X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/blobdiff_plain/9cf859f070b64862e351e9074184a9508cbd90da..5bb54cf40bb63c268c97f5aa04416365dc62305b:/blog/archive/2012/03/03.rss diff --git a/blog/archive/2012/03/03.rss b/blog/archive/2012/03/03.rss index ee8d426386..0f7baa5634 100644 --- a/blog/archive/2012/03/03.rss +++ b/blog/archive/2012/03/03.rss @@ -413,7 +413,7 @@ create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li> <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 @@ -422,5 +422,90 @@ package</a>.</p> + + Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html + http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html + Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100 + <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> + + +