An interesting idea... from India itself!
Software Swatantrata by advocate Mahesh T Pai of Kochi ------------------------------------------------------
This Compact Disc contains swatantra software for the various versions of Microsoft� Windows Operating System. Swatantra, in several Indian languages means the same thing - freedom - freedom from dependence; from slavery. It stands for being able to do what you want to do with / on your computer. Swatantrata - the state of being free - means being able to chose the software you want to use. Your are not enjoying Swatantrata if you have to buy a particular software because it is used at your workplace or school, or by your business associates. Swatantrata is about not having to upgrade (and pay for) your software every time your employer or friends up grade theirs. Swatantrata is about not having to depend on a monopolist for fixing every little bug in the software which you paid for. Swatantrata is not only your freedom; it means the community's freedom and liberties. It is about being able to help your friends and neighbours.
Swatantrata is not "free" as in "free of cost". Swatantrata means that you have the swatantrata to give away copies of this CD free of cost. it also means that you have the swatantrata to charge somebody a lot of money (or a little of it) for giving him (or her) a copy of this same CD.
Swatantrata is also about being guaranteed that your personal information remains yours. It is about being assured that information about you, your computer and data on your computer is not accessed by somebody either over the internet, or otherwise, without your knowledge.
Swatantrata comes at a price -- but not always at a cost. You have to comply with standards. You are bound to follow the licensing terms. When you share this software with others, you have to ensure that the swatantrata given to you by authors, compilers and distributors of this software is also available to others. There are several packages on this CD-ROM, most of it is covered under the GNU General Public License. There is a Malayalam version of the GPL here.
To learn more about what the concept of freedom means, start here, or read this article by Richard M. Stallman (available on the CD).
Some of the software here is covered by the GNU Library General Public License. A little other software on this CD is released under other related licenses, which preserve most of the above mentioned freedoms. The concerned license is there with each package.
What is here?
Plenty. Just browse through each directory. Click here to view the directory listing - that is the best way of doing it. Most are self installing executables for Microsoft� Windows 32 bit Operating system - they ought to work for Windows95 and above. Click for more some of the more important contents, and very shallow install instructions.. The best way however is to to browse the contents manually.
About this compilation
This is a compilation made by Mahesh T. Pai, Advocate, "NANDINI", S. R. M. Road, Cochin - 682018, Kerala, India.
The compiler can be contacted at the above address, or by email at paivakil@yahoo.co.in.
All programs or other files on this CD are protected by copyright, and unrestricted, royalty and permission free copying and modification is permitted as per terms of license applicable to each package, program, or file. Please see the concerned file or documentation accompanying each file for details of the licenses and its terms.
Binaries on this CD are downloaded from the websites or other locations as accessible to the compiler from India over the internet/World Wide Web, and are are distributed as received by the compiler. Sources for the binaries are accessible from the web sites of authors / creators of each respective package. The compiler or other distributors of this CD do not accept any responsibility for providing recipients of this CD or programs on this the sources, unless the source code itself is on this CD.
Contents of SwatantraWin
Cygwin
Cygwin simulates the linux environment in Windows. Save the setup file and run it from the local hdd -(note - set up might hang if run from the CD) and chose 'install from local directory' to install. If you have an internet connection, you can choose 'install from internet' to download more software.
DataBase
Contains MySql, MySql GUI, and MySql ODBC for Win9* and Win NT
For Developers
Gtk
The Gimp Tool Kit is a tool kit to develop GUI Widgets for programs. There are also runtime environments in this directory. Run the file called gtk+-1.3.0-20020313-setup-2.zip before installing GIMP (below).
RPMBrowser enables you to read Red Hat Package Manager files in a WIN 32 environment
Developer CPP is a GUI for Gnu C++.
Minimalist GNU for Windows, or MingW.
If you have PERL version 5.8 or better installed, use Prima to develop GUIs using a VB like tool.
Python is a programming language !!!!
