During my work on -Debian Edu -based on Squeeze, I came across some issues that should be -addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my -notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit -explanation.
- --
-
-
- We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel -changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages -with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation -system depend on tasksel tasks in -/usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package -installation. - -
- Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
-foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
-services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
-at least try to enable it for these services:
-
-
+
+
- CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using - quotas. -
- Nagios for admins checking the system status. -
- GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords. -
- LDAP for admins updating LDAP. -
- Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active. -
- ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt. +
- When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to -authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to -use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it -is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind - -
- Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made -sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an -inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values. - -
- Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before -touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is -BTS report #653305 and the -d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply -it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust -debian-edu-install to use this new hook. - -
- Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install -time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install -packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work -in Wheezy. - -
- Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow -the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding -up KDE login on slow networks. - -
- Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to -change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on -paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require -fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm. - -
- Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary. -The current command line script is not very friendly to people most -familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to -have it available where the admin will be looking for it.. - -
- We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service -actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the -Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me. - -
- We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles -using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less -packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles. - -
- We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password -when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was -requested in BTS report -#588968 and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a -MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this. - -
- We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
-
-
- reduce the number of chemistry visualisers -
- consider dropping xpaint -
- and probably more? -
+ - Det frie norske stavekontrollprosjektet for bokmål og nynorsk: + http://no.speling.org +
- Samiske korrekturverktøy: + http://divvun.no/ +
- Ordlistene fra Norsk ordbank: + http://www.edd.uio.no/prosjekt/ordbanken/ +
- Last ned ordlistene: + http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30577 + (PS: no_NO-pack2 for OOo 2.x)) + + +
- Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is -mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other -examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such -firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide -some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we -could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some -command line script to do this (one for the running system, another -for the LTSP chroot). - - -
- In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We -should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to -install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to -use. - -
- The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out -interesting educational packages. We should work on the package -tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational -packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install -new applications with a simple mouse click. - -
- The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place, -with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to -be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable -filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should -implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it, -instead of the "it is documented" method of today. - -
- A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to -"take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room. -There are at least three implementations, -italc, -controlaula og -epoptes and we should pick one of -them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is -how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room -and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a -given room. - -
- Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we -should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into -the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should -provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for -them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange -configuration and data with the central server. This should be -investigated. - -
- Switch to new version scheme. Make new version 2.1, not 2.0.11. We do not + release often enough to justify three digits. +
- Switch build rules to build OOo v2 thesaurus files, as the v1 build rules + no longer work. This require the libmythes-dev package on Debian. +
- Introduce new Makefile variables hyphendir and thesdir to make it easier to + control where to install these. +
- Change script used to import from no.speling.org, to load new word + boundaries if at least two people believed the boundaries was correct. +
- Added word boundaries for several words (around 500 words) using the + updated script. +
- Imported thesarus for bokmål from synonymer.merg.net. +
- Rewrote build rules to use = instead of - as combined word marker, thus + allowing words like e-post. +
- Imported a lot (around 10k words) of new words with dash (-) in them from + no.speling.org now that it is handled by the build system. +
- The +drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal - Ben Goldacre i The Guardian +2012-09-21 + +
- Norsk +skole har ikke realfag - kronikk av Hege Tunstad i Dagbladet +2012-09-22, basert på +en bloggpost 2012-09-19. + +
- Folkeopplysningen: + Alt du trenger å vite om homeopati! - bloggpost av Gunnar R. Tjomlid + 2012-09-22. + +
2nd October 2012+@@ -174,82 +134,26 @@ version.I helga fikk jeg endelig pakket sammen en ny versjon av den norske +stavekontrollen, og gikk ut versjon 2.1 etter at det var gått fire og +et halvt år siden sist. I dag fikk vi sendt ut annonseringen. Her er +det vi sendte ut:
+ +Oslo, 2012-10-02
+ +Pressemelding: Ny utgave av norsk stavekontroll med +synonymordliste
+ +Mer enn fire år etter at forrige utgave av den frie norske +stavekontrollen ble utgitt, er en ny og forbedret versjon klar. Dette er +noe utviklerne er veldig glade for.
