From: Petter Reinholdtsen There is a certain cross-over between the
+
+
Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project and the Edubuntu
-project, 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.
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-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.
+I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical +engineering, and is currently professor for information management at +the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and +freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.
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 @@ -34,80 +34,79 @@ introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu?
- - 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. +What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu?
- - Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to the next +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.
Which free software do you use daily?
- 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. +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.
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools to use free software?
- 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. +Strong arguments are + +