[Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
Dear luggies Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting lot of request for suggesting proects. In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. Please suggest projects ideas. Please keep in mind the constraints a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. c. Should point out resources available on net Raman.P Be the first one to try the new Messenger 9 Beta! Go to http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/win/ ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
Dear luggies Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting lot of request for suggesting proects. In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. Please suggest projects ideas. Please keep in mind the constraints a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. c. Should point out resources available on net This is a welcome move in our LUG. I too had lot of enquiries from lot of students, but could not give an effective help. Discussing in this list can bring some positive outcome. Some of criterias that i feel are important: 1. The academic project should be done for some real life requirements. No matter, what it is. If it solves a real life problem, then this project is worth while doing it. 2. The basic skills needed for doing the project is very important. We cannot guide project at the 8th semester, if the students dont know even the basic. 3. Even MCA students can be included in FOSS projects. The FOSS project that is being undertaken should be fullfilling, and should be towards implementing in a common life scenario. For example, if the student are doing an ecommerce project, they have to work towards implementing it in real life, and atleast deal some 2 or 3 prodcuts through that software. Only then, both the project experience and the software would be useful for the students. Secondly, as we have seen, no single matured foss project is short term. For example, wordpress has been started before 2006 and still its evolving. So, we should have a setup, so that, we build a student community of contributors across colleges under a common platform, so that the project they do evolve in to a mature one over the period of time. But for that, we need to have a strong platform, a vibrant community, and the open source development model. By platform, i mean, a site that contains the SVN, Wiki, project management, IRC etc. By Vibrant community, i mean, the contributors should be passionate about it, and should not do it for academic sake. By Open source model, i mean, the concrete process to commit source code, and a workable model, where different team takes different tasks towards the common objective. Its a model or process that should be finalised before starting project and should be strictly followed by the contributors. To achieve those, there are some basic requirements to be fulfilled. The students should be trained in using svn, and other tools to be used for project management. Only then they will be able to maintain, manage and take control of their development work. Secondly, regular meetings and conferences is to be held both in person, and over IRC, so that they would be able to discuss each and everypart of the project. As everyone knows, a foss project is NOT merely a coding. Infact coding contributes only minor part of the development. What is required is a solid concept, with optimal architecture for the project to start with. So the students should finalise on a concept, and start periodical discussion on various aspects of the project and document it. *FOSS Project that i undertook --- *I have been taken an initiative on my own, to guide 4 students from Mahendra engineering college. I would seek the opinion of the group members over it. The project i suggested to them was "College ERP". To develop a basic module for the college to manage their administrative and academic tasks. This is essentially for the college management, and would greatly improve the management capability and decision making ability for the college. I am aware that this is too big a project for a BE student to take it as academic project. However, i thought, that we would be covering only basic and essential modules for the college, and it can be continued as a long term project with next batch of students taking up from where they left. The advantage i feel is that the current student can involve in the project till they get a suitable job, and in turn train a batch of their junior to work on it. Even after getting a job, they can very well guide their juniors with their technical skills. My idea can mostly be a unfeasible one, but my guess is that if the project kicks off, it would become a active foss project, else, it would become a normal academic project. So any way, there is no loss for the student. *My Suggestion: *If any of the members are convinced of my idea above, we can work together and convert it in to an active FOSS project, involving students from various projects, working on different modules. For credibility, a brand name can be created by starting a community enterprise, or atleast by maintaining a fullfledged website, so that students can always refer to, when they submit their project to their management. This can be done
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 5:52 AM, Raman.P <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear luggies > Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting > lot of request for suggesting proects. > > In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. > > Please suggest projects ideas. > > Please keep in mind the constraints > > a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students > b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. > c. Should point out resources available on net > There are two kinds of projects here : 1) An Enterprise application which primarily does not have any intelligence in it, and is purely form driven. The design aspects of an application would be reflected here, and might not require much R&D. 2) A 'research' project - something like Face/Speech recognition et al - now this requires a much deeper understanding of the subject and a significant timeline for research and then the subsequent implementation. ( i remember i started off my final year thesis in mid-second year) Now, it all depends on the aptitude and go-getter attitude of the student to choose either of the above. Though, #1 sounds boring, building a mini-ERP system or an Order-processing workflow is NOT 'trivial'. For #1, i have been thinking of an COMPLETE OfficeSuite - which encompasses Calendar, Booking COnf Rooms , Timecards, project mgmt, defect tracking, Transport mgmt, Employee DB and search, simple HR system etc etc. I am aware of 'independant' applications that cater to the above, but there is NO SINGLE product which caters to above. Though trivial, this would be a boon for small entrprises ; and if the students can afford to 'support' it after college, they can also monetize it by targetting the SMEs - whose market cap is huge. For #2, there are loads and loads - depends on the research interests of the person. Venkat Blog @ http://blizzardzblogs.blogspot.com ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
