blog/data/2013-12-06-skolelinux-klaus-knopper.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
   3 Date: 2013-12-06 09:50
   4
   5 <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
   6 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
   7 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
   8 had a new school administrator show up on
   9 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
  10 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
  11 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
  12 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
  13 Germany a few years ago.</p>
  14
  15 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  16
  17 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
  18 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
  19 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
  20 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
  21
  22 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
  23 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
  24 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
  25 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
  26 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
  27 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
  28 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
  29 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
  30 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
  31
  32 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
  33 project?</strong></p>
  34
  35 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
  36 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
  37 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
  38 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
  39
  40 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  41 Edu?</strong></p>
  42
  43 <ul>
  44   <li>Quick installation,</li>
  45   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
  46   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
  47   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
  48     single company,</li>
  49   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
  50     experience and problem solutions.</li>
  51 </ul>
  52
  53 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
  54 Edu?</strong></p>
  55
  56 <ul>
  57   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
  58   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
  59   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
  60   working again reliably.
  61
  62   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
  63   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
  64   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
  65   as their base.
  66
  67   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
  68   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
  69   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
  70   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
  71   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
  72   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
  73
  74   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
  75   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
  76   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
  77   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
  78   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
  79   schemes.</li>
  80
  81   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
  82   compared to Debian.</li>
  83
  84 </ul>
  85
  86 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
  87 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
  88 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
  89 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
  90
  91 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
  92
  93 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
  94 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
  95 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
  96 programming languages for teaching.</p>
  97
  98 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
  99 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 100
 101 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
 102
 103 <ul>
 104
 105   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
 106     teaching and learning.</li>
 107
 108   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
 109     home, and at their working place without running into license or
 110     conversion problems.</li>
 111
 112   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
 113     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
 114     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
 115     science, not products.</li>
 116
 117   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
 118     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
 119
 120 </ul>