In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
+Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
+up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
+Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
+since then, helping to make sure the
+Debian Edu
+Squeeze release became as good as it is..
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
-studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
-Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
-Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
-teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
-information technology and science/technology.
+
I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
+Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
+years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
+also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
+O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
+our computer network.
+
+
Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
+spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
+(4 months).
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?
-
Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
-project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
-qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
-contributing.
+
We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
+my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
+very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
+("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
+to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
+months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
+(Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
+than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
+our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
+approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
+locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
+a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
+(Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
+one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
-out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
-Debian Project!
+
Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
+project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
+the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
+computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
+free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
+up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
+labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
+administration costs tend towards zero.
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?
-
As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
-downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
-setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
-possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
-long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
-because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
-rather small and often busy elsewhere.
-
-
The Debian LAN
-project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.
+
While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
+might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
+budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
+supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
+office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
+option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
+capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
+include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
+power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
+within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
+the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
+i.e. harder to understand for novices.
Which free software do you use daily?
-
I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
-on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
-mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
-have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.
+
LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
+KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
+PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?
-
One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
-Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
-politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
-administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
-Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
-free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
-of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
-
-
To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
-political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
-However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
-the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
-"Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
-a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
-fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
-software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
+
+
+- Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
+people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
+difference between proprietary software products, and free software
+developing.
+
+- Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
+there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
+licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
+privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
+share among German Skolelinux schools.
+
+- Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
+trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
+decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
+
+- Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
+free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
+general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
+shared world wide (school books e.g.).
+
+- Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
+office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
+need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
+
+- Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
+
+- Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
+for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
+Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
+keep sending documents in ODF formats.
+
+