There is the documentation for Python in PostScript, Portable Document Format, and LaTeX source format. The actual python program is here. Install it first These are allied files for Windows.
Documents: This directory contains several tutorials, guides and HOWTOs, and information why you should use swatantra software.
Watch out for articles by the Richard M. Stallman himself, in particular, one on the concept of copyleft, another on why software should be swatantra about the GNU Project, etc.
and do do not forget to read the two books (yes, two full books, on this CD) "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", and "A Brief History of Hackerdom".
Editors
Simple text editors
Includes -
Yudit -- a Unicode editor for many languages, including Indian Language - written by somebody from Japan !!! Sources for Yudit are in this file.
JEDIT is a text editor which user Java - java itself is not free. Best feature about JEDIT is that several plugins are available for it - connect to the internist and use the plugins tap from the tool bar.
EMACS - how can any compilation of Free S/w be complete without GNU EMACS???
ASPELL is a spell checker - compile it using Cygwin. Only sources are in this CD.
Ghost view, and Ghost Script are complimentary, and are used to view PDF - portable document format files and PostScript files - (and you thought that only Adobe's� Acrobat can do that?)
Malayalam TeX is also here.
Perl
Choose from three flavours - latest is version 5.8. This comes bundled with Apache web server, version 2.0. Now, you can have the same software that runs on Yahoo! and other major sites.
Graphics
What use an operating system if it does not have Graphic editors?
On GNU, you have GIMP. There is also a tutorial - Grokking-the-GIMP. You will first have to install the GTK runtimes, edit your path environment (eg:, by editing the autoexec.bat file, to add a line something like this:- c:\progra~1\Common~1\GTK\1.3\lib; to it, reboot unzip the GIMP.*.*.tar.gz file in the folder to the location you want to install, and then run GIMP.exe in the /gimp/bin directory. It will register itself. Your screen resolution should be 1024 X 726 pixels or better, otherwise you will have difficulty running the splash screen coming up the first time GIMP is run.
Internet
Httrack is a program which will download entire web sites on to your computer. Careful - your hard disk is bound to fill up fast!!!
Mozilla, in two flavours - version 1.1, and 1.2 are available. Remember to visit http://www.mozdev.org/projects.html to get a huge bundle of add on software for Mozilla.
FileZilla is an FTP client. FTP clients are, for the common man, used to upload web sites to the host server.
LanguageSupport
This directory contains several programs required to support non-English languages, including a few free fonts.
Tex
MiKTeX-2.2 is an implementation of LaTex. This program is used for typesetting. Look out for the tutorials in the documentation directory. Run the set up program to install. This directory contains the 'Large' implementation of MikTex. You can choose to install only the basic version. This will a lot of disk space. You also can connect to the web and install the 'full' version of MikTeX, to which will take up approximately 500 MB disk space.
Multimedia
Audacity and winLAME are music codecs.
Celestia is an astronomy software which will imitate the actual planetary position as per your system time on the screen.
Office
ABIWORD - a simple word processor can read some (not all) Microsoft Word documents. Saves files in Rich Text File format. Look out for the Abiword dictionaries and plugins in the Abiword directory.
Openoffice - what use a computer without a full-blown office suite? Here is OpenOffice.org (notice the .org?) version 1.0.1 suite. It has a presentations component, an HTML editor, a spread sheet application, an editor for mathematical notations, a picture editor, and of course, a word processor. The standard dictionary is the US English dictionary. Dictionary for British English is on the CD. First install OpenOffice.org, and then unzip the en_GB.zip file into the /user/share dictionary where you installed OpenOffice.org. Then you have to manually change the Tools > Options menu, go to the Languages > Writing Aids section, click 'edit', select English (UK) from the Languages dropdown Menu, and enable the options.
There are several documents on OpenOffice.org (the software, not the website) in the documents directory.
Tutorials
After reading all this, you will feel like installing a GNU operating system - and start by reading these HOWTOs.
Now, GO AHEAD, ENJOY all the FREEDOM you want!!!!!!!!!!
Circulate via: -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference