===========================================
LINUXForYou * Dec 2003 (Vol 1 No 10)
In India Rs 50 (with CD)
http://www.linuxforu.com
Pages 102 * US$7.95 0 74470584957
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THIS ISSUE has probably reached your city. Saw it in Bangalore, and also got
a complimentary copy from the LFY team at LinuxBangalore2003. But when I
reached back to Goa on Dec 4, it wasn't in as yet. So it might take time to
reach 'small town' India... FN
REVIEWED: Mandrake 9.2 * PhProjekt * StarOffice 7.0
COMPUTERS AT TIS HAZARI, the session courts for the city of New Delhi, are
being shifted over to Linux, courtesy the National Informatics Centre. -
Rahul Chopra in this month's editorial.
LINUX LEARNING CENTRE at Bangalore is offering courses
in administration, security, development (internals and
programming essentials, programming with Qt, device
driver programming, MySQL & PHP), RHCE and Red Hat
rapid track certification. www.linuxlearningcentre.com
DotGNU RELEASES CD: It can now be used to implement application programs and
Web services in C# and C applications under multiple operating systems,
including GNU/Linux, FreeBSC, MacOS, MS Windows. The 219 MB release 0.1 CD
is available as a free download at
http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent
e-Bridge calls itself "the new state-of-art training
facility from eSpark Infotech is now open in the
heart of Bangalore". It's offering embedded Linux courses
(Linux fundamentals, programming Linux, embedded C & Linux,
realtime C & Linux, Linux internals, device drivers,
networking) and DSP courses (DSP fundamentals, TI/analog
dev programming, audio/video, image processing,
bio-medical systems). www.ebridgesolutions.netLinux.net provides a free e-mail service to those who want an e-mail address
that ends in '@linux.net'
MAJOR UPDATES and releases: OpenNA Linux 1.0, Gibraltar
Firewall 1.0, Xandros Desktop 2.0, Onebase Linux 2.0,
CUPS 1.120rc6.
CAN YOU MAKE money with open source? Registration entails a "nominal fee" of
Rs 5000 for a three-day conference. http://www.linuxasia2004.com/attendees/
February 11-13, 2004, New Delhi.
SEND IN YOUR favourite slogans for a tee-shirt, and win
five free copies of the shirt... LFYedit at efyindia.com
MONEY CAN't buy respect, says Robert Adkins. Some of us might have met this
guy at LB2003 in Bangalore. He's the CTO of Technetra Corp, and an advocate
and implementer of FLOSS solutions for government. He can be contacted at
radkins at technetra.com
CAREERS WITH FLOSS: The number of students opting for
courses in Open Source is growing steadily, even as industry
experts predict a growing need for trained professionals
in this expanding field.
EXIT RED HAT, ENTER FEDORA: It's official now; the free (of cost) version of
Red Hat Linux will not be available anymore. This has created a lot of FUD
in an already unstable environment, thanks to the SCO episode. But is Red
Hat closed for good?
WEB-BASED COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: PHProjekt is an easy-to-install
collaboration suite, which runs on the open source platform and
databases. As the design of the system is developer-friendly,
adding new features and components is a piece of cake.
STAROFFICE: The latest version of Sun's office suite, StarOffice 7, may just
be the right solution for the cost-conscious user. It loads faster than the
earlier version, and sports some noticeable improvements.
IN THE LFY CD THIS MONTH: Slackware (the "oldest Linux distro")
and a range of GNU software for Windows users.
FALLING BACK on backup systems.
MAKING ADOPTION OF Linux in the enterprise easy. www.linux4e.com
Business partners required: http://wwww.linux4e.com/partners
ooWRITER HELPS YOU create your own templates and styles so that you can work
with documents easily.
Open Source is key to IBM's vision of computing. User
empowerment is key to Microsoft's, writes Alolita Sharma
USING DATABASE functions in Calc, a tutorial. (Wish there were more how-tos
for the user in this mag! --FN)
HALDIA DOCKS: it has a uniquely designed Linux installation
with an active-active cluster set up, which is considered
the best of its kind. This has ensured efficiency and
cost-effectiveness.
BASIC UNIX commands and concepts: an extract from *Running Linux* (Shroff
Publishers, Pp 674 only Rs 425 in India).
VxWorks and LynxOS are definitely the biggest embedded
operating systems in use today. But slowly they are
acknowledging the power of GNU/Linux and how it can
help them maximise deployments.
HELP LINUX GO INDIAN: By using various translation tools, you can join
Language translation groups working across India to help translate GNU/Linux
into your language.
