Dear all, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology (BIT) (www.bitsathy.ac.in), Sathyamangalam, organised a two days FOSS workshop on 20/11/2012 and 21/11/2012 for all the teaching / non-teaching staffs covering 16 departments in the college.
The college management has decided to migrate around 1500+ computers across 16 departments and all computer labs (about more than 90% of entire IT infrastructure) from proprietary OS to GNU/Linux OS (no dualboot options) throughout the college campus and also decided to train all staff members to feel comfortable working on GNU/Linux platform. Both teaching and non-teaching staffs from the following departments attended the workshop Department of English Fashion Technology Computer Science and Engineering Computer Applications Information Technology Aeronautical Engineering Mechanical Engineering (CAD/CAM) Electrical and Electronics Engineering Electronics and Communication Engineering On the first day, 40+ technical staffs from the above departments were introduced to the following with complete hands-on practice Mageia GNU/Linux OS installation Software management in Mageia GNU/Linux User and Group management Applications for regular desktop use (office / internet / VLC and Gstreamer multimedia framework etc.) File access / permissions (participants got familiar with commands like setfacl for granting/restricting file access permissions to others) Printer configuration using cups (installing HP ML-1005 MFP was really a breeze) Windows/Linux file sharing using samba etc. Comparision of Proprietary applications and it's FOSS equivalent applications On Day 2, 60 teaching faculties from all 16 departments attended the workshop. All of them were introduced to Mageia GNU/Linux. Apart from the above topics, they were additionally introduced to few programming/development related tools and stuffs. A Remote Installation server was setup in the college for smooth migration process and almost everyone enjoyed installing Mageia GNU/Linux and applications from the server repository few times till they become comfortable with it. The college has planned to conduct continuous workshops and encourage all staff members to use GNU/Linux as the primary OS platform for all academic and research purposes. I would like to thank BIT college management, The Director, Dr.P.Thangaraj / Prof and Head - CSE for the opportunity to conduct this workshop. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After conducting several FOSS workshops in the recent years, I have realised and noticed many changes with higher education management authorities with respect to FOSS software, and wish to share few of them here. 1. Like BIT, in TN, many engineering colleges has lost interest in proprietary OS / applications and also paying repeatedly for other proprietary software licenses and have decided to move towards GNU/Linux OS platform to maximum extent and stay with (reason due to huge software licensing cost and increased placement opportunities for the students on FOSS platform). 2. So far, I have received invites from 10+ engineering colleges (in Coimbatore and surrounding region alone) to conduct workshops mainly for the teaching / non-teaching staffs in their colleges (arts and science colleges, polytechnics will be joining in this list soon). 3. Colleges are looking for some kind of external support in the migration process, and they find none who fulfill their requirements. 4. They are looking alternative for almost all the existing proprietary software apps (mainly engineering kind of software than the regular apps). Their wishlist is somewhat huge and will post that list in my next mail. We need to find some good alternatives for those software which would enable them to try and give us some feedback. 5. In my personal opinion, ILUG-C community has done a great job in the past several years to bring FOSS in TN education system. Now that system is ready for switching over to FOSS. Unfortunately, institutions who wishes to migrate to GNU/Linux platform find difficulty in getting commercial support from outside. I am looking for some useful discussions on, how this problem can be addressed and how ILUG-C can help colleges to move towards FOSS. Looking forward for useful discussions on the above. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards S. Baskar CCSO/LinuXpert Systems _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
