+
Germany is a core area for the
+Debian Edu and Skolelinux
+user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
+Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
+
+
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
+
+
I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
+Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
+"Westfalen-Kolleg
+Dortmund", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
+the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
+examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
+second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
+or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.
+
+
Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
+blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
+information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
+teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
+school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
+the end of April this year.
+
+
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?
+
+
The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
+attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
+Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
+using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
+2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
+clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
+reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
+Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
+two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
+known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
+Skolelinux.
+
+
Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
+better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
+clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
+was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
+and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
+the admin teachers.
+
+
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?
+
+
It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
+Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
+So it was a perfect choice.
+
+
Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
+possible to point teachers and students to programs like
+OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
+high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
+a school and to choose where to get support for this.
+
+
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?
+
+
Nothing yet.
+
+
Which free software do you use daily?
+
+
At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
+Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
+Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
+LibreOffice.
+
+
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?
+
+
Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
+that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
+interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.
+
+