EXPERT INTRODUCTION: Multi-threaded programming under Linux.
KICKSTART YOUR Linux installation (Part I): Installing Red Hat Linux on
multiple machines one after another can be quite tedious. To avoid answering
the same question over and over again, try the KickStart method, as it does
not need any user intervention.
WRITE CHEQUES. NOT JUST BOOKS: Niyam Bhushan on how
anybody can turn thoughts into words, and words into wealth.
NFS CLIENTS for Windows.
OpenSSL PACKAGE offers a vast crypto library of algorithms
WAIT QUEUES in Linux device drivers
UNDERSTANDING recursive sub-routines
INDIA-RELATED NEWS:
HP launches GNU/Linux laptop
Mandrake's latest distribution
Oracle announces 10g for GNU/Linux
Delixus offers India Linux
CxProtect anti-virus mailing solution for mail-servers
Trade management system from Network Programs
Netweb Technologies unveils Tyrone
MRO-Tek rolls out Network Management Systems
Review of FLOSS at BangaloreIT.com
===========================================
DISCLOSURE: This journalist (FN) writes a monthly column for LFY and gets
paid for it. Promoting awareness about the content of LFY however is not
part of the job, and is carried on with the intention spreading awareness
about FLOSS among different GNU/Linux user groups in India.
--
Frederick Noronha : http://www.fredericknoronha.net : When we speak of free
Freelance Journalist : http://www.bytesforall.org : software we refer to
Ph 0091.832.2409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.
Hi,
As a part of the "Software Freedom Day 2006" celebrations at College
of Engineering Chengannur, a one day training camp is planned for the
staff and students of two Government Schools in Chengannur. A group of
12 students from the college will be spending a day helping them
install and learn GNU/Linux. We have selected a group of 100 students
in each school who will attend our training. (We could not celebrate
the SFD on time as we had exams that time, then the school had exams.)
We have already installed IT@School on the computers at the schools.
The college has agreed to provide us an LCD projector and laptops for
the event.
This is a part of the actvity of the FLOSS cell existing at the
college. Hope this small contribution of ours goes a long way in
making Free Software useful and popular.
Date and Time: 28thSept 2006, 1000hrs to 1600hrs
Venue 1: Govt. Girls' School, Chengannur
Venue 2: Govt. Boys' School, Chengannur
FLOSS Cell, College of Engineering Chengannur, Kerala.
http://floss.cec.googlepages.com/
--
Cheers :-)
githinATgmailDOTcom
Free as in Freedom
http://githin.googlepages.com/
Hi all,
New updates !!
It's available here
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries#Marathi_.28India.29
download mr_IN_pack.zip and install using "Install New
Dictionaries" wizard of file menu.
Works perfect with 2.0.x which has got inbuild huspell
engine, but to make it work with 1.1.x and 2.x (with
myspell) recompile their source code with Hunspell UNO
component, then follow the same procedure.
Please revert back with queries, suggestions, comments
if any.
PLEASE NOTE: It's just a 1st version of marathi spell
checker and requires periodic refinements.
Contributions will be highly appreciated.
Regards.
Priti
Note: forwarded message attached.
__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Ultimately, we need to recognize that Linux is a 15-year-old kernel and that
there will be another technical development to superscede it eventually. I
can't say what that will be, but I think the best chance of mobilizing
individual contribution to it would be to use GPL 3.
*Bruce*
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Use_GPLv3_for_Linux_Kernel_says_Bruce_Perens
Cheers
Praveen
--
"Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history.
`Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn."
-- Richard Stallman
Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr
Thanks !
By the way, it's only the 1st version and consistant
refinement is needed for upcoming versions.
Contributions will be highly appreciated.
Regards.
Priti
--- RKVS Raman <rkvsraman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Congratulations!!!
>
> -Raman
__________________________________________________
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Hi all,
This is for your information !
Most awaited marathi spell checker is now available
for installation without any hassle through "Install
new dictionary" wizard of "File" menu.
It's in pipeline and will be available upstream very
soon !
For more details please visit:
http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/laurent_godard
Do revert back with comments/suggestions, if any.
Regards
Priti Patil
janabhaaratii Project
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
(Formerly NCST)
8th Floor, Air India Building,
Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021.
India.
Telephone: +91 22 2202 4641, +91 22 2283 6924
Fax: +91 22 2204 9573
Website: www.cdacmumbai.in, www.janabhaaratii.org.in
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Pls see these reviews
http://www.amazon.ca/Rebel-Code-Inside-Source-Revolution/dp/customer-review…
They give a better idea which i was not able to convey as well. The main
point is that it gives ideas about trends and also is a great
motivational book. There are so many ideas which tell how things
happenned or why they fell in place.
