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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from April 2012</title>
                <description>Entries from April 2012</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- IMG_5869.JPG --&gt;
&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
are not marketed and sold to &quot;regular consumers&quot;.  The hair saloons
can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
finally found a Danish supplier
&lt;a href=&quot;http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html&quot;&gt;selling
it for around NOK 1800,-&lt;/a&gt;.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
days ago.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
toys.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>NUUGs leverer høringsuttalelse om v3.1 av statens referansekatalog</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_leverer_h_ringsuttalelse_om_v3_1_av_statens_referansekatalog.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_leverer_h_ringsuttalelse_om_v3_1_av_statens_referansekatalog.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;NUUG-styremedlem Hans-Petter Fjeld
&lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/u/0/110394259537201279374/posts/AGzRmAuFdW1&quot;&gt;meldte
nettopp&lt;/a&gt; at han har sendt inn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;s
høringsuttalelse angående Difi sin standardkatalog v3.1.  Jeg er veldig
glad for at så mange bidro og sikret at vår stemme blir hørt i denne
høringen.  Anbefaler alle å lese våre
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/201204-standardkatalog-v3.1&quot;&gt;to
sider med innspill&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
that the video editor application included with
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
video.  AMR is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;.  MP4 is
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Holder de ord og NUUG lanserer testtjeneste med stortingsinformasjon</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Holder_de_ord_og_NUUG_lanserer_testtjeneste_med_stortingsinformasjon.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Holder_de_ord_og_NUUG_lanserer_testtjeneste_med_stortingsinformasjon.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_har_mine_representanter_stemt_i_Storinget_.html&quot;&gt;januar
i fjor&lt;/a&gt; startet vi i NUUG arbeid med å gjøre informasjon om hvem
som har stemt hva på &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stortinget.no/&quot;&gt;Stortinget&lt;/a&gt;
enklere tilgjengelig.  I løpet av få måneder fant vi sammen med
organisasjonen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holderdeord.no/&quot;&gt;Holder de ord&lt;/a&gt;
som arbeidet mot et lignende mål.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Siden den gang har vi fått tak i maskinelt lesbart informasjon om
hvem som stemte hva mellom 1990 og våren 2010, og tilgang til
stortingets nye datatjeneste som har informasjon fra høsten 2011 til i
dag.  Det gjenstår litt arbeid med det første datasettet, men
datasettet fra høsten 2011 er klart til bruk.  Begge datasettene er
tilgjengelig &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/nuug/folketingparser&quot;&gt;via
git&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;På
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/holder-de-ord-datadrevet-oppfolging-av-politiske-lofter/&quot;&gt;Go Open&lt;/a&gt; i morgen lanserer
NUUG sammen med Holder de ord &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.holderdeord.no/&quot;&gt;en
test-tjeneste&lt;/a&gt; som viser hva som er og blir behandlet på Stortinget og
hvem som har stemt hva siden oktober i fjor.  Du får herved mulighet
til å ta en sniktitt.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
And given that people will use the software without handing any money
to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
in these situations is that free software are locked out from
implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
from Simon Phipps
(&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Forskning: &quot;GPL gir lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling av makt fra produsent til bruker&quot;</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Da jeg googlet etter noe annet kom jeg tilfeldigvis over
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=58309&quot;&gt;en
hovedfagsoppgave&lt;/a&gt; ved Universitetet i Oslo som diskuterer verdien
av GPLs fire friheter for brukerne av IT-systemer.  Jeg ble fascinert
over det som presenteres der.  Her er sammendraget:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Motivasjonen til å skrive denne oppgaven er en personlig undring
over hvorfor det primært, og ofte eksklusivt, fokuseres på det
økonomiske aspektet ved utredninger om fri programvare er et godt valg
for det offentlige. Fri og produsenteid programvare bygger på
fundamentalt forskjellige ideologier som kan ha implikasjoner utover
økonomiske kostnader. Kunnskapskulturen som er med på å definere fri
programvare er basert på åpenhet, og er en verdi i seg selv.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Oppgavens tema er programvarelisensen GPL og frihet. GPL-lisensiert
programvare gir visse friheter i forhold til produsenteid
programvare. Mitt spørsmål er om, og eventuelt i hvilken utstrekning,
disse frihetene blir benyttet av ulike brukere og hvordan de
manifesterer seg for disse brukerne. Sentrale spørsmål i oppgaven
er:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Hvordan fordeles handlekraft gjennom lisensieringen av programvaren?&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Hvilke konsekvenser har programvarelisensen for de ulike brukere? &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Fri programvare gir blant annet brukeren mulighet til å studere og
modifisere kildekoden. Denne formen for frihet erverves gjennom
kunnskap og krever at brukeren også er en ekspert. Hva skjer med
frihetene til GPL når sluttbrukeren er en annen? Dette diskuteres i
dialog med informantene.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jeg har i denne oppgaven samlet inn intervjudata fra IKT-ansvarlige
ved grunnskolene i Nittedal kommune, driftsansvarlig og IKT-veilederen
for skolene i kommunen, samt IKT-koordinator for utdanning i Akershus
fylkeskommune og bokmåloversettere av OpenOffice.org. Den empiriske
delen av oppgaven er delt inn i to seksjoner; den første omhandler
operativsystemet Skolelinux, den andre kontorprogrampakken
OpenOffice.org.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Som vi vil se gir GPL lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling
av makt fra produsent til bruker. Brukerens makt analyseres gjennom
begrepene brukermedvirkning og handlingsfrihet. Det blir også lagt
vekt på strukturelle forhold rundt bruken av teknologi, og spesielt de
økonomiske begrepene nettverkseksternaliteter, innlåsing og
stiavhengighet. Dette er begreper av spesiell nytte når objektet som
omsettes eller distribueres er et kommunikasjonsprodukt, fordi verdien
til et slikt gode for en potensiell bruker avhenger av antall
eksisterende brukere av godet. I tilknytning til denne problematikken
inneholder oppgaven også en diskusjon rundt åpne standarder og
formater.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Oppgaven konkluderer med at de «fire frihetene» som GPL-lisensen er
laget for å beskytte er av avgjørende betydning for bruken av
OpenOffice.org og Skolelinux, i Akershus fylkeskommune såvel som i
