisk format ved publisering av
-redigerbare dokumenter setter en Norge tiår tilbake. Det som vil skje
-er at offentlige etater går tilbake til kun å publisere dokumenter på
-et av de mange formatene til Microsoft Office, og alle som ikke
-aksepterer bruksvilkårene til Microsoft eller ikke har råd til å bruke
-penger på å få tilgang til Microsoft Office må igjen basere seg på
-verktøy fra utviklerne som er avhengig av å reversutvikle disse
-formatene. I og med at ISO-spesifikasjonen for OOXML ikke komplett og
-korrekt spesifiserer formatene til MS Office (men er nyttige å titte i
-når en reversutvikler), er en tilbake til en situasjon der en ikke har
-en
-fri og åpen standard å forholde seg til, men i stedet må springe
-etter Microsoft. Alle andre leverandører enn Microsoft vil dermed ha
-en seriøs ulempe. Det er som å fjerne krav om bruk av meter som
-måleenhet, og heretter aksepterer alle måleenheter som like gyldige,
-når en vet at den mest brukte enheten vil være armlengden til Steve
-Ballmer slik Microsoft måler den.
-
-
Jeg er ikke sikker på om forslaget er vedtatt av regjeringen ennå.
-Kristian Bergem hos DIFI nevnte på et møte forrige tirsdag at han
-trodde det var vedtatt i statsråd 8. mars, men jeg har ikke klart å
-finne en skriftlig kilde på regjeringen.no som bekrefter dette.
-Kanskje det ennå ikke er for sent...
-
-
Jeg ba i forrige uke om innsyn i dokument 6, 7 og 8 i FAD-saken, og
-har i dag fått innsyn i dokument 7 og 8. Ble nektet innsyn i
-dokumentet med tittelen «Oppsummering av høring om endringer i
-forskrift om IT-standarder i offentlig forvaltning» med hjemmel i
-off. lovens §15.1, så det er vanskelig å vite hvordan argumentene fra
-høringen ble mottatt og forstått av saksbehandleren hos DIFI. Lurer
-på hvordan jeg kan klage på at jeg ikke fikk se oppsummeringen. Fikk
-tre PDFer tilsendt fra FAD,
-Endring av underversjon i EHF,
-Bakgrunnsnotat knyttet til versjon av EHF standarden i Forskrift om IT-standarder i offentlig sektor og
-Utkast til endring av standardiseringsforskriften, hvis du vil ta en titt.
When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
+the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
+or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
+last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
+on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
+The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
+control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
+turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
+not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
+i915 driver used by the
+Packard Bell
+EasyNote LV, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
+
+
The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
+i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
+/etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
+option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
+can be done by running these commands as root:
+
+
+echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
+update-initramfs -u -k all
+
+
+
Since March 2012 there is
+a
+mechanism in the Linux kernel to tell the i915 driver which
+hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
+brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
+the
+intel_quirks array in the driver source
+drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c (look for "static
+struct intel_quirk intel_quirks"), specifying the PCI device
+number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
+number.
+
+
My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from lspci
+-vvnn for the video card in question:
According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
+modinfo i915), information about hardware needing the
+invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
+dri-devel
+(at) lists.freedesktop.org mailing list to reach the kernel
+developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
+yet shown up in
+the
+web archive for the mailing list, so I suspect they do not accept
+emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
+the Debian bug tracking system instead as
+BTS report #710938, to make
+sure the patch is not lost.
+
+
Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
+with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
+worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
+something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
+the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
+BTS report #711237, and
+have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
+this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
+developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
+developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
+during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
+you do not know how to update BTS).
Via
-twitter
-I just discovered that Pcwizz have
-done a video
-review on Youtube of Skolelinux
-/ Debian Edu version 6. He installed the standalone profile and
-the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
-a few programs and his view of our distribution.
-
-
There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
-have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:
-
-
-"Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
-
-
-
And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:
-
-
-"So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
-to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
-lets give it 7 out of 10. I am not going to use it. That is because
-I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
-feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
-
-
-
To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
-installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
-server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
-considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)
-
-
While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
-about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
-
-
-"[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
-is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
-actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
-included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
-
-
-
I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
-Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
-one
-consistent menu system instead of two incomplete and partly
-inconsistent menu systems.
