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6 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: entries from April 2012</title>
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14 <h1>
15 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
16
17 </h1>
18
19 </div>
20
21
22 <h3>Entries from April 2012.</h3>
23
24 <div class="entry">
25 <div class="title">
26 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
27 </div>
28 <div class="date">
29 1st April 2012
30 </div>
31 <div class="body">
32 <p>Germany is a core area for the
33 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
34 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
35 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
36
37 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
38
39 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
40 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
41 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
42 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
43 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
44 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
45 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
46 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
47
48 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
49 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
50 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
51 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
52 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
53 the end of April this year.</p>
54
55 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
56 project?</strong></p>
57
58 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
59 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
60 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
61 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
62 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
63 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
64 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
65 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
66 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
67 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
68 Skolelinux.</p>
69
70 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
71 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
72 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
73 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
74 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
75 the admin teachers.</p>
76
77 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
78 Edu?</strong></p>
79
80 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
81 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
82 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
83
84 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
85 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
86 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
87 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
88 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
89
90 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
91 Edu?</strong></p>
92
93 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
94
95 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
96
97 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
98 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
99 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
100 LibreOffice.</p>
101
102 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
103 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
104
105 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
106 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
107 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
108
109 </div>
110 <div class="tags">
111
112
113 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>.
114
115
116 </div>
117 </div>
118 <div class="padding"></div>
119
120 <div class="entry">
121 <div class="title">
122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
123 </div>
124 <div class="date">
125 5th April 2012
126 </div>
127 <div class="body">
128 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
129 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
130 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
131 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
132 for schools. Check out his article
133 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
134 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
135
136 </div>
137 <div class="tags">
138
139
140 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>.
141
142
143 </div>
144 </div>
145 <div class="padding"></div>
146
147 <div class="entry">
148 <div class="title">
149 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
150 </div>
151 <div class="date">
152 6th April 2012
153 </div>
154 <div class="body">
155 <p>Recently I have spent time with
156 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
157 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
158 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
159 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
160 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
161 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
162 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
163 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
164
165 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
166 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
167 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
168 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
169 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
170 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
171 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
172 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
173
174 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
175 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
176 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
177 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
178 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
179 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
180 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
181 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
182
183 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
184 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
185 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
186 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
187 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
188 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
189 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
190 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
191 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
192 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
193
194 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
195 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
196 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
197 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
198
199 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
200 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
201
202 </div>
203 <div class="tags">
204
205
206 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>.
207
208
209 </div>
210 </div>
211 <div class="padding"></div>
212
213 <div class="entry">
214 <div class="title">
215 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
216 </div>
217 <div class="date">
218 8th April 2012
219 </div>
220 <div class="body">
221 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
222 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
223 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
224 contributor to the
225 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
226 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
227
228 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
229
230 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
231 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
232
233 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
234 project?</strong></p>
235
236 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
237 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
238 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
239 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
240 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
241 "localisation".</p>
242
243 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
244 Edu?</strong></p>
245
246 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
247 Edu?</strong></p>
248
249 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
250 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
251 education system.</p>
252
253 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
254 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
255 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
256 money on the latest hardware.</p>
257
258 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
259
260 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
261 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
262 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
263
264 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
265 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
266
267 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
268 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
269 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
270
271 </div>
272 <div class="tags">
273
274
275 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>.
276
277
278 </div>
279 </div>
280 <div class="padding"></div>
281
282 <div class="entry">
283 <div class="title">
284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jeg_skal_p__konferansen_Go_Open_2012.html">Jeg skal på konferansen Go Open 2012</a>
285 </div>
286 <div class="date">
287 13th April 2012
288 </div>
289 <div class="body">
290 <p>Jeg har tenkt meg på konferansen <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go
291 Open 2012</a> i Oslo 23. april.
292 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Medlemsforeningen NUUG</a> deler ut
293 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/prisen/">prisen for fremme av fri
294 programvare i Norge</a> der i år. Kommer du?</p>
295
296 </div>
297 <div class="tags">
298
299
300 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
301
302
303 </div>
304 </div>
305 <div class="padding"></div>
306
307 <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="04.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
308 <div id="sidebar">
309
310
311
312 <h2>Archive</h2>
313 <ul>
314
315 <li>2012
316 <ul>
317
318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
319
320 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
321
322 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
323
324 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (5)</a></li>
325
326 </ul></li>
327
328 <li>2011
329 <ul>
330
331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
332
333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
334
335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
336
337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
338
339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
340
341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
342
343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
344
345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
346
347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
348
349 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
350
351 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
352
353 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
354
355 </ul></li>
356
357 <li>2010
358 <ul>
359
360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
361
362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
363
364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
365
366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
367
368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
369
370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
371
372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
373
374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
375
376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
377
378 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
379
380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
381
382 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
383
384 </ul></li>
385
386 <li>2009
387 <ul>
388
389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
390
391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
392
393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
394
395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
396
397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
398
399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
400
401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
402
403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
404
405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
406
407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
408
409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
410
411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
412
413 </ul></li>
414
415 <li>2008
416 <ul>
417
418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
419
420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
421
422 </ul></li>
423
424 </ul>
425
426
427
428 <h2>Tags</h2>
429 <ul>
430
431 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
432
433 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
434
435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
436
437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (2)</a></li>
438
439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
440
441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
442
443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (54)</a></li>
444
445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (97)</a></li>
446
447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (7)</a></li>
448
449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (121)</a></li>
450
451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (15)</a></li>
452
453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
454
455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (22)</a></li>
456
457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (15)</a></li>
458
459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
460
461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (4)</a></li>
462
463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
464
465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (14)</a></li>
466
467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (157)</a></li>
468
469 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (121)</a></li>
470
471 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
472
473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (24)</a></li>
474
475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (46)</a></li>
476
477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
478
479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
480
481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
482
483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (4)</a></li>
484
485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
486
487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
488
489 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (23)</a></li>
490
491 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
492
493 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (24)</a></li>
494
495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (1)</a></li>
496
497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (3)</a></li>
498
499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (9)</a></li>
500
501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (6)</a></li>
502
503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (23)</a></li>
504
505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (1)</a></li>
506
507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (18)</a></li>
508
509 </ul>
510
511
512 </div>
513 <p style="text-align: right">
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