<p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
-support is also buggy, and our build system contain of workarounds to
+support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
<p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
</description>
</item>
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
+users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
+<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
+Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
+long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
+Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
+author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
+contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
+encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
+years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
+weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
+installations.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
+London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
+just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
+along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
+mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
+well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
+have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
+LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
+these things we decided to try it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
+from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
+goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
+would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
+low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
+that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
+Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
+proprietary software everywhere.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
+how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
+various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
+English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
+users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
+OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
+desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
+use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
+that counts...)</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
+and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
+the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
+applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
+constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
+XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
+iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
+longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
+realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
+putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
+first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
+
+<p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
+free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
</channel>
</rss>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff