- <item>
- <title>Is there a PHP expert in the building? Debian Edu need help!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>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:
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
- (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
- <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
- This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
- Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
-
-<li>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 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
- #698840</a>.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
-(<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
-irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <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>
-