On January 28, 2006, the GNU/Linux user group meet at the Goa Science Centre (alongside the scenic Miramar beach) once again showed that the five-minute lightning talks series does work well.
As we waited to battle the unpunctuality syndrome, the topic floated towards RHCE/RCHT, 64-bit systems, Skype, ETDC courses, and films from South Africa. By this time, we had a surprise guest. Samir Kelekar, who came in direct from Dabolim airport, after landing in from Bangalore. Samir is on the GoG's infotech council, and has been a long-time member of the group. To kick off, we saw some of the films from South Africa, made in a very interesting manner, with the goal of introducing FLOSS and computing concepts to young people (and others). There were brief reports on the Firefox browser, an articulate African lady offering introduction to some useful websites, and more. All done in a very user-friendly manner. And: there are 13 episodes focussing on these subjects! DVD copies available with Nelson if you need them, at a reasonable price that covers cost and possible raises a tiny fund for the SXC user-group. http://linuxdvdsale.tripod.com/ Engineer Bijon Shaha did his homework and was introducing the concept of the South African 'freedom toaster'. Pop in a CD, get out a distro. Sounds unrealistic? It's true. Shaha did a good job in introducing the subject. Damodar gave an interesting presentation on how to install GNU/Linux without any risk to a Windows partition. His tip: "When you're asked for the boot-loeader to be loaded, don't load your grub boot-loeader in the master boot record. Select the first boot partition, copy it on a floppy and restart the system with the floppy...." Really nice to see our new LUGgers taking such an interest and even volunteering talks! Edgar was next with the five-minute slot, talking about his travails with getting his Acer 64-bit working with various distros -- Fedora Core 4, Mandriva 10.1 and Suse. His woes include Suse not properly recognising the ACPI status (battery status), the digicam not communicating properly with the camera, Suse not giving the option of multiple desktops, Postgres missing fro some distros, 3D games just crawling... Perhaps Edgar will post directly onto the list, so as to get advice from a wider pool. My (FN's) own modest presentation was a hurried sharing of some lessons picked up at Africa Source 2 in Uganda. It included mentioning of comics to teach GNU/Linux and IT concepts by Schoolnet Namibia, the Gadgets software seeking to integrate a whole lot of social software (wikis, mailing lists, blogs, etc), an encounter with billionaire Afronaut Mark Shuttleworth, the aim of Africa Source (taking FLOSS to non-profit organisations, and it's three tracks focussing on info management, migration for NGOs and migration for education), the Sahana software crafted as a Sri Lankan initiative to help cope with disasters, human rights FLOSS such as Martus software, the tectonic.co.za site focussing on FLOSS, Creative Commons, localisation of computing initiatives, etc. Samir, a longtime LUGger now on the Goa infotech council, made the point that policy planners and politicians sitting on official bodies are often in a "totally different world". He suggested the LUG could do something by pushing the official policy in a way where Goa benefits from the power of Free Software. "If I started on [GNU]Linux in the first year, it would mean I have something like three years of experience (by the time one starts working)," Samir said, pointing out that companies in Bangalore were spending huge resources to get their new employees familiarised with the tools of Free/Libre and Open Source Software. He pointed out that developing software on proprietorial software tools was also prohibitively costly, with say a set of MSD software tools costing Rs 100,000. Various ideas came up on how more students could be encouraged to venture into Free Software in Goa, how a more FLOSS-friendly policy could be made FLOSSible. Poorly trained engineering skills was a real problem, Samir indicated, pointing out that after graduation, some engineers were joining NIIT to learn Java for a year after they left college. "The whole future of my company depends on how good guys I get. It's difficult to find people," Samir Kelekar added. He stressed that those with GNU/Linux skills were paid far higher than those from the world of generic properietorial software. There was a long discussion, with suggestions coming in from Arvind Yadav, Ravi Deka, Edgar of Moira, Prof Janarthan (of the Botany Department, GU) and a whole lot of others. By the time we looked at our watches, it was past the time to close. We spoke to Goa Science Centre director Joshi, and he too felt it might be a good idea to screen the FLOSS South African films for a wider audience at the Science Centre. See you on February 25, 2006, the fourth Saturday of next month. Volunteers offering five-minute talks (it's easy!) are more than welcome. FN -- ------------------------------------------------------------- | India Linux Users' Group, Goa | | Join the friendly user group | | Mail list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/join | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teach-yourself-linux | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa-announce | | http://www.iosn.net/country/india/organizations/ilug-goa/ | ------------------------------------------------------------- , , / \ .-. * SOFTWARE ((__-^^-,-^^-__)) (. .) * FREEDOM `-_---' `---_-' / V \ * SHARING `--|o` 'o|--' // \\ \ ` / /( )\ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ): :( '.^^_^^.' SHARE IT EQUITABLY :o_o: \_/ \_/ "-"