+ +Den største endringen er at byggesystemet for stavekontrollen er +skrevet om til å akseptere ord med bindestrek (f.eks. «e-post»). Litt +over 10.000 slike ordformer er lagt til i orddatabasen. I tillegg er +det kommet en del nye ord og rettelser rapportert inn av de frivillige +som gjennomfører korrektur av orddatabasen i prosjektet. For å få +fortgang i dette korrekturarbeidet er det fint med flere frivillige +som kan bidra i prosjektet.
-+ - En god og fritt tilgjengelig stavekontroll er en viktig byggestein + for å fremme bruken av korrekt norsk språk, sier prosjektdeltager + Petter Reinholdtsen. +
- +Takket være samarbeidet med synonymordlisteprosjektet er +synonymordlista for bokmål tilgjengelig sammen med ordlista for bokmål +og nynorsk. En synonymordliste for nynorsk er også med, men den er på +prøvestadiet og meget liten.
+ +Stavekontrollpakken og synonymordlistene brukes i +LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Koffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, Firefox og +en rekke andre programmer, og på både Windows, Mac OS X, Linux og +BSD.
+ +Det hele utgis under den frie lisensen GPL og kan fritt lastes ned +fra prosjektsidene på +no.speling.org. Ferdige pakker for +LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er også tilgjengelige fra samme sted.
+ +Det norske stavekontrollprosjektet er i kontakt med lignende +prosjekter for blant annet å forbedre stavekontrollteknologien, å +utveksle verktøy for vedlikehold av orddatabasen og å få tilgang til +relevante datasett. Et av disse prosjektene er et separat prosjekt ved +Sametinget som er i gang med å utvikle samisk stavekontroll for blant +annet Microsoft Word og OpenOffice.org.
+ +Et søsterprosjekt for å lage grammatikk-kontroll for +LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org er igangsatt, men har ennå ikke kommet +langt nok til å brukes. Frivillige til å bidra i dette prosjektet er +også svært velkomne.
+ +Kontaktperson
+ ++Axel Bojer, prosjektdeltager +
+ +
E-post: fri_programvare (at) bojer.no +
Tlf: +47 954 32 417 +Referanser
-Fra NEWS-fila i kildekodepakken
+ +Release 2.1 (2012-09-30)
+ +-
-
I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy -version.
+- -10th June 2012-De siste månedene har jeg sammen med andre i NUUG jobbet med å -gjøre det enklere å få innsyn i offentlige dokumenter, og dette -inkluderer å gjøre postjournaler enklere tilgjengelig for maskinell -analyse og søk. I den forbindelse tok jeg i dag å tittet litt på -Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -(OEP), FAD/DIFIs fellesløsning for departementer og statlige -etater.
- -Her er antall oppføringer pr. måned det siste året, -summert -opp ved hjelp av -en -Scraperwiki-database. Merk at denne Scraperwikien har -ytelsesproblemer pga. mengden data.
- --
- - -Måned Antall -2011-07 164355 -2011-08 153662 -2011-09 173134 -2011-10 170665 -2011-11 198409 -2011-12 175908 -2012-01 206875 -2012-02 202862 -2012-03 204225 -2012-04 207931 -2012-05 223754 Det er også interessant å se hvor ofte ulike etater sender inn sine -journaloppføringer til OEP. OEP inneholder en liste med sist -innrapporteringsdato for alle som sender til OEP, og ved å se når og -hvor ofte det blir sendt inn fra etatene kan -frekvensen -beregnes. Her er bunnlista, dvs. de som leverer sjeldnere enn hver 10. -dag beregnet fra -en -Scraperwiki-database:
- -- -
- -Etat Frekvens Leveringer Norges geologiske undersøkelse 83.7527546296 1 Medietilsynet 33.7527546296 1 Departementenes servicesenter 23.8763773148 2 Kunnskapsdepartementet 15.8763773148 2 Kompetansesenter for distriktsutvikling 15.3763773148 2 Toll- og avgiftsdirektoratet 15.3763773148 2 Fredskorpset 12.5842515432 3 Statens legemiddelverk 12.1881886574 4 Utlendingsnemnda 11.5842515432 3 Politidirektoratet 10.9175848765 3 Skattedirektoratet 10.9175848765 3 Statens innkrevingssentral 10.5842515432 3 Barne-, ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet 10.2509182099 3 Kunst i offentlige rom 10.2509182099 3 En kan beregne lignende frekvenser ved å sammenligne -journalføringsdato med publiseringsdato for hver enkelt oppføring i -OEP, men den lenken legger jeg ikke ved her for å unngå at -søkemotorroboter begynner å overbelaste Scraperwiki-databasen.
