 Thank you for the opportunity to give me the chance to give you a presentation. We know each other from the German Linnokstag, and I am the coordinator of the agency congress in the German Linnokstag, so I'm more from the view of the German administration and from the politicians, but this has to do something with Skola Linnok, or with Linnok at all. And I also wanted to say to you, it is very important that you remind this, it is only a critical review from the German point, nothing with internationality but only from the German point, but it's very important for our international guests to see what is reality in Germany and in German schools, and so it could be that you don't like my presentation, but don't bother me to talk about it. German anyway. First of all, that's my history, the coordination and advisory board of the German Federal Ministry of the Ontario. This is a ministry which is responsible for the IT in the whole administration of the federal administration. In Germany we have a very complicated administration. At the top there is a federal administration with about 400 agencies, and then in the second level there is the administration of the countries, also German countries, federal countries, they also have a government and a prime minister and ministries, and in these ministries there are the responsibilities for the schools, it's not on the top, that is different between other countries. I think in France the Ministry of Education is also responsible for the schools and there are only the, I think, prefect also. But you cannot make a view from this and this, it's totally different in all of you. Germany is a federal country and so we have these levels in the administration and the responsibility is in the middle level for the schools, the countries, the government of the countries are responsible. So the coordination and advisory board is on the top level and there are working parties in which they are sitting together and they are responsible for all the things that in the administration and the use of the information technology is optimized and the use is very economy in the agencies. And also they have to advise all the IT people in the agencies. So the coordination and advisory board has, well that's not the rule to say do it like this or do it like this, they have to put guidelines, just what is good to do. And one of these guidelines was this here, it is a very, let me say, a very successful product of this administration. It was the migration guideline which was also put in other languages now. It is, I think, in English, in Polish, in Vietnamese and so on. And do you remember the download 400 pages in Oslo? This was this paper. Yeah, this was this paper. This was this report. And very interesting, in the first report they detailed, described how to exchange, exchange. And that for me is from the Kola people, but it's very nice, exchange, exchange. This is written in this report on 419 pages in the first version. So you can imagine who is fighting against it. Well, before this there was a German KVST letter. It's an informational media for the administration. It's spread out to the administration, normally only for the administration. This letter, which I wrote, was the promoting of the use of open source software in the federal administration. And this was the year 2000 total use. For this presentation I just thought about the title. My first title was Linux on desktop. But that's not the right title in there. And the second title was, why is there no Linux on desktop? Well, and seeing this as tricks here, it's exclusively seen from the German view. And if you look in Germany around, in administration, in school and so on, where you will find a little violence with Linux, but mostly there's no Linux on the desktop. Why? Well, we have some laws of how German schools and German teachers are working. Excuse me. Well, one is, we've always did it like this. And we'll never do it in another way. The second is, every John, Dick and Harry could make his demands. And the third is, we have never done this before. And so we don't do it now. These are rules, like German administration and like German, the schools are part of the administration, they don't do it with the teachers are thinking. It's horrible. But this is bright energy. So we have a problem from the mentality of the people and of the teachers. The man likes heavy ginormous and the experience you all have. And therefore, the user's question is, why Linux? And why is it called a Linux? Well, these are the answers. I don't need it. Another thing is, I have XP at home and I don't like to learn again about the use of computers. Does it run under XP? These are pupils. Pupils asking you, does it run under XP? Which is our Windows? And last but not least, that's totally crazy. At home, I don't have to pay for Windows. It is free. Also for schools, it is free. You know, all of that's the vibe. So what we tried in the PEMPIC administration in our agency was we set up two identical test stops. We made it as equal as possible. So we include all of the pictures from Windows on the Linux test stop and test it with the users. It was very funny. Dr. Meskis from Kedarkis and Mr. Richard know this. They are sitting inside the projects and nothing. So this is a desktop you know. No, it's on Linux. And this is the equivalent disk. What do you know? Well, you can see the difference. Another few look. Yeah, this one. This icon changes back to the other one, which is more spectacular. This is a little different. Well, what did they use? Most of the deciders didn't take part of the test. Functions which are identical on both systems are very better