From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:19:07 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Nytt intervju på trappene. X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/aee55bee1d47f1991aa8fb3173d5688520054d7e?ds=inline Nytt intervju på trappene. --- diff --git a/blog/draft/2012-03-skolelinux-john-ingleby.txt b/blog/draft/2012-03-skolelinux-john-ingleby.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..f0406f6a4d --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/draft/2012-03-skolelinux-john-ingleby.txt @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +Title: Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby +Tags: english, debian edu, intervju +Date: 2012-03-15 11:30 + +

Debian Edu anb +Skolelinux + +John Ingleby + +

Who are you, and how do you spend your days?

+ +

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.

+ +

How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu +project?

+ +

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.

+ +

What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?

+ +

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.

+ +

What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian +Edu?

+ +

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!

+ +

Which free software do you use daily?

+ +

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...)

+ +

Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to +get schools to use free software?

+ +

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.

+ +

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.