[Fsf-friends] GNULinuxInIndia o Feb 26, 2003
FN
fred@bytesforall.org
Wed, 26 Feb 2003 16:49:31 +0530 (IST)
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Formerly LinuxInIndia * Compiled by: Frederick Noronha * Feb 26,2003
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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 Almost Virus-free.
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.
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GNUunify 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).
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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?download
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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at bytesforall dot org --COPYLEFT 2003, GPL. May be freely circulated
provided entire text is retained. FN
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