It really inspires one to be good in software. e.g. i remember when I
was in engg college in 1991 we couldn't even think of writing an
assembler software and here in the book there is this exceptional 19
year old who has a head start in programming and thinking of emulating
an OS and that too Unix. Even now most of us cannot write or even think
of designing systems software like compilers/assemblers/OS etc. There is
a huge difference in quality among majority of our engineers and the
normal engineers/technicians there. (when I read joelonsoftware.com
--though its microsoft oriented, i feel we hardly know as much as these
top chaps know) (also we are bogged down in a few open source projects
like fonts development etc which hardly should have taken more than an
year or two-- if there are more good indian led projects why can't a
list be maintained for them like sourceforge.net)
There is also a huge difference in quality and mindset between what type
of so called engineers are being produced from our educational machine
as compared to the western education system. There those people don't
think of themselves as engineers till they get out of 6 to 8 year
courses (no time limit is fixed unlike the people who pass out here
after their 3 or 4 year courses and still don't know much) and in
between drop out or take totally different subjects e.g. Larry Wall's
career is not typical computer science subjects at all. Thats why he was
so innovative and PERL was produced. Linus Torvalds stayed in
college/university for 7/8 years, some of these bright chaps completed
Btech and then Mtech next year or same year --there are so many options
for training, research and development there --where we don't even come
close.
when i see such sites as
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/ I am
amazed. See the difference in quality between what their final year
students produce and whats produced here (where most things are copied
and students don't have any idea what to do till the term has already
started)
Then it was also quite interesting to read that Linus could lead so well
the OS kernel work maybe as a result of the 1 year compulsory army
officer training that he opted for during university days. We have
nothing like that here.(not many Indian geeks want to build a sound body
to cope with the pressure of working on computers and not many people
understand what its like to have compulsory army training) He keeps
things in his head --photographic memory and so on (thinking on one's
feet, the maturity in tackling conflicts or not giving offense,
developing leaders under him automatically etc etc).
Difference between system of working with linux development as compared
to emacs forking development etc etc-- so many management aspects are
also revealed in the book --it can be read a few times just to
understand and learn from such history.
I think its a great book and can really really inspire new people to
think ambitiously.
Our drawbacks--
we have no authentic idea about the number of indian open source
programmers/developers and whether there is an increase/decrease or
constant number since nobody measures and nowhere in any open source
project do we see names of Indians mentioned much. There should be some
annual survey in some authentic Indian publication and highlighting of
role models and good personality traits so that people understand what
made open source/free software succeed. Spanish speakers/non english
speakers ask more questions in forums than Indians and that shows places
like Brazil,Mexico, Italy, East Europe, japan, korea etc are more active
and increasing in development/computer literacy
then in college we don't share or innovate code but compete unhealthily
against each other --this is typical indian crab mentality --teachers do
not see this aspect and cannot think of ways to reduce this mentality
--only highlighting positive traits/ publicly praising healthy
competition/sharing/giving/good leadership etc etc and publicising good
indian/foreign role models can change this negative crab mentality.
We even don't learn how humility has played such a great part in the
open source movement--witness what one top hacker told how linus himself
is and was so humble and encouraging which motivated all those around
him. Or the great traits of Richard Stallman and so on and so forth. Our
nerds think its infra dig to help somebody else --specially if they
don't know computers or don't know as much as them. They think that is
macho. They have never been told that --knowledge increases the more you
use it or give/share it. Also knowledge is one thing no thief can steal
from you (even if they succeed in the short term --your peers will
eventually find out and time will compensate you unless you brood on
that one negative thing for ever.)
There is nothing like our abominable ragging in the west --people will
sue the institution and the authorities if that happens there because
their justice system works. A simple thing such as highlighting local
political godfathers in an institution or state from a different/outside
publication can keep such things in check. By outside publication, I
mean say if an institution in Bihar has a lot of political interference
(political godfathers who control student union/elections/council etc)
have a report published in a publication outside Bihar or on the web
--make the issue transparent and the politician will have to hide/duck
for cover and all this nonsense will reduce. We have something like
indiavotes.org /mumbaivotes.org now coming up which is asking educated
people to understand and take part in higher governance so that quality
of leadership improves. A great book is here
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/ since good men should not
be aloof from society. Einstein etc could motivate society because
they were accessible and participative. Indian
scientists/researchers/hackers must contribute to society by
participating in the community too.
Kush