[Fsf-india] GOA: Small GNU/Linux meeting at GEC

[Frederick Noronha]

REPORT FROM GOA... The GEC is the Goa Engineering College, and is the
third unit of ILUG opened up (aside from Panjim and Margao). Panjim meets
on the fourth Saturday of each month, Margao on the third Saturday, and
GEC as per the convenience and exam-schedules of students... FN

---------- Forwarded message ----------

It was a small meeting on April 16 at GEC. Prof George Easaw had to rush
to Panjim, and the meeting had been called at short notice. Maybe we could
tighten up planning (we face similar problems in Margao, and to a lesser
extent at Panjim... don't worry we've been thru all this and worse... once
the volunteers are in place, things will move smoothly).

To keep things informal, the meeting was held at the canteen.

Some highlights...

* Help was sought from GEC to run an ILUG-goa-tech or ILUG-goa-help or
Linux-Goa-tech/help (called by whatever name). The idea is to set up a
help-list for those wanting to discuss pure technical topics. We got some
volunteers for this, and also help coordinate GEC group

Prof George Easaw 	geasaw@vsnl.com
Prof Srinivas Rayadu	msr@gec.ac.in

Students volunteers (seniors)
Blinston F.		b2ornot2b@yahoo.com
Ashwini Kumar		ashwini_kumar_in@yahoo.co.uk

Student volunteers (2nd year)
Siddharth		engico83_2k@rediffmail.com
Anant Borole		anantdb@lycos.com

Anyone willing to add their names to this list, please do so.

* Blinston stressed the exam-pressures on students. "Every six months we
just disappear," he added. (Mid para break: ILUG-Goa member from the Gulf,
Laxman Saval and his sons, one into installing Linux at 13, dropped in
just now.)

* It was felt second-year students could help as volunteers.

* Issues discussed: RedHat plans to stop free distribution of
software; Siddharth's interest in embedded Linux, voice-over-IP project of
some GEC students; plans for compiling a special CD of software useful for
engineering students; B2's batch is mostly into GNU/Linux project with
this OS hogging 5/7 projects this year; Yunus' work on GUI-based thin
clients running Linux; why LCDs are so costly in India; Wipro's plan to
develop Ximian in India for Sun Solaris; are GNU/Linux distros getting
bloated.

* Animesh Nerurkar made some suggestion of possible GNU/Linux based
projects for students... how about sharing those via the list
Banduji? Including a Konkani editor that gives its output in both
Devanagari and Roman script for any text typed in...

* Siddharth says their project of a GNU/Linux-based MP3 player is getting
ready, and he hopes to display it at the next Panjim meet (April 27)....

* FN raised the issue of a comprehensive list of all
(willing-to-be-listed) ILUG-Goa members, with contact details, to
encourage networking among members. This, with our website, has been a
pending job.

* Animesh regretted that few had responded to his appeal for letting him
know what GNU/Linux CDs they would be willing to share with others. Prof
Rayadu offered the following resources, available as ISOimage to be copied
from the GEC network: Redhat 6.2 and 7.2 and Mandrake 8.1. Some earlier
Debian images might also be available.

* Siddharth and other engg students thanked John Fort from Australia for
his generous donation of CDs and books on GNU/Linux. "The Sunsite docs are
very good. There's a lot of material for someone wanting to see the
earlier distros," said Siddharth. (ENDS)

Comments and feedback to ilug-goa@egroups.com with copy to
--
Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783
BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org  * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com
Email fred@bytesforall.org * SMS 9822122436@attcell.net * Saligao Goa India
Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference