Petter Reinholdtsen

Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project. We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we hope to get released soon. The two problems require some with PHP skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in the project:

1. It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is BTS report #700257. This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze. Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?
2. It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither using ldif nor using CSV files. The feature was disabled after a major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system. This is BTS report #698840.

If you can help us, please join us on IRC (#debian-edu on irc.debian.org) and provide patches via the BTS.

It has been a while since my last English Debian Edu and Skolelinux interview last November. But the developers and translators are still pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators in the project, Cédric Boutillier.

Who are you, and how do you spend your days?

I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.

I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby packaging, publicity and translation.

How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu project?

I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of the Debian Edu manual for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the manual.

I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.

What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided by GOsa². What pleased me also was the fact that among the software installed by default, there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages, to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and artistic skills with music (Ardour, Audacity) and movies/animation (I was especially thinking of Stopmotion).

I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on #debian-edu. Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this beautiful project.

What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu?

For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the fact that it provides a solution ready to use.

I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection of educational free software.

What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu?

Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.

One can find support from a company by looking at the wiki dokumentation, where some countries already have a number of companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However, for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some support for Debian Edu as well.

Which free software do you use daily?

I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am also using the mathematical software Scilab and Sage (built from source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).

Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and statistics?

I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our university, we use both R and Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For geometry, there are nice programs:

• drgeo and kig to do constructions in planar geometry
• kali to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze groups), although the interface looks a bit old.

I like also cantor, which provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage, Octave, etc...

Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools to use free software?

My suggestions would be to

• advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
• communicate about the quality of free software projects, using well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
• advertise the living and strong community around the project.
• show that it is not more difficult to use than any other system.

Jeg jobber til daglig ved Universitetet i Oslo, en institusjon som lenge har vektlagt verdien av åpne standarder og fri programvare. Men noe har endret seg, og for en liten stund tilbake annonserte USIT at dagens fungerende e-postsystemet basert på fri programvare skulle byttes ut med Microsoft Exchange og at Microsoft Outlook skulle bli den best fungerende men antagelig ikke eneste støttede e-postklienten. Annonseringen har ført til flere protester og en underskriftskampanje, initiert av Diana Santos, der så langt 253 personer har signert. Prosjektet NIKE (Ny integrert kalender/e-post) ble initiert for å se på mulige løsninger med utgangspunkt i at en kombinert epost/kalenderløsning var påkrevd, og prosjektet NIKE-implementasjon er igang med å rulle ut MS Exchange ved Universitetet i Oslo.

For kun kort tid siden ble det annonsert at det blir et åpent møte med ledelsen hos universitetet i Oslo med disse planene som tema:

Tid: Onsdag 2013-06-05 kl. 10:00
Sted: 9. etasje i Lucy Smiths hus (admin-bygget)

Det kan være en god plass å stille opp hvis en som meg ikke tror valget av Microsoft Exchange som sentral epostinfrastruktur er et heldig valg for Norges ledende forskningsuniversitet, men at en er mer tjent med å selv beholde kontrollen over egen infrastruktur.

Saken har ført til endel presseoppslag så langt. Her er de jeg har fått med meg:

• 2013-05-29 Forsvarer nytt IT-system - Universitas
• 2013-05-23 UiO innfører nytt epost- og kalenderverktøy - Uniforum
• 2013-05-22 Protestgruppe vil stanse IT-system - Universitas
• 2013-05-15 UiO må ha kontroll over sitt eget epostsystem - Uniforum

Included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux, there are quite a lot of educational software. Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn. We have tried to tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the debtag field. Here it is. Click on a image to learn more about the program.

field::arts

field::astronomy

field::biology:structural

field::chemistry

[viewmol]

field::electronics

[gpsim]

field::geography

field::linguistics

field::mathematics

[geomview]

field::physics

field::TODO

In total, 61 applications. 3 of them lacked screen shots on screenshot.debian.net. If you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us know on IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org, or our mailing list debian-edu@.

