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                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from December 2013</title>
                <description>Entries from December 2013</description>
                <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</title>
                <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
project&lt;/a&gt; consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow&quot;&gt;Dominik
George&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg --&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
life with open source. In &quot;real life&quot;, I am, as already mentioned, a
student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
a bit vacant right now however.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
(public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
network of that school together with a team of very interested and
talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
to help building another school&#39;s informational education concept from
scratch.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That said, one might see me as a kind of &quot;glue&quot; between school kids
and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
and cycling.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrOSCon&lt;/a&gt; and visited the project
booth. I think I wasn&#39;t too interested back then because I used to
have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
&quot;out-of-the-box&quot; solution ;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openrheinruhr.de&quot;&gt;OpenRheinRuhr&lt;/a&gt; 2011 when the
BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
small demonstration, but there wasn&#39;t any real feedback and the guys
seemed rather uninterested.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The most important advantage seems to be that it &quot;just
works&quot;. After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn&#39;t
have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that&#39;s enough to say
that it rocks!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life&#39;s bad, and so no
politician will ever permit a setup described as &quot;Debian, an universal
operating system, with some really cool educational tools&quot; while they
will be jsut fine with &quot;Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
school network&quot;, even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
other words: &quot;What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?&quot; I
can list a few points about that:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

 &lt;li&gt;always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
 &lt;li&gt;be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
 &lt;li&gt;be helpful at being helpful ;)

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
run text tools. I use
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm&quot;&gt;mksh&lt;/a&gt; as shell,
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm&quot;&gt;jupp&lt;/a&gt; as very advanced
text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
based full-featured student management software with the two),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://mcabber.com/&quot;&gt;mcabber&lt;/a&gt; for XMPP and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irssi.org/&quot;&gt;irssi&lt;/a&gt; for IRC. For that overly
coloured world called the WWW, I use
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/&quot;&gt;Iceweasel
(Firefox)&lt;/a&gt;. Oh, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mutt.org/&quot;&gt;mutt&lt;/a&gt; for
e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
kids. One of these things is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jappix.org/&quot;&gt;Jappix&lt;/a&gt;,
which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
Facebook now ;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Well, that&#39;s a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
side is what I have experienced.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
that won&#39;t work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
they jsut refused to use it because &quot;Linux sucks&quot;. It is something
that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
plain criminal.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
founded an association named
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.teckids.org&quot;&gt;Teckids&lt;/a&gt; here in Germany that does
just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
area of free and open source software, for example the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.froscon.org&quot;&gt;FrogLabs&lt;/a&gt;, which share staff with
Teckids and are the youth programme of
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.froscon.org&quot;&gt;the Free and Open Source Software
Conference (FrOSCon)&lt;/a&gt;. We do a lot more than most other conferences
- this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
Skolelinux in the future ;)!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren&#39;t for the world
being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!--

&gt;  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?

That&#39;s probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
community. However, I would be willing to do the following:

 &lt;li&gt;Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
   free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
   of the decision makers above;
 &lt;li&gt;Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
   knowledge about free software

If that is wanted, just let me know ;).

--&gt;
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                <title>Dugnadsnett for alle stiller på Oslo Maker Faire i januar 2014</title>
                <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle_stiller_p__Oslo_Maker_Faire_i_januar_2014.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Helga 18. og 19. januar 2014 arrangeres
&lt;a href=&quot;http://makerfaireoslo.no/no/program/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;Oslo Maker
Faire&lt;/a&gt;, og &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dugnadsnett.no/&quot;&gt;Dugnadsnett for
alle&lt;/a&gt; har fått plass!  Planen er å ha et bord med en plakat der vi
forteller om hva Dugnadsnett for alle er for noe, og et lite verksted
der vi hjelper folk som er interessert i å få opp sin egen mesh-node.
Jeg gleder meg til å se hvordan prosjektet blir mottatt der.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Målet med dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo er å få på plass et datanett
for kommunikasjon ved hjelp av radio-repeaterstasjoner (kalt
mesh-noder) som gjør at en kan direkte kommunisere med slekt, venner
og bekjente i Oslo via andre som deltar i dugnadsnettet, samt gjøre
det mulig komme ut på internett via dugnadsnettet.  Første delmål er å
kunne sende SMS-meldinger vha. IP-telefoni løsningen
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;Serval project&lt;/a&gt; mellom
deltagerne i Dugnadsnett for alle i Oslo.  Formålet er å ta tilbake
kontrollen over egen nett-infrastruktur og gjøre det dyrere å bedrive
massiv innsamling av informasjon om borgernes bruk av datanett.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Høres dette interessant ut?  Bli med på prosjektet, fortell oss
hvor du kunne tenke deg å sette opp en radio-repeater (slik at folk i
nærheten kan finne hverandre ved hjelp av
&lt;a href=&quot;http://flynor.net/mesh/mesh.php&quot;&gt;kartet over planlagte og
eksisterende radio-repeatere&lt;/A&gt;), bli med på epostlisten
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett&quot;&gt;dugnadsnett
(at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; og stikk innom
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no&quot;&gt;IRC-kanalen
#dugnadsnett.no&lt;/a&gt;.  Så langt er det planlagt over 40
radio-repeatere, med VPN-forbindelser via Internet for å la de delene
av nettet som ikke når hverandre via radio kunne snakke med hverandre
likevel.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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                <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
                <link>https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
had a new school administrator show up on
&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; to share
his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
Germany a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
from teaching, I&#39;m also conducting some more or less experimental
projects like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knoppix.org&quot;&gt;Knoppix GNU/Linux live
system&lt;/a&gt; (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html&quot;&gt;ADRIANE&lt;/a&gt;
(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html&quot;&gt;LINBO&lt;/a&gt;
(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
system supporting various operating systems).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Quick installation,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;works (almost) out of the box,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
    single company,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
    experience and problem solutions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;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.

  &lt;li&gt;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.

  &lt;li&gt;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 &quot;Skolelinux-compatible&quot;.

  &lt;li&gt;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.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
  compared to Debian.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Strong arguments are&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
    teaching and learning.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;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.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;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.&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
    would you need proprietary software for?&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;
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