Raman.P wrote: Dear luggies Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting lot of request for suggesting proects. In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. Please suggest projects ideas. So the October season has started. I wait for the day when the season starts with a mail "I am interested to do this project and I have the following ideas to go about doing it..". Please keep in mind the constraints a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. c. Should point out resources available on ne Though I tend to say that the students should typically start looking at ToDos, Wishlists and Unresolved open bugs of FOSS projects, get in touch with the contributors/devels and try to put their effort on something which is there and to be made better, I am myself wonder whether their college is going to encourage them to take those as Final Year projects as their definition of such things still remain to be mostly tangled in IEEE papers. If the college permits such endeavours, them as sure that there is enough work to be done for another 3-4 years just from the existing pile of work to be done. Almost every famous project has half a dozen things which new contributors can take up and try it out. There are lots of people in this list itself who are someway or other associated with FOSS projects and would be able to provide the needed feed to much on for a season or two. I know we are tired of asking them to start early, learn the art and the tool, have some plan by the start of the season so they have more clue of what to do during the season. I still remember students who I happen to meet somewhere during the last few days of the year (read December end) when they had 30 days or so left and weren't even having a working Linux distribution running at their boxes. There were some who wanted to do Qt based interface but didn't even have the inclination to go through the Qt tutorials, which were the fact are very good for starters. I hope things have improved since then, but I don't expect it to have completely changed. -- --- With Regards, Parthan "technofreak" 2FF01026 http://blog.technofreak.in ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
> Dear luggies > Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting > lot of request for suggesting proects. > > In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. > > Please suggest projects ideas. > > Please keep in mind the constraints > > a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students > b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. > c. Should point out resources available on net > I would like to refer http://www.gnomebangalore.org/ , an initiative by Novell for open source projects. [But I would emphasize on strong fundas even though the mentors (there) will help you out to an extent.] Srikanth ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
Dear luggies >Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting >lot of request for suggesting proects. > >In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. > >Please suggest projects ideas. > >Please keep in mind the constraints > >a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students >b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. >c. Should point out resources available on net > > >Raman.P > The following list of OSS projects could be useful for students to learn and implement the technologies for real-life situations. http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ (For Storage/Remote Backups) BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. http://cult-thinclient.sf.net (For Network Computing) Cult is an Open Source software-only network bootable thinclient Operating System that provides a complete solution for thin clients, PCs or virtualized hardware http://www.gnokii.org/ (For Mobile Communication) gnokii provides tools and a user space driver for use with mobile phones under various operating systems (most testing is done under Linux but also Solaris, *BSD family and MS Windows families are known to work). http://beagleboard.org/ (For Embedded Systems) Beagle Board is an ultra-low cost, high performance, low power OMAP3 based platform designed by BeagleBoard.org community members for embedded development And finally, I have downloaded Fedora-9 Everything Source Repository (more than 6000+ software packages) as Source RPMS, and if students were interested in getting this, pl write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] S. Baskar CEO/LinuXpert Systems ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
I understand that many colleges are asking / allowing the students to project in the college itself. Of course, many students have their own systems and tend to work from them. Some of the issues : a) installation of the distro and the relevant additional packages. -- while it is desirable to let the students do it themselves, a helping hand / guidance could be useful if the immediate goal is to get the project going. [as Parthan pointed out, the last minute rush will be there.] b) official letters / certificates : colleges generally need that from the guiding agency (for project acceptance, attendance and completion) LinuXpert Systems, Linus Academy and other "established setups" could issue one. NRCFOSS could provide the platform for unattached mentors (if they desire it). c) While the students are enthusiastic, there may be some resistance at the college level for FOSS projects. Even in one FOSS enabled college, some students were discouraged. We could do something about it -- using official / personal channels. d) Publicity helps. Can we have a list of "successfully completed" FOSS student projects. NRCFOSS, of course, has a vested interest in publicising this list. An official letter could also be written to all the principals / HoDs highlighting the availability of FOSS projects and the support offered by ILUG-C. e) Evaluation Certificate / Prize I have refrained (for various opeational reasons --as I see them) from proposing Prizes for student projects at NRCFOSS. But ILUG-C can announce a schema. NRCFOSS (and/or others) could provide the funds. There can also be issues like monitoring the students regularly, helping them with bandwidths for heavy downloads, etc. We have to be realise that students might not respond with the same enthusiasm / effort / basic knowledge. option 1 : offer project ideas, mentor services to everyone who is regularly responding (with work or more queries !!),. be prepared that a sizeable number will drop out. option 2 : use some criterion (more on commitment than on "top of the class" variety) to identify student groups, attach atleast one LUG member as godfather (any godmother??) and get things going. Srinivasan (NRCFOSS). ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
