It has been a while since my last English
-Debian Edu and Skolelinux
-interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
-pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
-time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
-in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
-
-
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
-
-
I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
-professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
-mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
-probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.
-
-
I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
-and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
-packaging, publicity and translation.
-
-
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?
-
-
I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
-the
-Debian Edu manual for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
-then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
-manual.
-
-
I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
-virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
-shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
-how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.
-
-
What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
-ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
-by GOsa². What pleased
-me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
-there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
-to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
-artistic skills with music (Ardour,
-Audacity) and
-movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
-Stopmotion).
-
-
I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
-#debian-edu.
-Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
-beautiful project.
-
-
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?
-
-
For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
-community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
-fact that it provides a solution ready to use.
-
-
I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
-distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
-of educational free software.
-
-
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?
-
-
Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
-project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
-not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
-solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
-is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.
-
-
One can find support from a company by looking at
-the
-wiki dokumentation, where some countries already have a number of
-companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
-Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
-for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
-consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
-support for Debian Edu as well.
-
-
Which free software do you use daily?
-
-
I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
-most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
-scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am
-also using the mathematical software
-Scilab and
-Sage (built from
-source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
-
-
Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
-using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
-statistics?
-
-
I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
-university, we use both R and
-Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
-geometry, there are nice programs:
-
-
-
-- drgeo and
-kig to do
-constructions in planar geometry
-
-
- kali
-to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
-groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
-
-
-
-
I like also
-cantor, which
-provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
-Octave, etc...
-
-
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?
-
-
My suggestions would be to
-
-
-
-- advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
-
-- communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
- well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
- OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
-
-- advertise the living and strong community around the project.
-
-- show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
- system.
-
-
-