e88~~\ 888b | 888 | / 888 888 ,e, d888 |Y88b | 888 | L 888 888-~88e e88~\888 " /~~~8e 8888 __ | Y88b | 888 | I 888 888 888 d888 888 888 88b 8888 | | Y88b | 888 | N 888 888 888 8888 888 888 e88~-888 Y888 | | Y88b| Y88 | U 888 888 888 Y888 888 888 C888 888 "88__/ | Y888 "8__/ X 888 888 888 "88_/888 888 "88_-888 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Formerly LinuxInIndia * Compiled by: Frederick Noronha * Feb 26,2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. GNU/LINUX... IN EDUCATION: Vinayak vinayak_hegde@softhome.net an APGDST student at the NCST in Juhu from the Mumbai LUG linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in lists reasons why GNU/Linux makes sense in education:
o GNU/Linux is the best operating system when it comes to education. students can tinker with the internal of the system and get to learn a lot in the process.
o Easy to fix. Commercial support price is not exorbitant. You are not tied down to a particular vendor....
o Most Reputed Institutes and R&D organisations (IIT, IISc some RECs, TIFR, C-DAC, NASA etc) use GNU/Linux.
o Open Standards compliant.
o Immune against most virus attacks.[Thanks to David Kastrup, Bochum for feedback on this point)
o Most technologies and standards are first implemted in GNU/Linux and then elseware. (examples being first OS to be ported to Intel Itanium architecture)
o Unimaginably scalable (Runs from anything from wristwatches and PDAs to cluster supercomputers and mainframes).
o Now backed by major corporations such as IBM and Oracle.
o Very customisable as source code is available.
o Last but not the least free (as in "free beer" :D ). So extremely cost-effective.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. GNUnify ALL INDIA FREE SOFTWARE FESTIVAL: The Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research(SICSR), under its annual Unify festival, organized the first ever Free Software Festival in India on Feb 15-16, 2003. For a report of the event contact Kanti Jadia (j_kanti@rediffmail.com)
URL's for reference
o http://www.gnunify.org o http://www.symbiosiscomputer.com o http://www.iitb.ac.in o http://www.vjti.ac.in o http://www.plug.org.in o http://www.ilug-bom.org.in/ o http://www.simputer.org o http://www.mit.gov.in
Perhaps one could also add: gnu.org.in -- the home page of the Free Software Foundation (India) -- and http://www.linux-india.org (LinuxIndia).
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. FINALLY, SOMETHING IN INDIAN LANGUAGES: IndLinux Hindi v0.37 (milan) released: Guntupalli Karunakar karunakar@freedomink.org that indefitagable campaigner for Indic solutions in GNU/Linux, came up with this announcement on Feb 20.
IndLinux Hindi v0.37 (milan) is released
Download it from http://www.indlinux.org/downloads/index.php
or directly from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/indlinux/IndLinux-Hindi-0.37.tar.gz?downl...
Read release, installation and usage notes at http://www.indlinux.org/doc/IndLinux-Hindi-0.37-README.txt
More about the IndLinux team at http://www.indlinux.org
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. NEWS FROM EASTERN INDIA: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay sankarshanm@softhome.net sent in some interesting udpates.
o Nirmalya Lahiri and Sankarshan himself have managed to get up and running the LTSP at a local privately run college [Sarsuna College] with 50 PCs. This college for all practical administrative purposes has shifted to the OSS platform, with major IT related administrative functions being carried out with least increase in cost and major value addition. Staff orientation was also without major hitches and the system is up and running for the past 6 months.
o Both have also developed and put in place a DSS/MIS for a government aided college at BudgeBudge that takes care of related executive decision making ability.
o A consortium model library model capable of being scaled up to handle central libraries is in the pipeline for implementation at universities.
o Rohan Sen rohansen@myrealbox.com has developed a prototype fully functional, scalable and robust payroll program that is currently smoothly running at Surendranath College, another Govt aided college at Kolkata.
o Currently a self learning Knowledge Base is being developed using the latest release of Oracle and Content Management Systems.
