Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on 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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