if the system was XP. And new functions compared to Office 97 are very better if the system was XP. It's funny. And the same situation is in German schools. What are the reasons for this evolution? Well, we as developers here are only viewing from the technical point. And I wanted to show you that there is a social point of view. And for the children there's no advantage for them to use this or this system. Security and economy are not very important for children, but for the teachers or for the administrators or the systems. Not for the children. The children have problems with games and ADU software. In Germany there are some small companies developing ADU software. And this ADU software is presented on exhibitions in Germany to the teachers. And the teachers are going to school and sent to the parents of the children. Well, we have a very nice city. We founded an ADU exhibition. And on this city there are programs that will help your children to learn better German, better mathematics, better everything you can learn at school. You only have to buy it. It just costs a certain amount of euros. And if we get 150 Bord, then we get a license for the school, isn't it good? Yes, and all the parents buy the software, and you know it's only running under another operating system. Well, though we have a very big problem with the ADU software. And another thing is, if anything goes wrong, it directly suffers. So there's no motivation for schools to move. Deciders do, but the children and publishing houses want. And these writers are very conservative. And they are not experienced with free or leave or open software. Well, make a little step back and excuse for this slide here. Who of you know the European Action Plan 2002? Have you ever heard of this? Please sign up. Yes, it's a French colleague, that's nice. But it was a very big action plan. At this time, Erty Lycan, who was a Finnish man, was a European commissioner, and he was responsible for the European society. And he set up this action plan to make a little competition between the states of Europe. And there are three main tasks. And one objective was that he wanted to invest in people and skills to bring Europe's use into the digital age. And one task, and this is the original sentence of this action plan, was that it should be for teachers, pupils and parents access to digitized cultural heritage, learning methods, European open source of the initiative. But in the next action plan, which was started in 2005, there was nothing from that because the European Commission set up all the goals that are fulfilled, and I don't see it that they are fulfilled. What is the German reality in 2004? Who from you notes this paper in Germany from the German colleagues? Anyone? Yeah. Then you know the values which are in this paper. This is a study of how the environment in the schools of Germany is different. How many windows users are there, how many Linux systems, and so on. And if you see this here, these are the values from the years. Let's see. Windows in German schools. This is funny. 100% and then 99%. This is the sum of all schools, and this is Linus. And the very funny thing is for this study, 40% Linus in schools and 99 windows. I don't know how they get these numbers. It's possible that they use both. Yeah. Yeah. Many do. Many do. That's right. The reason is very simple. They have an obligation in education to let people get to know different systems. When they get into real-life work, normally they're going to drive a BMW to the work or a Mercedes-Benz or who called it that. That's right. You have to have knowledge about it. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the right one, you said. And this is a calculated sum, I said. And there's no difference, because we have different schools in Germany. We have the basic schools. We have colleges or so. And they are put all together in these values here. But it's interesting on this here. Well, another fact also from this study is this here. If you see these values, you have e-learning software, you have multimedia directories, whatever this means. I thought that some of the pupils are only using one electronic directory. And if the teacher has a special question, they only find the thing, the object, print it out and bring it to the teacher. And if it's the right operating system, it says, OK, programming languages, multimedia. And now see the reality in Germany. These are all things you know about. Reality is this here. E-learning software in Germany is licensed by publishing household schoolbooks. Totally licensed. No chance. Multimedia directories. Well, there's one big and some small ones, but they're also licensed and published by schoolhouse. And on this thing here, who has ever heard, I think from the teachers about the project, Antuli. Antuli. Well, that's... Like this, there are some books and there are questions about the contents of the book. And children get an internet access to this web application and then they can answer the questions, like a quiz. And then the teachers must pay for this. They have to pay a license and they can administrate the pupil accounts. And if the pupil is very good, he can answer many questions. If he is not so good, OK. Well, this is digital separation of the society. What if the pupil has no internet access? Well, under two months, licensed by software companies, programming languages also licensed by software companies and also this here, multimedia applications also licensed. But these are the origin of the data taken from the report, which is officially, you can download it from the internet page of the industry, you see. But we have alternatives. There