Thank you for your kind words for this modest newsletter Sankarshan! FN
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. GNU/LINUX... AND PCQ: Below is a listing of GNU/Linux software featuring in recent issues of Indian mainstream PC mag, PCQuest. (We do wish PCQuest would focus more on GNU/Linux... and stop mixing up terms like Free Software and 'freeware').
July 2001 * The latest Linux distribution from Red Hat Feb 2002 * Shusha and Shivaji fonts for Linux. March 2002 * A file-splitting utility for GNU/Linux (Indianware) May 2002 * Simple tool to split large files into smaller files. June 2002 * Sniffer and protocol analyzer... by Rohit Sharma July 2002 * GNU/Linux section of indiwiz.com in PDF format July 2002 * Bulk mailer written in Perl for GNU/Linux Aug 2002 * Cyberoam, providing Internet via cable Oct 2002 * Indix: project to develop Indian lang support for GNU/Linux. With modified X-windows, development toolkits and a terminal emulator program Nov 2002 * Indix. oprint converts Indic text to PostScript
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. LAP -- TAKING GNU/LINUX TO EDUCATION: Raju Mathur raju@linux-delhi.org credits the "unflagging efforts" of Prateek Khanna and Dhruv Gami for helping to get up and running the Linux Access Project (LAP) home page. See http://lap.linux-delhi.org/
They are using a Wiki (TWiki) as the collaborative tool, so feel free to create an account for yourself and add content and comments. LAP, the GNU/Linux Access Project is an initiative for popularising Linux in education.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. NEWS FROM THE TAMIL FRONT: vvenkataramanan venkat@tamillinux.org informs us about having written a new font download tool (BASH shell script). This downloads all frequently used Tamil fonts (TSCII, TAB, TAM, Vikatan, Kumudam, Kalki, Murasu-Anjal compatible WebTamil fonts, etc.).
With this he plans to address the following problems for Tamil linux users;
o Downloading fonts to read various pages one by one.
o Installing truetype fonts and making it available to X
Says VV: "It uses GNU wget to ftp download all fonts at one go from my employer's ftp server (real fast), use ttmkfdir to create font scales and update fontpath with chkfontpath utility. (I have tested this in few machines running RH and Mandrake, I will be glad if someone tests it in SuSE and Debian and more). I plan to add few more ftp servers where I will maintain fontpools (any volunteers for space?)"
Some more quotes: "The idea came out of Ximian Red Carpet for GNOME (http://www.ximian.com). I wanted to write some unified downloader/installer for everything tamil (fonts, keymans, akaram editor, Unicode editor, Vasee's TamilTeX package, Sivaraj's console tools, atleast one Tamil Linux Howto. This will make the life of anyone willing to migrate to tamil desktop simple. First step though is to make it work with fonts fully. It draws heavy inspiration from similar utility by Sebastino Vigna for Microsoft's free webfonts and some similar tools for Debian."
It is available for download from ftp://ftp.tamillinux.org/apps/TamilFontsGet.sh and the documentation is at http://www.tamillinux.org/fonts.html
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. CHANGES AT TAMILLINUX.ORG SITE: Venkat also announces some "long pending" changes to the tamillinux.org site - listing some latest developments in Mandrake 9.0rc1, GTK2 VP modules of Dinesh, Vasee's kimaps, the Tamil Linux Howto, etc.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. MAGAZINE COMPLETELY IN FREE SOFTWARE: V. Sasi Kumar vsasi@vsnl.com shares that the Laboratory in Informatics for the Liberal Arts (LILA) of the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya has brought out a magazine named LILA devoted to futuristic computing. Says he: "They say that, to their knowledge, this is the first magazine in India to be manufactured completely in Free Software, and also the first to be brought out under the Free Documentation Licence. They propose to have Free Software as its major theme, with other aspects of contemporary trends in computing also included. No price is mentioned on the magazine. Hope it is 'free' as in 'free beer'! ;-)"
Check out: hindivishwa.org Email: hindiuniv@nda.vsnl.net.in
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. USING GNU/LINUX? Let your loyalty show... register at http://counter.li.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOUR INPUTS and criticism to this newsletter are welcome. Contact at fred at bytesforall dot org --COPYLEFT 2003, GPL. May be freely circulated provided entire text is retained. FN --------------------------------------------------------------------------