Tags: english, debian edu, intervju
Date: 2012-06-25 11:30
-<p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
-
-George Bredberg
+<p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
+recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
+Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March this
+year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how to
+adjust and scale the setup to his liking. He granted me an interview,
+and I am happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
<p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
-folkhighschool teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In Norwegian I
-believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master in
-"Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I just
-like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
+"folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
+Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
+in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
+just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
perspective when working with IT.</p>
<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?</strong></p>
I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
-now. Earlier I tested out the K12-ltsp project, which we used for some
+now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
-K12-ltsp abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
+K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
seriously into Skolelinux instead.
<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?</strong></p>
The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
-distribution, ready to install. It has ldap-support, windows
+distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, windows
integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
-well. But that is vnc-based and ltsp, to me, is better when it comes
+well. But that is VNC-based and LTSP, to me, is better when it comes
to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is showing videos from
Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to mix thinclients with
workstations, since the user settings will be the same. In our
-vnc-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by setting up a
+VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by setting up a
second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the workstations,
because they will be different from the ones used on the
thinclients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
-have only two installs to update and configure. One for the
-thinclients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.
-Our old system was also based on RedHat and CentOs. They are both very
+have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
+clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
+old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
<p>Debian is a bit to quick when it comes to updating. As an example
we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
-year (2012) the updates you get from the repos has stopped sound from
-working with them. It's a kernel/Alsa issue. So you have to be more
-careful properly testing the updates before you run them in a
-production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
+year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
+sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
+to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
+a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
<p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
-install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hardcoded into the
-distribution, when it comes to ldap and at least samba
+install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
+distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba
integration. That is more a cosmetic /translation issue, and not a
-real problem. Running windows applications within the Skolelinux
+real problem. Running windows applications within the Skolelinux
environment needs to be better supported. That is, running them
-seamlessly via rdp, and support for single-sign on. That will make the
-transition to free software easier, because you can keep the
+seamlessly via RDP, and support for single-sign on. That will make
+the transition to free software easier, because you can keep the
applications you really need. No support will make it impossible if
you work in a school were some applications cant be open source. As
for us we really need to run InDesign in our journalist classes.</p>
source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a problem
if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that will
create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good support for
-running windows applications via the thinclient (Linux) desktop is
+running windows applications via the thin client (Linux) desktop is
essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed level of
educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
+
+
+ > Is this Adobe InDesign? What is it doing that the free software
+ > alternatives can not offer?
+
+We run a journalist education. One of the very few non university
+ones that is ok:d by Svenska journalistförbundet, and that gives the
+pupils the right of membership there, once they are done. (Important
+if you want to get a job.)
+
+InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
+magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
+market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
+world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
+to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
+are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
+edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
+there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
+
+We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to the
+radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
+Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
+Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more openminded. We have
+tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
+program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
+studio. Its way to complex and the gui is to scattered when you only
+want to cut, make passovers, add extra channels and normalize. Thoose
+things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
+have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
+fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
+one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequentlly
+because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
+sound file.
+
+So, I am not sure we will succed in replacing even Audition, but we
+will try. Problem is the students have certain expectations when they
+start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to look
+and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many programs
+out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised as
+Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what program
+they learn, because once they start working they still have to learn
+the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn the
+editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
+
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