blog/draft/2013-skolelinux-klaus-knopper.txt

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