It has been a while since my last English
+Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
+pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
+time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
+in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
+
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+
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:
+
+
+
+- drgeo and
+kig to do
+constructions in planar geometry
+
+
- kali
+to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
+groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
+
+
+
+
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.
+
+
+