-
-
The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
-embedding:
The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
+today. This is the release announcement:
+
+
New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
+2013-06-10
+
+
This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
+alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
+
+
About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+
+
Debian Edu, also known as
+Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
+out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
+network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
+services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
+and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
+environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
+the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
+installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
+database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
+directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
+desktop contains
+more
+than 60 educational software packages and more are available from
+the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
+and Xfce desktop environment.
+
+
This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
+this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
+Squeeze release.
+
+
Software updates
+
+
+
+
Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
+
Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
+
Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
+
Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
+
+
+
+
Other changes
+
+
+
+
The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
+
Updated translation of the installation.
+
New Romanian translation.
+
Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
+
Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
+
Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
+
New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
+
Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
+
More testsuite tests.
+
Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
+
Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
+
+
Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
+LTSP in Wheezy.
+
+
Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
+them up with GOsa².
+
+
Update IMAP server setup.
+
+
Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
+slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
+entered password).
+
+
+
+
Known issues
+
+
+
+
DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.
+
+
No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
+available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
+missing import feature).
+
+
Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
+
+
KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
+own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
+unfixed.
+
+
+
+
Where to get it
+
+
To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
Min venn Erik Vold har på vegne av styret i
-Frikanalen sendt ut
-følgende
-epost til alle kanalens medlemmer og støttespillere, i et forsøk
-på å redde kanalen etter at kulturdepartementet kuttet all
-finansiering i fjor høst. Jeg fikk meldingen som
-NUUG-styremedlem, og mener den
-trenger et større publikum. Jeg gjengir den derfor i sin helhet,
-inkludert lenken til budsjett og regnskapsutkast, etter
-avtale
-med Erik.
-
-
-
Til Frikanalens støttespillere
-
-
Frivillighetens TV kanal har med minimal støtte avviklet daglige
-sendinger siden 2009 og til tross for at statsstøtten uteble i år, er
-vi nå i full gang med å utvikle et nytt TV system som foreningen selv
-vil eie. Departementet fikk dessverre ikke med seg at nettet vil
-berike TV sendingen fremfor å gjøre den overflødig. De har nå overlatt
-finansieringen av videre drift til frivilligheten og vi håper derfor
-på deres hjelp til å søke om midler. På kjøpet får dere langt flere
-muligheter til å nå ut med deres budskap og med utbyggingen av Hybrid
-TV (nett på TV) kan vi sammen motbevise departementets påstand.
-
-
Kostnaden med denne utviklingen er svært lav ettersom de fleste
-programmererne jobber gratis og alt er basert på åpen kildekode der
-man deler hverandres bidrag til kringkastingsorienterte systemer. I
-samarbeid med flere europeiske kanaler i EBU (SVT, BBC, NRK, ZDF, ARD,
-France Televisions etc) ønsker vi å bygge opp et nettverk for delt
-support og åpen kildekode der Frikanalen er den eneste sandkassen hvor
-ny teknologi kan testes på luft. Riks TV åpner for annonsering av
-nettinnhold relatert til det du ser på TV (streamevents i HbbTV)
-allerede i sommer. Med støtte fra Media Netwerk som drifter Frikanalen
-samt Sofia Digital som stiller med Hybrid TV server er vi & NRK sikret
-en sentral rolle i utprøvingen. Det vil da bli mulig og streame
-direkte til Riks TV sine nye mottakere (og nye IDTV'er) i HD samt at
-TV'n kan annonsere en link til deres organisasjonssider, med
-oppdaterte nyheter (RSS feeds), relaterte videoer etc., under
-avviklingen av deres innslag.
-
-
Vi tror sendingene på den nye nettstyrte TV-kanalen vil bli rikere enn
-på den kommersielle plattformen vi har vært på så langt. Brukerne vil
-nå få en tettere integrasjon med sosiale medier samt at innholdet
-etterhvert kommer ut på Hybrid TV og mobile enheter. Teknisk ansvarlig
-i Frikanalen, Erik Vold, er sentral i utviklingen av streamingdelen
-for tv.nrk.no (Ã¥rets produkt i PC World) og erfaringen NRK har gjort
-på mobile enheter kan videreføres til oss. Det er heller ingen tvil om
-at Hybrid TV vil bli en suksess også i Norge. Erik sitter i Nordig som
-har vedtatt en felles standard for de nordiske kringkasterne basert på
-HbbTV. Denne standarden bruker web-protokoller som gjør det like
-enkelt og billig å utvikle tjenester for Hybrid TV som å lage en
-nettside. Samtlige nye TV apparater solgt i Norden vil ha støtte for
-HbbTV og med det tror vi oppslutningen vil bli like stor som ellers i
-Europa (Tyskland og Frankrike tredoblet antall HbbTV-brukere i
-fjor). Vi forventer også mye d rahjelp fra disse foregangslandene. Vår
-utvikler Tore Sinding Bekkedal er i skriv ende stund på en HbbTV
-workshop med EBU-medlemmer hos IRT i München der han på vegne av NRK
-tester og utvikler ny stremingteknologi (MPEG- DASH) for
-mobile enheter og hybrid TV.