- -Jeg har spurt Norges geologiske undersøkelse om hvorfor de leverer -så sjelden, og det kommer av at de har problemer etter oppgradering av -arkivsystemet sitt og jobber med å fikse det slik at de kan gå tilbake -til å levere hver uke. Har ikke undersøkt noen av de andre.
+ +1st October 2012+@@ -257,28 +161,42 @@ til å levere hver uke. Har ikke undersøkt noen av de andre.Som jeg +skrev +i juni har DIFI foreslått å fjerne krav om å bruke ODF til +utveksling av redigerbare dokumenter med det offentlige, og +derigjennom tvinge innbyggerne til å forholde seg til formatene til MS +Office når en kommuniserer med det offentlige.
+ +I går kveld fikk vi i NUUG +fullført vår høringsuttalelse og sendt den inn til DIFI. Du finner +uttalelsen +på wikien. Ta en titt. Fristen for å sende inn uttalelse var i +går søndag, men en får kanskje sitt innspill med hvis en sender i +dag.
- -9th June 2012-Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a -TV -with face recognition to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to -me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face -recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who -is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility, -company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better -evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would -be willing to pay for.
- -I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my -household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel. -It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book -1984 by George -Orwell.
+ +24th September 2012+@@ -286,38 +204,44 @@ Orwell.Jeg har sterk tro på vitenskap, som er et annet navn på +etterprøvbar kunnskap, som metode for å sikre et velfungerende +samfunn. Eller som en fantastisk reklamekampanje i England formulerte +det, vitenskap +flyr deg til månen, religion flyr deg inn i bygninger. Men den +vitenskapelige metode trenger folk med kunnskap, evne og vilje til å +gjøre sitt beste, og settes under press av et samfunn som ikke akkurat +belønner slike egenskaper. Her er noen skremmende og oppmuntrende +lenker relatert jeg anbefaler alle å lese:
+ +-
+
+
Ingen tvil om at alle gode krefter må jobbe sammen for å sikre at +vi vet hvor vi skal fly.
- -6th June 2012-A few days ago -I -reported how to get the support status out of Dell using an -unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was -discovered -by Daniel De Marco in february. Combined with my web scraping -code for HP, Dell and IBM -from -2009, I got inspired and wrote -a -web service based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the -support status and get a machine readable result back.
- -This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON -output: - -
- --% GET https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1 -supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""}) -% -
It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add -support for other vendors. The python source is available on -Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
+ +23rd September 2012+@@ -325,57 +249,41 @@ Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian docbook version of the 2004 book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. +The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist +in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for +those that are reluctant do read an English book. + +When I started, I +called +for volunteers to help me, but too few have volunteered so far, +and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent +mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than 700 +strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With +my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to +complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
+ ++ +
Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work +commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out +the project files currently available from +github.
+ +If you are curious what the translated book currently look like, +the updated +PDF +and +EPUB +are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but +github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I +saw no point in linking to that version.
- -2nd June 2012-Jeg oppdaget nylig en -artikkel -i Adresseavisa i Trondheim som nevner FiksGataMi, og der Trondheim -kommune ser ut til å fortelle at de ikke følger forvaltningslovens -krav ved mottak av meldinger sendt inn via FiksGataMi. La derfor -nettopp inn denne kommentaren til artikkelen:
- -
- -
- -Her er en liten faktaoppdatering om FiksGataMi-tjenesten, da noen -ser ut til å ha misforstått hvordan den fungerer.
- -FiksGataMi er et privat initiativ opprettet og drevet av -medlemsforeningen NUUG. FiksGataMi tar imot meldinger om feil i -offentlig infrastruktur, og sender meldingen skriftlig videre på vegne -av innmelder til aktuell aktør i det offentlige, det være seg kommune, -fylke eller vegvesenregion. Offentlig etat blir valgt ut fra -geografisk plassering og kategori valgt av innsender. Offentlige -etater er i følge forvaltningsloven pliktig å følge opp og besvare -skriftlige henvendelser, og hvis noen av mottakerne ikke gjør dette -kan en klage på lovbrudd i det offentlige. FiksGataMi fungerer dermed -som en slags epostklient for innbyggerne der kopi av innsendte -meldinger gjøres tilgjengelig og knyttes til kartplassering for enkel -gjenfinning. à sende inn nye problemrapporter via FiksGataMi er -dermed ikke avhengig av at kommunen aktivt må følge med på meldinger -hos FiksGataMi, da de får dem tilsendt på sine offisielle -epostmottakspunkter. Hvorvidt noe blir fikset og om innbyggerne er -opp til mottaker av meldingene. For Trondheim kommune er -mottaksadressen bydrift.vegdrift@trondheim.kommune.no, en adresse jeg -inntil jeg leste denne artikkelen trodde ble håndtert i henhold til -forvaltningslovens krav.
