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 * Oct 15,2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------
INDIA... AT THE LINUX COUNTER: Linux Counter has a total of 138722 people registered. 1407 users have been registered by friends. There are 124367 machines registered. This network guesstimates that between 0.2% and 5% of all Linux users have registered with the Linux Counter. So the total number of Linux users is probably between 2,774,440 and 69,361,000 people.
Among the country-wide ratings, India is ranked only 137th overall, when judged by GNU/Linux uers per million population. But in terms of overall number of GNU/Linux users registered, India with 2843 registered users is only behind the US (28514 registered users), Germany (11307), Brazil (9785), France (6479), Spain (5558), Great Britain (5307), Canada (4600), Italy (4517), the Netherlands (3595), Sweden (3300), Finland (3137 users). India is ahead of Russia, Mexico and China. Probably improved connectivity to the Net here would make more people aware of the Linux Counter, and give users a better chance to register.
Linux Counter recently completed 10 years of its existance. This compiler (FN) is proud to be associated with this initiative, as a volunteer covering Goa-India. More volunteers welcome for regional Indian states. If you use GNU/Linux, acknowledge your debt to the volunteers who (and the philosophy that) made it happen! Not just Linux the kernel, but also GNU! Register at http://counter.li.org
'INDIA'S BIGGEST OPEN SOURCE EVENT': Linux Bangalore/2003, what is called "India's biggest Open Source event", is being held from December 2-4 at Bangalore, India. For details visit http://linux-bangalore.org/2003
Organisers have just announced that speaker registration for Linux Bangalore/2003 is now open. If you wish to be considered to give a talk at Linux Bangalore/2003, check http://linux-bangalore.org/2003/register/
Speaker guidelines at: http://linux-bangalore.org/2003/guides/speakers.php Speaker registration will be provisionally open till November 8th. Some 70+ talk slots will be available. Talks will be selected after that.
Those wanting to keep abrest with plans for the event, join the list by sending a blank email to linux-bangalore-2003-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
LFY ANNOUNCES Linux Asia 2004 IN DELHI, FEB 2004: Linux For You, Asia's first Linux magazine, today announced holding of Linux Asia 2004. The event is aimed at shifting Linux from labs to offices. Linux Asia 2004 will be held from February 11th - 13th, 2004 (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) at The India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. It says it will be "the largest ever event on Linux in India". http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/03/09/29/1618251.shtml?tid=52
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BUY GNU/LINUX CDs at Rs 30 per CD (plus postage). This network, run by Aniket Navelkar aniket@gmx.net is supported by the GNU/Linux Users Group of Margao, Goa. To place an order for your personal copy and for further info, pls contact aniket@gmx.net. Payment via cash, DD, money order or SBI electronic transfer.
Distros currently available include Debian 3.0, Redhat 9.0, Mandrake 9.1, Knoppix 3.3 and 3.2, GNUWin 2.1 (GNU utilities for Windows!), FreeBSD 5.0, Server Optimised Linux (SOL), Dynebolic 1.03a3, The Open CD (for Windows platform), FreEDUC (educational software that boots from a CDrom), SUSE LiveEval, Gnoppix (no, this is not a spelling mistake!), Slackware 9.0, RockLinux 2.0 (lots of Windows Managers Qvwm, Fwvm2, icewm), Conectiva 9.0 (four-CD set), ArchLinux 0.5, ArkLinux, and GSCP Distro (the easy-to-set up version of the Goa Schools Computers Project). http://www.ilug-margao.org/html/cd_library.htm
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TeXLIVE 2003 CD NOW ON SALE: Radhakrishnan CV cvr@river-valley.org tells us that the TeXLive 2003 CD has been released (stable final release) and the have the iso images of demo, install and live versions of the CD/DVD. Says he: "Install version is what a normal user would need. Live version is ready-to-run TeX system for 12 operating systems in a DVD without installing unto your harddisk and demo is a scaled down live version for Linux, Win32 and Mac OSX alone."
All the bzipped ISO images are at: http://sarovar.org/projects/texlive
PDF and JPG files of all the CD/DVD labels and covers are also available at the same site. You might find details about TeXLive at: http://texlive.sarovar.org
"Be warned that bzipped images of install and demo CD's are roughly 270 MB and 571 MB respectively. Compressed DVD image is 516 MB. The page might show you the filesize as single digit bytes, that's because it is a symlink from the mirror folder. TeXLive is an ongoing project at TUG, so we would sync the newest stable releases always," says he.
TUGIndia is making available the TeXLive 2003 collection (3 CD set released by TUG), beautifully packaged in a nicely printed CD cover. It looks like a collectors item. They have fixed the price at Rs. 1,000 per set including forwarding and shipping costs. Says CVR: "We would dispatch CDs to the individual/institutions who have already paid the cost (of Rs. 500 which was the cost of previous release of TeXLive) and waiting for TeXLive's release without any burden of extra cost. This is in recognition of their patience and interest in TeXLive."
People who are fortunate to have a fat bandwidth can grab the images from sarovar.org. They are free to make copies and distribute, but respect the licences of the packages. Says CVR: "Recently, Springer-Verlag copied TeXLive 7 CD and distributed along with one of their LaTeX books with explicit instruction on the CD that 'contents of the CD should not be copied or distributed' which is a clear violation of the licences of thousands of packages in the CD. By doing such a thing, one invites the wrath of TUG, FSF and obviously runs the risk of litigation."