-
-
Frikanalen har forøvrig flyttet inn i nye kostnadsfrie lokaler på
-Chateau Neuf. Med massiv hjelp fra frivillige får vi der en
-flerkameraregi i egnede lokaler. Dette åpner for debatter, konserter,
-events og mye spennende innhold i samarbeid med Student TV'ene.
-
-
Med hjelp fra NUUG har også streamingdelen av systemet fått plass på
-Uninett (Forskningsparken) og dermed er vi på Norges beste
-internettlinjer. Vi åpner med dette for live mottak fra samtlige
-medlemmer og på sikt kan vi tilby HD på hybrid TV og PC / MAC / mobil.
-
-
Avvikling på luft skjer allerede med egenutviklede løsninger i åpen
-kildekode (playout og live-koding). Det er også mulig å se første
-byggetrinn med programoversikt og videoer på nett, men foreløpig kun
-for nettleserne Opera, Chrome og Firefox:
-http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/
-og
-http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/. Kom
-gjerne med ønsker og tilbakemeldinger til vår hovedutvikler Benjamin
-Bruheim: grolgh (at) gmail.com
-
-
Med en tettere tilknytning til Akademia og NRK, er det god grunn til å
-tro at utviklingen vil skyte fart og at vi raskere kommer ut med
-dagsaktuelt innhold.
-
-
Vi sender i dag på Riks TV og Altibox, men ikke lenger på TV8. Det er
-viktig for våre brukere igjen å komme ut på Get og Canal Digital,
-dermed er det svært heldig at vi nå har formidlingsplikt på kabel. Til
-tross for at det tar noe tid å få nye avtaler på plass, med frivillig
-juridisk bistand, vil vi sannsynligvis komme bedre ut i andre enden
-også her. Formidlingsplikten gjelder samtlige kabeldistribusjoner i
-Norge, ikke bare de regionene TV8 hadde avtale med.
-
-
Om alt dette skal se dagens lys er vi avhengig av en
-grunnfinansiering. Deres medlemsavgifter er i så måte et svært viktig
-bidrag som vi er veldig takknemlige for. Vi ser oss likevel nødt til
-å be dere om å delta i arbeidet med å dekke de resterende
-driftskostnader. Frikanalen sin arbeidskapasitet er betydelig redusert
-etter at foreningen ikke lenger kunne finansiere en daglig leder, men
-allmøtet kan åpne for at flere bidrar til inntjening (Ekstraordinær
-generalforsamling foreslo å tillate sponsorplakater på sendeflaten og
-deler av disse inntektene kan tilfalle kanalen). HÃ¥per alle
-medlemmene kan hjelpe oss med å skrive søknader og skaffe sponsorer,
-eller i det minste komme med gode forslag til inntjening. Det er ikke
-mye som skal til for å klare videre drift, kun 0,5 mill. pr år.
-
-
Med en støtte som tilsvarer en norsk kortfilm vil vi kunne redde
-sendearkivet for flere tusen videoer bygget opp av frivilligheten
-gjennom 5 år og vi dobler kapasiteten for å ta imot nye (De som
-leverer HD vil for øvrig kunne få HD på nett, mobil og hybrid TV).
-
-
Vi vil også kunne videreføre konsesjonen på Riks TV og realisere en
-formidlingsplikt på kabel som har en årlig verdi på ca. 5 millioner
-kroner (når over 2/3 av Norges befolkning).
