Re: Debian-edu/Skolelinux and Edubuntu cooperation
søn, 08,.05.2005 kl. 23.54 +0200, skrev Halvor Dahl:
> Andreas Tille wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 8 May 2005, Markus Gamenius wrote:
> >
> >> Then we will be less vulnerable in the future, and we will give
our
> >> users more freedom.
> >
> > You might think about whether your users want freedom of choice of
> > a distribution or just a relieable system. Freedom is a very great
> > word but using freedom sanely requires a lot of experience and
knowledge.
> > My impression of the target user group was that they do not really
> > want to have the choice between different technical base systems -
> > at least I fail to see a selling point here.
> >
> > Kind regards
> >
> > Andreas.
>
>
>
> This is certainly true. Users don't bother much about operating
> systems. Decision makers may have an opinion on Windows vs
> any other operating system, but hardly on Debian vs Ubuntu.
>
> However, the relevant point of this discussion is that we are
> now running on software that is quite simply getting old. This
> may in some cases be an issue when it comes to flexibility in
> hardware selection, but I think we can still find solutions for
> quite a while. So far I have not heard of any case actually
> being lost because of this.
Actually this is what happened here in Kongsvinger. We found the Woody
based Skolelinux too old. It's just not the looks, but several
applications require KDE 3. Actually we don't run that either, we use
IceWM. But KDE 3 is there in the background. We therefore chose Fedora
on our LTSP servers, but kept Skolelinux on our main servers. For me
Debian Woody is a server OS, but not for the desktop. But that's me. We
did a lot of research around this, and tested Skolelinux on several
schools in our test phase. The students and teachers hated it. After we
switched to Fedora, the complaints went away.
We run one of the largest Skolelinux installations in Norway. Nine
schools and 2300 users. Now I am going to replace and old server on one
of those schools, and I _too_ find Fedora to be "ever changing" and I am
therefore looking for something new. I have two choices, Sarge based edu
or Kubuntu. Right now, I find Kubuntu the stronger candidate of the
two.
What happens now, when Sarge gets stable? This discussion will come back
when Sarge gets outdated, and it will. Another selling point for Kubuntu
for me, is that K12LTSP seem to be looking towards Ubuntu for future
releases. K12LTSP and Skolelinux are two sides of the same thing, Linux
based systems for schools. Why not cooperate with them?
> What is more important for sales is actually the old KDE desktop
> in Woody. Some people think it looks old-fashioned, and we need
> to take that seriously. In real life there is no use arguing
> against opinions like that - you just need to address it by
> coming up with something a little bit more "modern" looking.
>
>
> Ubuntu may sound like the right answer, but what is the question?
> In my opinion, it is "How do we get control over our release
> process?" and not "What distro should we chose?".
Agreed. I call our installation a Skolelinux installation, even though
our LTSP servers aren't. But the concept and the main servers are. It
would be difficult to tell from our students desktop, what distro the
servers are running.
Best regards
Trond Mæhlum
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Halvor
>
>
>
>
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