+Title: Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper
+Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
+Date: 2013-11-12 09:50
+
+<p>There is a certain cross-over between the
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
+project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
+project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
+effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
+Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Klaus Knopper, master degree in electrical engineering, professor
+for information management at the university of applied sciences
+Kaiserslautern/Germany and freelance Open Source software developer
+and consultant.</p>
+
+<p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
+from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
+projects like the Knoppix GNU/Linux live system (Debian-based like
+Skolelinux), ADRIANE (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
+LINBO (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and
+repair system supporting various operating systems).</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Credits for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the german
+coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
+source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
+introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+ - Quick installation,
+ - works (almost) out of the box,
+ - contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,
+ - is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a single
+ company,
+ - has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their experience
+ and problem solutions.
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+ - Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to the next
+ version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to a new version
+ means a full new installation from scratch to get it working again
+ reliably.
+
+ - Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a little
+ outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or similar
+ educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing as their base.
+
+ - Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
+ configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is not
+ always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network configuration is
+ actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux and not easy to change,
+ so schools sometimes have to change their network configuration to make
+ it "Skolelinux-compatible".
+
+ - Some proposed extensions, which were made available as contribution,
+ like secure examination mode and lecture material distribution and
+ collection, were not accepted into the mainline Skolelinux development
+ and are now not easy to maintain in the future because of Skolelinux
+ somewhat undeterministic update schemes.
+
+ - Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers compared to
+ Debian.
+
+ For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now rather
+ consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until Skolelinux is
+ more closely integrated into Debian and becomes upgradeable without
+ reinstallation.
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+ GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
+ programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence, occasionally
+ LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various programming
+ languages for teaching.
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+ Strong arguments are
+ - knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for teaching and
+ learning.
+ - students can learn with and use the same software at school, at home, and
+ at their
+ working place without running into license or conversion problems.
+ - closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather than exposing
+ it, and
+ proprietary software vendors try to bind customers to certain products.
+ But
+ teachers need to teach science, not products.
+ - If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what would you
+ need
+ proprietary software for?
+
+ > > * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
+
+ An interesting problem is perspective of the industry vs. perspective of
+ educational institutions. A common problem seems to me that schools claim
+ to "HAVE to use proprietary software", because employers and industry
+ would "require this". The industry on the other hand claims to "HAVE to use
+ proprietary software" because that's "what students learn at school".
+
+ Interesting interview partners could be those companies who will hire
+ students after their graduation, in order to show that there is an
+ actual demand of skilled GNU/Linux users and experts in the industry.
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