-
-
Uten støtte står verdens eneste nasjonale nettstyrte åpne TV kanal i
-fare for å forsvinne. En konkursbegjæring vil gjøre at utstyrsparken
-går til advokatsalærer i behandling av boet og kreditorene vil ikke
-kunne få dekket sine krav. Det mener vi ikke bare er urett ovenfor
-långiverne, men det er urett mot alle de som har bidratt med å bygge
-opp frivillighetens eneste sendearkiv og ikke minst alle de som i dag
-jobber frivillig med å videreutvikle TV-systemet.
-
-
HÃ¥per dere i likhet med styret ser verdien i videre drift og kan melde
-tilbake innen årsmøtet (Kontaktinformasjon til styret og frivillige
-utviklere er i kopifeltet).
-
-
Vennligst fyll ut det blå feltet i regnearket under med det dere tror
-er mulig å få inn. Det dere skriver her er ikke bindende, men gir
-styret en indikasjon på om videre drift er mulig. Det blir tatt
-stilling til av generalforsamlingen medio mars. Setter derfor pris på
-om alle kan bidra med forslag til støtte eller antatte verdier fra
-søknad/spons innen det.
-
-
Forhåpentligvis når vi også ønsket budsjett på 1 mill. pr år. Med det
-kan vi nedbetale gjelden raskere og sørge for en bedre
-tilgjengelighet, samt raskere utvikling:
Jeg håper noen av mine lesere med dette ser verdien av Frikanalen
-og melder seg inn for å sende sine videoer ut på TV til RiksTV og
-Altibox-seerne. Det haster. à rsmøtet i foreningen Frikanalen skal
-straks avholdes, og innen den tid må en redningsplan være på plass.
-NUUG bidrar allerede litt ved å organisere utviklersamlinger og
-finansiere litt mat og drikke til de frivillige som stiller opp på
-dugnadsbasis for å utvikle den tekniske løsningen. Det er ikke nok
-til å redde kanalen, men gir et lite steg i riktig retning.
-
-
Update 2013-03-13 13:00: Epostlistelenkene
-fungerer ikke lenger, da epostarkivet nå ikke lenger er tilgjengelig
-for ikke-abonnenter. Korrigerte teksten fra styret litt etter
-oppfordring fra Frikanalen-styret.
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:
+
+
+
+
It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
+ (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
+ BTS report #700257.
+ This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
+ Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?
+
+
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 BTS report
+ #698840.
Om noen år skal mine barn antagelig begynne på skolen i Oslo. Der
-skal de blant annet lære seg å verdsette og håndheve sine egne grenser
-og beskytte sin personlige integritet og privatsfære. Det blir ikke
-enkelt når ledelsen i Osloskolen med vitende og vilje legger opp til å
-krenke elevenes privatsfære ved å la politiet ransake elevene med
-narkohund i klasserommet. Jon Wessel-Aas har publisert noen
-interessante kommentarer om hvorfor dette er ulovlig.
+
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.
+
+
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.
+
+
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?
+
+
I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
+the
+Debian Edu manual for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
+then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
+manual.
+
+
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.
+
+
What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
+ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
+by GOsa². 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 (Ardour,
+Audacity) and
+movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
+Stopmotion).
+
+
I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
+#debian-edu.
+Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
+beautiful project.
+
+
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
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.
+
+
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.
+
+
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
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.
+
+
One can find support from a company by looking at
+the
+wiki dokumentation, 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.
+
+
Which free software do you use daily?
+
+
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
+Scilab and
+Sage (built from
+source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
+
+
Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
+using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
+statistics?
+
+
I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
+university, we use both R and
+Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
+geometry, there are nice programs:
kali
+to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
+groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
-
Jeg er veldig glad for at han bidrar med argumenter og forklaringer
-vi foreldre kan ta med oss når vi skal protestere på og få en slutt på
-denne forkastelige praksisen. Narkotikaproblemet må adresseres på
-andre måter som ikke krenker barn og ungdoms integritet. Jeg ønsker
-ikke at mine barn skal læres opp til å akseptere radering av
-privatlivets fred, men heller at de skal læres opp til å sloss imot
-den innføringen av stadig mer totalitær overvåkning som har pågått
-over mange år i Norge.
+
I like also
+cantor, which
+provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
+Octave, etc...
+
+
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?
+
+
My suggestions would be to
+
+
+
+
advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
+
+
communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
+ well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
+ OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
+
+
advertise the living and strong community around the project.
+
+
show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
+ system.