- -Kan ellers fortelle at 57 kommuner lenker til FiksGataMi fra sine -nettsider, og at 37 % (4182 av 11266 ) av problemrapportene sendt inn -via FiksGataMi er markert som løst i løsningen. Trondheim kommune har -fått tilbud om å få rapportene levert på datamaskinlesbart format i -stedet for epost, men har ikke takket ja så langt.
- -Vennlig hilsen Petter Reinholdtsen, en av NUUG-folkene bak FiksGataMi.no
- -Det høres for meg ut som om innbyggerne i Trondheim burde klage på -kommunens potensielle lovbrudd.
+ +20th September 2012+@@ -383,163 +291,100 @@ kommunens potensielle lovbrudd.Jeg ble for noen dager siden tipset om en rapport utarbeidet av +Cabinet Office i England ved navn +Test, +Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised Controlled +Trials, skrevet av blant annet Ben Goldacre (som jeg først ble +klar over da han holdt et veldig interessant TED-foredrag med tittel +Battling bad +science). Rapporten handler om hvordan det offentlige burde bruke +vitenskaplige metoder i større grad for å finne ut hvilke virkemidler +som er mest effektive når en skal regulere samfunnet. Her er et sitat +fra starten av rapporten:
+ ++
+ +Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are the best way to determine + wheather a policy is working. They are now used extensively in + international development, medicine, and business to identify which + policy, drug or sales method is most effective. They are also at + the heart of the Behavioural Insights Team's methodology.
+ +However, RCTs are not rutinely used to test the effectiveness of + public policy interventions in the UK. We think they should be.
+Her tror jeg også Norge har noe å lære. Det offentlige bruker mye +penger på aktiviteter der det ikke er åpenbart (og heller ikke blir +målt) at den reelle effekten er det en ønsker å oppnå. Ruters +elektroniske billettsystem, NAV-reformen, økt bruk av penger på +politiet og sykehussammenslåinger kommer meg i hug.
- -2nd June 2012-Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the +
+17th September 2012+After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the Debian Edu and Skolelinux -mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and -thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the -Debian Edu -Squeeze version.
+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?
-My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel, -Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner -(Angela FuÃ) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed -by Angela).
- -During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator -and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work -touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During -the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in -becoming an osteopath.
- -Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela FuÃ, Mike Gabriel) -have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at -introducing free software into schools. The project's name is -"IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT -skills with communication skills.
+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?
-While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for -"IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to -reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available, -people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux -distributions that target being used for school networks.
- -At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a -commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen, -Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we -went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing -and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian -Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that -got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most -attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within -the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
- -In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local -people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data -protection experts, other IT professionals.
- -We came to two conclusions:
- -First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in -bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit -by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup -whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard -IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and -customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are -possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a -standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some -degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here -locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting -point.
- -Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at -all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions -for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What -has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment -of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule" -tries to provide an approach for this.
- -Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains, -defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in -Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT -equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin) -teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there -spare time.
- -We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were -networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school -here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to -teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi -non-existent until 2010/2011.
- -Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in -class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this -avoidance do exist.
- -We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this -social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey -for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with -several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and -they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management -at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new -and probably a gain for all.
+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?
-There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to -any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian, -the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone -workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within -project communication, honest communication within the group of -developers, etc.
+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?
-Every coin has two sides:
- -Technically: BTS issue -#311188, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network -client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation -should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think -about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into -several portions (to make it easier for new developers to -contribute).
- -Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should -find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for -Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany -promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are -there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring -these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and -all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last -meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people -there being rather disconnected from the development department of -Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
+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?
-For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
- -For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For -serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for -more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
- -I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the -development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI. -PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently -is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
+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 communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde -as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber -I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also -the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive -whiteboard.
- -My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
+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?
-Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people, -enrol people.
+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.