Compilation of the TeXLive CD is the result of the hard work of hundreds of developers' for several months apart from the terrific work of several thousand contributors who wrote all the software solely for the benefit of the user community. By purchasing the TeXLive, the cost of which is only that of the media and shipping, you promote a great movement that stands for software freedom, adds the Indian TeX Users Group.
INDIANISATION AHOY: That untiring campaigner on Indianisation issues, G Karunkar karunakar@indlinux.org -- incidentally, we're awaiting this guy at the 'Paradise LUG' chapter in Goa later this month -- informs us that IndLinux Milan CD 0.7-2 alpha has been released. Some time back the final release notes were yet to be up. But, says he, you can track the release notes at http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxMilanReleaseNotes
Download the ISO from (total size 531MB). http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11495
Features: * Based on Morphix 0.4-1 * Gnome 2.4 desktop, OpenOffice 1.1rc3 , evolution 1.4 * Extra apps added: Yudit, gtranslator, pfaedit, kbabel, gettext, balsa * Boot options for all major Indian languages added. Hindi (hi) -default, Bengali (bn), Gujarati (gu), Kannada (kn), Malayalam (ml), Marathi (mr), Oriya (or), Punjabi (pa), Tamil (ta), Telugu (te) * Language can be selected boot time by passing lang=code parameter eg. for Bengali, give morphix lang=bn; for Marati give, morphix lang=mr * Install to harddisk (morphix installer) work successfully, but use if carefully.
Indic specific additions * two new fonts Gargi (devanagari), Padmaa (gujarati) - from http://www.indictrans.org * Locales for Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi * Misc changes: switching between layouts in gkb appled done by "Shift L + Shift R" combination. Default keyboard layout - Hindi , additional Bengali, Gujarati, Kannda, Malayalam, Tamil. OpenOffice configured to work with Hindi. Yudit also configured with Indic fonts & keyboard layouts
Track IndLinux Demo CD development at http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxDemoCd
Check this mailing list, on Indianisation of GNU/Linux, at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indlinux-news
BILINGUAL WEB-PAGES: Harveer wanted to know how to make bi-lingual webpages with GNU/Linux.
There are two ways to it you could use font based method, where you select the font and type, so font tags are used for it, and that particular font has to be installed on client side. Dynamic fonts can be used, but they won't work on GNU/Linux. Another way is to make webpages in unicode. On GNU/Linux you can use Redhat 9/MDK 9/ Morphix, all of which have Gnome 2.0. Here you will have to do all html coding urself. Mozilla composer can also be used, but its not yet supporting rendering (the stable releases). Check out http://www.geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html, that should help you get started. On using yudit read http://www.indlinux.org/doc/yuditguide.html
Karunakaran says that they are customising Morphix to make it indian-language enabled, with commonly needed apps. Quite some people have show interest in that.
Says he: "You can chekout what we are doing at http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxDemoCd Also check with http://smc.sarovar.org (the Malayalam localisation group). They made a malayalam knoppix CD and it was probably used in some projects."
FROM MALAYSIA: The Malaysian National Computer Confederation (MNCC) and Advanced Technology Studies Centre (atSC) have embarked on a plan to promote open source technology to schools in the country. As a start, they have initiated a pilot project, with sponsorship from local businessman Datuk Siew Nim Chee, to train teachers in open source software (OSS), says a report forwarded by Doug Loss dloss@bloomu.edu http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31762.html
GARGI RENDERS FINE WITH MOST TEXTS: Prof Nagarjuna G. nagarjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in reports from Mumbai that the release of Gargi 1.1 seems to be rendering fine with most texts. Mozilla build 1.5b with CTL enabled is also available for download (15mb) from the link: http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/ObjectType/lcalznproject/ http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/Objects/mozilla/ http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/Objects/howtoFont/ Says this doughty campaigner: "Please give feed back on both mozilla and the fonts. We are soon starting xmodmaps for indian languages other than inscript and the printing problem. I will also write soon about the notes on the meeting that we had regarding printing problem where developers from NCST and RedHat participated along with Karunakar and myself."
INTL OPEN SOURCE NETWORK: Irfan Khan khania2@super.net.pk draws our attention to a report on the International Open Source Network at http://www.developmentgateway.org//ict/dg-contribute/item- detail?item_id=350274&version_id=210589&from=alert
The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for free and open source software (FOSS) in the Asia- Pacific Region. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human resources in ...
INVITE TO JOIN THE 'LITTLE LEAGUE': Kunal kunalbharati@yahoo.com from Navi Mumbai would like to draw the attention of smaller LUGs around India to join the 'Little League', a network meant to promote GNU/Linux in the smaller regions of the country.
He suggests that it might be "a good idea to mail the invitation to owners of there respective glugs (GNU/LUGS) i.e. glug listed on (the indian FLOSS magazine LinuxForYou) LFY ... and mention there that this list is not for posting and technical problems ... but for discussion about activities that each and every glug is doing".
Sukrit from Pondicherry is the founder of the Little-League concept. Active campaigners from the smaller LUGs are specially invited. To join, send a blank email to little_league-subscribe@yahoogroups.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOUR INPUTS and criticism to this newsletter are welcome. Contact us at fred at bytesforall dot org COPYLEFT 2003. May be freely circulated provided entire text and credits are left intact.
You can subscribe to receive this FREE newsletter (free of cost, and free in other ways too!) by sending an email to linuxinindia-request@freelists.org with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging in on to www.freelists.org (a great place to set up free-of-cost technology-related lists!) and searching for 'linuxinindia'. FN --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Frederick Noronha (FN)