- <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
-which check that services are running, working, and return the
-expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
-test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
-installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
-operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
-online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
-configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
-
-<p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
-Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
-complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
-happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
-suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
-cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
-When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
-using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
-working packages to get it working. And the packages changed name
-from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
-debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
-packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
-would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
-right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
-
-<p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
-administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
-test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
-any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
-the problem.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
-please join us on
-<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
-irc.debian.org</a> and the
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
-list.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 6 Dec 2013 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
+but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
+had a new school administrator show up on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> 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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
+from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
+projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
+system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
+(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
+<a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
+(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
+system supporting various operating systems).</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>Quick installation,</li>
+ <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
+ <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
+ <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
+ single company,</li>
+ <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
+ experience and problem solutions.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>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.
+
+ <li>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 "Skolelinux-compatible".
+
+ <li>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.</li>
+
+ <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
+ compared to Debian.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Strong arguments are</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+ <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
+ teaching and learning.</li>
+
+ <li>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.</li>
+
+ <li>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.</li>
+
+ <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
+ would you need proprietary software for?</li>
+
+</ul>