are alternatives for e-learning, software. This is, for example, an open web school, but I think it's not maintained now in the moment. The only one is G-Com Prize, which you can set up in kindergarten and in basic school, it's very, very fun. Oh, this one, open office, you can use it everywhere. Multimedia, well, we have a very famous application, therefore, it's Wikipedia. And, well, I don't know why teachers on the world do not connect together and make a fog in Wikipedia for pupils. I think there's a progeny going ahead, but I have something heard about it, but never read about it. But this is a very good solution for all the school books. On the tools, everything you want, you have in the free software array, programming languages, no limit, and also creating multimedia applications. Look at Hollywood. The last Gouadek developer conference, which was located in Stuttgart, there was a presentation from Greenworks. Anybody who knows Greenworks? Yes. Yeah. Well, the last famous one was Madagascar. Totally made with linux. Totally. But what has all this to do with us here? If you want to promote school linux, see it, likely, from the pupils and teachers' view. We are more engineers and technicians and we see it only from the technical view. But we must include the teachers and we must include the pupils in our view. And as I'm saying this, the technical concepts of school linux are excellent. But, it's not important for the users and also you have to bring up a model and actor GUI, like KD.3.4. Why? Why? Well, if you want to play in this market, in the market where big companies go in and sell notebooks to pupils for 20 euros in the months, then you are playing against XP. And if your GUI is lower than XP, you are against the desk of the... Sorry, sorry, you just showed before with your own tests that it doesn't matter. No, this was a test, this test started in a public administration, not in a school. So, you say that the same test would show something different. If only you had KD3.4, then the test would show different. This test has been done in a public administration. And in a public administration it doesn't matter because they are only doing work on documents, sometimes on the tables, and most work with email and surfing on the internet. That is the work which a civil servant does in the public administration. But in school, the pupils which are sitting in school, they have their own computer. I am living in a town and in this town I make a little computer working party for the pupils. And the pupils which are coming to me all have a personal computer by their own. And they all are using XP and so they are known how to use XP. They don't have their old computers from that time. They had a newest machine because they wanted to play the games. They are just pointing. Just to stick to your argument that it is important to have KD3.4 instead of 3.3 but 3.2 or whatever. This, you are telling me, has nothing to do with 3.4 contract or 3.3. It has to do with stick to Windows because they want all the games. It has nothing to do with But I think from the concept, from the graphic concept and so on the KD3.4 is more modern than the other one. You could put in easier games and so on. And you could model the GUI more to XP and so for the pupils there is no difference between using it. They also have, in their head, I don't know why, they have in their head that it's very... I don't want to get more experience with the computer. I wanted to play with the computer. You see, normally they don't see the graphical user interface but then you are right. But the first thing they see on the computer is Windows. XP, that's the problem. Yeah. We have some examples in Norway that we have longer. You need to, for instance, because it has XP where it looks like the same colors and so on. I think they manage to just do that because they think they are getting less problems. We also have an investigation done by what you call it unbiased studies. Model studies. The report from there is that the teacher is very happy that the pupils will get all the games because they can concentrate on the education. Another thing is that big discussion is about OpenOffice's proprietary format that people have in their homes and how it can change so you have to fix that. The thing with us is to take OpenOffice 2.0 and just play with it in Microsoft Office document. I'm sorry to say. And the pupils really say that the windows are as good as Windows XP is no different and it's probably more chooseable in a kind of you have freedom. So that real life experience when pupils have used this is that they don't care. It's not their own discussion of the viewing. This is a discussion of opinion and to discuss opinion as we told when we started a lecture there was that you told some opinions about opinions. You are totally right. I agree with you but see it's only critical review. It motivates you to do something better. And the other thing I understand why they downgrade with it that they have no more games to concentrate on education. That's why. But this is an argument for the high school and the colleges I think in Germany but we have a new philosophy now in the country of North America's failure. We are living here and we are here in this country. And this philosophy is that they have no philosophy for the basic schools. Normally the basic schools are for children from 6 up to 10 years and normally the school ends at 12 or 13 o'clock and then the pupils go to home. At their meal, make their homework and so on sometimes they go to an extension of the kindergarten and there's someone who looks at the children in the homework. The new way is to