Germany is a core area for the
+Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
+Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
-and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
-Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
-teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
-Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
-I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
-primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
-so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
-also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
-to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
-appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
+
I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
+Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
+"Westfalen-Kolleg
+Dortmund", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
+the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
+examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
+second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
+or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.
+
+
Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
+blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
+information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
+teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
+school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
+the end of April this year.
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?
-
In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
-server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
-samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
-Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
-did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
-and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
-there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
-problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
-previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
-Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
-downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
-Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
-my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
+
The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
+attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
+Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
+using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
+2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
+clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
+reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
+Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
+two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
+known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
+Skolelinux.
+
+
Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
+better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
+clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
+was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
+and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
+the admin teachers.
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
-workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
-ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
-designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
-doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
-school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
-Japan.
+
It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
+Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
+So it was a perfect choice.
+
+
Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
+possible to point teachers and students to programs like
+OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
+high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
+a school and to choose where to get support for this.
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
-have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
-make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
-who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
-important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
-instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
-default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
-kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
-Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
-second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
-customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
-multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
-took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
-I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
-help.
+
Nothing yet.
Which free software do you use daily?
-
Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
-studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
-(customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
-still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
-house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
-the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
-have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
-day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
-installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
-have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
-and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
+
At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
+Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
+Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
+LibreOffice.
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?
-
Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
-and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
-popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
-to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
-file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
-also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
-Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
-budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
-compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
-is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
-are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
-doesn't play flash, for example.
+
Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
+that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
+interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.
![[foto av billettautomat]](http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-03-02-ruter-win2000pro.jpeg)