skolene i Nittedal. Distribusjonen av handlekraft er ikke helt
symmetrisk. Det er først og fremst de profesjonelle utviklerne i
Skolelinux som direkte kan nyttiggjøre seg friheten til å endre kode,
mens en sluttbruker som Nittedal kommune nyttiggjør seg den økonomiske
friheten til å kunne distribuere programmene. Det er imidlertid også
slik at ingen aktør klarer seg uten alle disse «frihetene».&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jeg fant også en masteroppgave fra 2006, men der ligger ikke
komplett oppgave tilgjengelig.  På tide å holde et øye med
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/search.html?q=skolelinux&quot;&gt;Skolelinux-søket&lt;/a&gt;
til DUO...&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
up in the recently released
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
Edu Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&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;My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
information technology and science/technology.&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;Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
contributing.&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 advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
Debian Project!&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;As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
rather small and often busy elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN&quot;&gt;Debian LAN&lt;/a&gt;
project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.&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;I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.&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;One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
politicians, this works out great for the &quot;market-leader&quot;.  The school
administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to &#39;free&#39;
the system.  There is currently some discussion about &quot;Open Data&quot; and
&quot;Free/Open Standards&quot;.  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Jeg skal på konferansen Go Open 2012</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jeg_skal_p__konferansen_Go_Open_2012.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jeg_skal_p__konferansen_Go_Open_2012.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg har tenkt meg på konferansen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/&quot;&gt;Go
Open 2012&lt;/a&gt; i Oslo 23. april.
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Medlemsforeningen NUUG&lt;/a&gt; deler ut
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/prisen/&quot;&gt;prisen for fremme av fri
programvare i Norge&lt;/a&gt; der i år.  Kommer du?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
contributor to the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
Edu Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&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&#39;m a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.&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&#39;m neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
reason my name&#39;s in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
they&#39;d like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
&quot;localisation&quot;.&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;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These questions are too hard for me - I don&#39;t use it!  In fact I
had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I&#39;d got out of the
education system.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
money on the latest hardware.&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;I&#39;ve been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).&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, I don&#39;t know.  I suppose I&#39;d be inclined to try reasoning
with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
you would hardly need a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent time with
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt; on speeding
up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were

NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
around 230 access(2) calls.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
(almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416&quot;&gt;KDE bug report
from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about this problem, and it is still unsolved.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
almost instantaneous.  I&#39;m not quite sure where to make the package
publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
that is not really an option at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
(at) lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Update 2015-08-04: The
&lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/&quot;&gt;source
of the scripts and associated Debian package&lt;/a&gt; is available from the
Debian Edu github repository.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; by
Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
for schools.  Check out his article
&lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
distribution for education&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Germany is a core area for the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.

&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&#39;ve studied Mathematics at the university &#39;Ruhr-Universität&#39; in
Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I&#39;m working as a teacher at the school
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/&quot;&gt;Westfalen-Kolleg
Dortmund&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
examination &#39;Abitur&#39;, which will allow to study at a university. This
second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
blended learning project called &#39;abitur-online.nrw&#39; and in some other
information technology related projects. For about ten years I&#39;ve been
teacher and coordinator for the &#39;abitur-online&#39; project at my
school. Being now in my early sixties, I&#39;ve decided to leave school at
the end of April this year.&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 first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
reach. At home I&#39;m using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
the admin teachers.&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;It&#39;s open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it&#39;s
Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
So it was a perfect choice.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Being open source, there are no license problems and so it&#39;s
possible to point teachers and students to programs like
OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It&#39;s of
high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
a school and to choose where to get support for this.&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;Nothing yet.&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;At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
LibreOffice.&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;Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
that doesn&#39;t seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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        </channel>
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