<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 4 Jun 2013 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a while since my last English
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
+Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
+then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
+manual.
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
+ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
+by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>. 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 (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
+<a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
+movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
+<a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
+
+<p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
+Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
+beautiful project.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>One can find support from a company by looking at
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
+wiki dokumentation</a>, 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.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>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
+<a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about">Scilab</a> and
+<a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html">Sage</a> (built from
+source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
+
+<p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
+using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
+statistics?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
+university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">R</a> and
+Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
+geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
+<a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig">kig</a> to do
+constructions in planar geometry
+
+<li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
+to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
+groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>I like also
+<a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
+provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
+<a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My suggestions would be to</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
+
+<li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
+ well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
+ OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
+
+<li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
+
+<li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
+ system.</li>
+
+</ul>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Åpent møte på onsdag om bruken av Microsoft Exchange ved Universitetet i Oslo</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_pent_m_te_p__onsdag_om_bruken_av_Microsoft_Exchange_ved_Universitetet_i_Oslo.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
-<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
-for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
-Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
-soon.</p>
-
-<p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
-in particular make me very happy to see included. The
-<a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
-the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
-included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
-<a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
-<a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
-it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
-and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
-computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
-Edu.</a>
-
-<p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
-Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
-<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
-alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
-follow.<p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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