+
It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
+but the Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
+had a new school administrator show up on
+#debian-edu to share
+his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
+time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
+Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
+Germany a few years ago.
+
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+
I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
+engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
+the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
+freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.
+
+
All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
+from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
+projects like the Knoppix GNU/Linux live
+system (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
+ADRIANE
+(a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
+LINBO
+(Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
+system supporting various operating systems).
+
+
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?
+
+
The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
+coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
+source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
+introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.
+
+
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
+ - Quick installation,
+ - works (almost) out of the box,
+ - contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,
+ - is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
+ single company,
+ - has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
+ experience and problem solutions.
+
+
+
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?
+
+
+ - Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
+ the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
+ a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
+ working again reliably.
+
+
- Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
+ little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
+ similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
+ as their base.
+
+
- Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
+ configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
+ not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
+ configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
+ and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
+ network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
+
+
- Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
+ contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
+ distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
+ Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
+ future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
+ schemes.
+
+ - Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
+ compared to Debian.
+
+
+
+
For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
+rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
+Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
+upgradeable without reinstallation.
+
+
Which free software do you use daily?
+
+
GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
+programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
+occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
+programming languages for teaching.
+
+
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?
+
+
Strong arguments are
+
+
+
+ - Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
+ teaching and learning.
+
+ - Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
+ home, and at their working place without running into license or
+ conversion problems.
+
+ - Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
+ than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
+ customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
+ science, not products.
+
+ - If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
+ would you need proprietary software for?
+
+
+
+