integrate this work in the school and so we have two things to do with basic computers in the morning you have to learn with the computers. That's right. But in the afternoon where the homework is done the pupils can play with the computers and that's why we made Snowflakes with all the games. We normally also have an answer on that and the biggest problem is that the parents don't put the CD into the computer. My father said the biggest problem is that you have things to put your hand into the computer. The only thing you have to do is to do that then you have a successful game. I think it's another problem that they don't know what is putting from the CD. That's the same in general. That's a big problem, I agree. But we have to continue. Well, now a little bit from my private experience. I wanted to set up a terminal based software network in a basic school in the kindergarten. I tried to just go to the Linux technical world, fine. But for the kindergarten there were not the right programs because the small childs like to play and they would have things like Super Dukes and such. The other problem in the basic school for me was there was an actual server. The actual server was also a German Linux project which was set up by Isaac von Lack and it's called the open database server, I think, ODS system and the project has maintained now very good and it is a Linux system, it's not a Thomas server, it's only a Linux system with a Samba server combined and a big Internet firewall and a squid server and a squid guard and so it's configured totally good and you only have to say, well, I want to have Internet connection in the school. Internet connection also can switch it down. That's very nice thing. But it's not spread wide in Germany. It's very good maintained. Number two was well then, if I didn't get the right system, I had to build it by myself. I set up a devian system installing the normal Linux terminal and bringing the games on the machines by hand and this is a small list of games which people like. Super Dukes type two to learn the key typing or rocks and diamonds and so on and so on. Yes, I know there are licensees problems in rocks and diamonds, not part of the devian project and so on. But I wanted to find a solution which works for my problem. Well, most problems I found were problems with multimedia games. Yes, that's no problem. And these are in the following environment. There was one big server, it was a machine like this here and there are same clients. And a network which was based on a small switch from 19 Oil was very small switch 8 ports and so on. And in this network I had some problems with multimedia sound and so Super Dukes run very fast but the sound came too late. Well, why aren't games important? This is my experience of. The games I have gone because the children like to play and the afternoon when the homework was done they wanted to play with the computer they are doing it at home. Also, the basic schools in North America are changing their philosophy they are changing it to a full-time school and so the children at the school are there in the afternoon. And the other thing is when they finished their homework they wanted to play. Well, and 90% of the children in my computer working party they have experienced with the wrong operating system they all had the so-called Aldi computer, Aldi as a bit supermarket in Germany they are buying they are selling foot but sometimes they are selling computers and they are very cheap. Well, thank you very much for your attention, if you have any questions and answers I will read them. Yeah, I can probably speak in that it's one comment about the think line because it doesn't really support games, that's the truth so that's because the technology is they use by all the computers, we use computers but now as you showed us they have new computers with more CPU no, graphical time some in Norway buy almost new computers with 800 megahertz processor. No, that's not a server Oh, that's not a server, okay How many is a server? But even if you have think lines that make less computer power it's the people so you have to turn the sound down because it's squeaky you have to turn it so when you have a big server it's really not fit to transport graphics so the solution to that is to keep down the maintenance cost is to use half think lines to solve that and you can run your games locally so that's one step in the right direction and as you said, it's true when the kids get home they want to have fun games, that's totally true and we get also that kind of questions in Norway when we are I'm rather traveling but fortunately we have this Netflix initiative from the government and they tell about it and it's more like a consumer knowledge about this we also have one more thing that you have a larger software industry in the education making Microsoft only software in Norway every year they get broke so somebody has to start something new so you don't have a strong software industry in schools and they who pass that deliver the things to the web browsers because they can keep down the cost of putting the software so these also are changing the landscape a bit we don't have so much the strong software so that's a difference thank you that was very interesting because there are many differences in the European countries and efforts for me very interesting to get input from you in Germany we have the situation there are traditional school books publishing houses now licensing them all it's a problem for the teachers to make a copy from a page of the book because they are breaking the license see any other questions or remarks thank you thank you for your help