From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 09:42:22 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: First draft.
X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/793a773a5387b6cfb149a3284e556ac416c6d0b9?ds=inline

First draft.
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+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.