In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
-Debian Edu and Skolelinux
-mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
-up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
-Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
-since then, helping to make sure the
-Debian Edu
-Squeeze release became as good as it is..
-
-
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
-
I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
-Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
-years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
-also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
-O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
-our computer network.
-
-
Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
-spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
-(4 months).
-
-
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?
-
-
We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
-my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
-very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
-("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
-to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
-months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
-(Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
-than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
-our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
-approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
-locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
-a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
-(Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
-one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
-
-
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?
-
-
Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
-project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
-the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
-computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
-free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
-up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
-labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
-administration costs tend towards zero.
-
-
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?
-
-
While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
-might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
-budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
-supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
-office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
-option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
-capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
-include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
-power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
-within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
-the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
-i.e. harder to understand for novices.
-
-
Which free software do you use daily?
-
-
LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
-KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
-PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
-
-
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?
-
-
-
-- Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
-people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
-difference between proprietary software products, and free software
-developing.
-
-- Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
-there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
-licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
-privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
-share among German Skolelinux schools.
-
-- Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
-trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
-decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
-
-- Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
-free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
-general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
-shared world wide (school books e.g.).
-
-- Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
-office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
-need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
-
-- Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
-
-- Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
-for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
-Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
-keep sending documents in ODF formats.
-
-
-