Two days ago, I asked how I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer preinstalled with Windows 8. I found a solution, but am horrified with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI and Windows 8.

I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem, causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings enough to tell.

There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend to follow.

I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not without risking to loose the warranty?

I've updated the Linux Laptop wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV, to ensure the next person do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the machine.

Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching, Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.

I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI instead of a BIOS to boot.

The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the Windows 8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again to get it to boot the Linux installer.

I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the Packard Bell EasyNote LV model. If you have any idea how to get Linux installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.

I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux on new Laptops?

En ting Skolelinux-prosjektet har hatt mye glede av er studentprosjekter. F.eks. er stillbildeanimasjonssystemet Stopmotion resultat av et studentprosjekt i Skolelinux. De siste månedene har en ivrig student veiledet av Marius Kotsbak i FRiSK testet hva en kan få til med en datamaskin til NOK 400,- (antagelig 1700,- med skjerm, tastatur og mus) når det brukes i Skolelinux. Jeg spurte han om et intervju.

Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?

Jeg heter Nirosan Thiyagalingam. Jeg er 24 år og studerer dataingeniør studiet ved Høgskolen i Sør Trøndelag. Interessen for data har siden ung alder vært tilstede og jeg har i tillegg alltid vært glad i å lære nye ting. Med teknologi som endres svært hurtig er det alltid noe nytt å lære. Noe som igjen har gjort det svært interessant å følge med på utviklingen. Jeg valgte dataingeniør studiet grunnet ønske om å lære enda mer om programmering og utvikling av store systemer.

Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?

Skolelinux prosjektet hørte jeg først om i media. Men det var først når jeg skulle velge bacheloroppgave at jeg fattet mer interesse for prosjektet. Et enkelt søk på nettet førte meg til skolelinux sine hjemmesider. Informasjonen jeg fant der gjorde meg enda nysgjerrig og jeg valgte derfor en oppgave som gikk ut på å få en Raspberry PI. Altså en ultra-billig datamaskin til å kjøre Debian Edu på lik linje med vanlige datamaskiner. I løpet av prosjektet ble det gjort mye forskning på nettet. Det var mye jeg måtte forstå rundt hvordan operativsystemet Linux fungerte før jeg kunne angripe problemet. Prøvde først å finne ut hvordan man kunne transformere en vanlig installasjon av Skolelinux til Raspberry PI, men dette var altfor vanskelig å jeg endte opp med mer spørsmål enn svar. Det ble videre opprettet kontakt med Skolelinux utviklere på IRC der jeg fikk diskutert hvilken retning jeg burde gå for å få til en fullverdig løsning. Det ble bestemt at jeg skulle gå for å først installere Raspian. Dette er et operativsystem basert på Debian spesiallaget for Raspberry Pi sin maskinvare. Nå som Debian var installert på datamaskinen gjenstod det å installere de nødvendige Skolelinux pakkene for å få til et fullverdig system. Disse pakkene ble installert manuelt i første omgang, men ble senere installert automatisk via et script som Petter Reinholdtsen laget. Dette scriptet er så enkel å bruke at man er i gang med installasjonen i løpet av bare 5 minutter. Ikke nok med det, alt skjer helt automatisk. Alt i alt er jeg veldig fornøyd med resultatet av installasjonsprosessen. Raspberry Pi er en veldig svak maskin og det merkes godt når man har installert Skolelinux på den. Video og 3D-rendering fungerer utrolig dårlig, men nettsurfing og kontorprogrammer fungerer godt. Det kan derfor konkluderes med at datamaskinen er egnet for enkle oppgaver.

Jeg syns det er viktig påpeke at dette kun er startfasen av en slik løsning. På markedet finnes det nå maskiner som har bedre hardware enn Raspberry Pi. Det er store muligheter for at man kan klare å installere Skolelinux på disse også, og da forsvinner nok mest sannsynlig ytelsesproblemene med Video og 3D rendering også.

Det ble også prøvd med en løsning som gjorde at Raspberry Pi fungerte som en tynnklient. Denne løsningen hadde langt bedre ytelse med tanke på hastighet og brukeropplevelse. Men også her var video og 3D rendering dårlig. Det ble brukt en liten Linux distribusjon kalt BerryTerminal for å få til dette.

Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?

Fordelen med Skolelinux er mange. At det er gratis er en stor fordel, men at det er så mange som er med på å utvikle det og vedlikeholde det er en enda større fordel. Allerede før jeg startet med prosjektet så jeg mange fordeler, og når jeg nærmet meg sluttfasen så jeg langt flere. At prosjektet skulle inneha en så høy kvalitet hadde jeg aldri trodd. En vanlig Skolelinux installasjon har de nødvendige programmene og funksjonen som både små og store skoler i tillegg til organisasjoner kan klare seg med. At prosjektet tilbyr en så komplett løsning er en kjempefordel. Installasjonen er knirkefri og det er svært enkelt å installere og komme i gang.

Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?

Ulempene jeg ser med prosjektet er ryddigheten av websidene. Selv om websidene er enkle og konsise er det allikevel ikke appellerende i like stor grad som for eksempel Ubuntu sine sider. Deres side tilbyr, i tillegg til godt design og presentasjon, en nettbasert emulator av deres operativsystem. Dette er en stor fordel slik jeg ser det. Bortsett fra dette ser jeg absolutt ingen ulemper med Skolelinux-prosjektet.

Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?

Til daglig er jeg en flittig bruker av det åpne media sentersystemet XBMC. Det enorme samfunnet rundt dette prosjektet har gjort dette til et program som dekker alles behov. Man kan tilpasse det akkurat slik man vil både med tanke på utseende og funksjoner ved installere plug-ins eller scripts.

Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?

Strategien som burde brukes sett fra mine øyne er markedsføring. Jeg er sikker på at om flere skoler fikk et lite innsyn i hvor bra Skolelinux er så ville de ikke nølt med å gå over fra noe annet som koster de store summer. At skolelinux til de grader tilbyr en så komplett løsning bure komme frem. Enten via reklamekampanjer eller ved å sende ut folk til skoler for så å la skolenettverk ansvarlige få teste ut hvordan Skolelinux fungerer i praksis. Om det i tillegg ble utviklet gode websider og en emulator for å la brukere prøve operativsystemet ville nok dette ha styrket inntrykket betraktelig.

Debian Edu / Skolelinux is an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server, network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago, 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity, please donate some money.

A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by the Debian Edu installer.

The script, debian-edu-bless in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation into a Debian Edu Workstation:

The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on setting up Raspberry Pi as a Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing Raspbian installation and transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).

The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation. If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:

PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
DESKTOP="lxde"

The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first boot.

The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based release today. This is the release announcement:

New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released 2013-05-14

This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu alpha1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".

About Debian Edu and Skolelinux

Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be installed via the network.

This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze release.

Software updates

• Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by default.
• Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.
• Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.
• Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on ibus-anthy.

Other changes

• Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and reliability improvements.
• Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because of 706434.
• Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible problems.
• Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus direct:// URL.
• Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.
• Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.
• Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.
• Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client servers, to make room for all the software installed.
• Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to log in (706753).

Known issues

• IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address (705900). Only install libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.
• DVD images are not yet ready.
• No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available yet (698840).
• Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
• KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.
• LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.
• Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to password submission problem (700257).

Where to get it

To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use

• ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
• http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
• rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso

The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b

The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c

How to report bugs

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs

In January, I announced a new IRC channel #debian-lego, for those of us in the Debian and Linux community interested in LEGO, the marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created a wiki page to have a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag hardware::hobby:lego tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to LEGO and Mindstorms:

Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only available in experimental.

If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux for LEGO designers.