It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
+but my plans to let my readers hear from the people behind the
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+ +I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical +engineering, and is currently professor in 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
+projects like the
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu +project?
+ +The credit 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.
+ +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 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- Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a + little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or + similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing + as their base.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.
+ +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.
+ +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? + +