option 2 : use some criterion (more on commitment than on "top of the class" variety) to identify student groups, attach atleast one LUG member as godfather (any godmother??) and get things going. nice one. ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
I had a talk with folks back at my organization, and we do have a few interesting projects that we want to work on, but don't have enough time due to our other engagements. I have put togather a list of those projects as well as few personal hobby projects, that we would love to see taken up by students and getting it done. The students will get to learn on few of the interesting and practical technologies. We might be able to have them intern at Efficient Frontier(www.efrontier.com) subject to our availibilty to mentor them. This list is in order of priority that we want to get done, *1. Build a complete conferencing system:* Build a solution to provide a complete voice and video conferencing system based on free/open source software. Build dedicated appliance based on Asterisk/Freeswitch/Skype to provide a VoIP solution to interconnect multiple offices of a organization spread across the world . Topics Touched : Operating Systems, Telecom, Networking, Scripting/Programming, VoIP *2. Design and deploy Server Automation and Virtualization Solution * Compare various virtualization technologies such as openVZ, kvm, xen, virtualbox; identify the most suitable for server virtualization and provide a solution to setup, automate, manage server virtualization. Topics Touched: Operating System Internals, Networking, Virtualization Techniques *3. Framework for Online Testing* My organization uses a barebone online testing framework as part of the recruitment process which is built on Google Apps, Python etc. This has helped us to carry out hiring in a much efficient manner than earlier times. We need someone one to take this framework and build a very intelligent and complete solution with enhancements such as computer adaptive tests, streamlined UI etc. Topics Touched: Python, Google App Engine/ BigTables(google's Db), Algorithms *4. Build a Custom Distribution based on OpenSuse:* This is the requirement for my organization. We have standerdized on opensuse and build our own distro on top of opensuse. We want to manage our own distro more effectively and innovatively and also customize, trim, optimize host opensuse os according to our needs for both desktops and servers. Topics Touched: Operating Systems, Kernel Compilation, Optimization, Package Maintainance etc. In addition to these, here are a few personal hobby projects, *1. PVR/Home Entertainment/HTPC Appliance*: Design and develope a commercially viable appliance based on linux/embedded linux to work as a PVR(Personal Video Recorder) and home media/entertainment server. It could work as a one stop solution to all home entertainment needs. Do additional things such as customizing mythtv to make it manage with set top boxes available in India, add channel guides, manage bigflix/seventymm queues etc. Topics Touched : Operating Systems, Networks, Scripting/Programming, Embedded Systems, Multimedia Systems *2. Enhance mobile appl smb4s60 * - smb4s60 is a mobile smb client written in python . Currently works in Nokia s60 phone and enables browsing network shares over the wireless network. Written by Premnath Sah ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Homepage: http://www.lnkr.net/smb4s60 One can take this as a base and add more functionalities, add support for wide number of cell phones and handheld devices etc. Topics Covered: Python, Nokia S60 platform, SMB/CIFS, Authentication, Networking. *3. LTSP Benchmarking:* There are no solid benchmarks available on which to base decisions as to what hardware to use to deploy a LTSP setup, how to scale it up etc. This project will involve setting up LTSP with different hardware and testing it running various sets of applications, monitoring server and collecting performance data, put the stats in a database, and come up with benchmarks. Topics Touched : Operating Systems, Networking, Performance Testing, Scripting/Programming, Database We could spec out the projects if students would like to take it up. Thanks Gourav > Dear luggies > Consequent to the interest ILUGC has generated among students, I am getting > lot of request for suggesting proects. > > In some colleges, they have decided out-and-out FOSS based projects. > > Please suggest projects ideas. > > Please keep in mind the constraints > > a. The projects are not fulltime for B.E students > b. Most will have only preliminary knowledge - but can pickup fast. > c. Should point out resources available on net > > > Raman.P > > > Be the first one to try the new Messenger 9 Beta! Go to > http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/win/ > > ___ > To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > "unsubscribe " > in the subject or body of the message. > http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc > ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listi
Re: [Ilugc] Students Project - suggestions
On 10:43:20 Oct 16, Gourav Shah wrote: > I had a talk with folks back at my organization, and we do have a few > interesting projects that we want to work on, but don't have enough > time due to our other engagements. I have put togather a list of those > projects as well as few personal hobby projects, that we would love to > see taken up by students and getting it done. The students will get to > learn on few of the interesting and practical technologies. We might be > able to have them intern at Efficient Frontier(www.efrontier.com) > subject to our availibilty to mentor them. [..] Nice effort. Looks interesting. -Girish ___ To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc