blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
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  12  <h1>
  13      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  14
  15  </h1>
  16
  17 </div>
  18
  19
  20     <div class="entry">
  21       <div class="title">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</div>
  22       <div class="date"> 9th July 2012</div>
  23       <div class="body"><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
  24 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
  25 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
  26 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
  27 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
  28 to adjust and scale the just released
  29 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
  30 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
  31 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
  32
  33 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
  34
  35 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
  36 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
  37 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
  38 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
  39 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
  40 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
  41 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
  42 perspective when working with IT.</p>
  43
  44 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
  45 project?</strong></p>
  46
  47 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
  48 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
  49 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
  50 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
  51 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
  52 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
  53
  54 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  55 Edu?</strong></p>
  56
  57 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
  58 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
  59 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
  60 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
  61 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
  62 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
  63 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
  64 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
  65 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
  66 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
  67 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
  68 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
  69 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
  70 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
  71 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
  72 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
  73 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
  74 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
  75 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
  76 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
  77 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
  78 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
  79 quicker to update.
  80
  81 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
  82 Edu?</strong></p>
  83
  84 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
  85 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
  86 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
  87 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
  88 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
  89 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
  90
  91 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
  92 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
  93 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
  94 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
  95 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
  96 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
  97 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
  98 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
  99 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
 100 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
 101 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
 102 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
 103 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
 104 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
 105 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
 106
 107 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
 108 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
 109 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
 110 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
 111 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
 112 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
 113 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
 114 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
 115
 116 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
 117 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
 118 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
 119 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
 120 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
 121 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
 122 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
 123 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
 124 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
 125 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
 126 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
 127 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
 128 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
 129 sound file.</p>
 130
 131 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
 132 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
 133 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
 134 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
 135 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
 136 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
 137 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
 138 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
 139 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
 140
 141 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
 142
 143 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
 144 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
 145 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
 146 )</p>
 147
 148 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
 149 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
 150
 151 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
 152 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
 153 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
 154 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
 155 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
 156 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
 157 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
 158 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
 159 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
 160 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
 161 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
 162 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
 163 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
 164 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
 165 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
 166
 167 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
 168 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
 169 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
 170 management with Airtime</a>,
 171 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
 172 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
 173 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
 174 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
 175 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
 176 </div>
 177
 178       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.</div>
 179
 180
 181     </div>
 182
 183
 184
 185
 186     <div id="sidebar">
 187
 188
 189
 190 <h2>Archive</h2>
 191 <ul>
 192
 193 <li>2012
 194 <ul>
 195
 196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
 197
 198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
 199
 200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
 201
 202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
 203
 204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
 205
 206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
 207
 208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
 209
 210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
 211
 212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (7)</a></li>
 213
 214 </ul></li>
 215
 216 <li>2011
 217 <ul>
 218
 219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
 220
 221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
 222
 223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
 224
 225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
 226
 227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
 228
 229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
 230
 231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
 232
 233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
 234
 235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
 236
 237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 238
 239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 240
 241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
 242
 243 </ul></li>
 244
 245 <li>2010
 246 <ul>
 247
 248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
 249
 250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
 251
 252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
 253
 254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
 255
 256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 257
 258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
 259
 260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
 261
 262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
 263
 264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
 265
 266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
 267
 268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
 269
 270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
 271
 272 </ul></li>
 273
 274 <li>2009
 275 <ul>
 276
 277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
 278
 279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
 280
 281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
 282
 283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
 284
 285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
 286
 287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
 288
 289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
 290
 291 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
 292
 293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
 294
 295 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
 296
 297 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
 298
 299 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
 300
 301 </ul></li>
 302
 303 <li>2008
 304 <ul>
 305
 306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
 307
 308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
 309
 310 </ul></li>
 311
 312 </ul>
 313
 314
 315
 316 <h2>Tags</h2>
 317 <ul>
 318
 319  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
 320
 321  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
 322
 323  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
 324
 325  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
 326
 327  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
 328
 329  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
 330
 331  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (57)</a></li>
 332
 333  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (112)</a></li>
 334
 335  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
 336
 337  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (6)</a></li>
 338
 339  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
 340
 341  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (151)</a></li>
 342
 343  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (17)</a></li>
 344
 345  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
 346
 347  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (7)</a></li>
 348
 349  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (8)</a></li>
 350
 351  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (31)</a></li>
 352
 353  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
 354
 355  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
 356
 357  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
 358
 359  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
 360
 361  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
 362
 363  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (196)</a></li>
 364
 365  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (143)</a></li>
 366
 367  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (4)</a></li>
 368
 369  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
 370
 371  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (35)</a></li>
 372
 373  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (49)</a></li>
 374
 375  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
 376
 377  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
 378
 379  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
 380
 381  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
 382
 383  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
 384
 385  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
 386
 387  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
 388
 389  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
 390
 391  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
 392
 393  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (1)</a></li>
 394
 395  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (37)</a></li>
 396
 397  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
 398
 399  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (4)</a></li>
 400
 401  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (10)</a></li>
 402
 403  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
 404
 405  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (34)</a></li>
 406
 407  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (2)</a></li>
 408
 409  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (25)</a></li>
 410
 411 </ul>
 412
 413
 414     </div>
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