Frederick Noronha (FN) on Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:41:06 +0200 (CEST)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

<nettime> GNULinuxInIndia Oct 15, 2003



     e88~~\  888b    | 888   |  /  888                888 ,e,           
    d888     |Y88b   | 888   |  L  888 888-~88e  e88~\888  "    /~~~8e  
    8888 __  | Y88b  | 888   |  I  888 888  888 d888  888 888       88b 
    8888   | |  Y88b | 888   |  N  888 888  888 8888  888 888  e88~-888 
    Y888   | |   Y88b| Y88   |  U  888 888  888 Y888  888 888 C888  888 
     "88__/  |    Y888  "8__/   X  888 888  888  "88_/888 888  "88_-888 
   --------------------------------------------------------------------
   Formerly LinuxInIndia * Compiled by: Frederick Noronha * Oct 15,2003
   --------------------------------------------------------------------

	INDIA... AT THE LINUX COUNTER: Linux Counter has a total of 138722
	people registered.  1407 users have been registered by friends. 
	There are 124367 machines registered. This network guesstimates that
	between 0.2% and 5% of all Linux users have registered with the
	Linux Counter. So the total number of Linux users is probably
	between 2,774,440 and 69,361,000 people.

	Among the country-wide ratings, India is ranked only 137th overall,
	when judged by GNU/Linux uers per million population. But in terms
	of overall number of GNU/Linux users registered, India with 2843
	registered users is only behind the US (28514 registered users),
	Germany (11307), Brazil (9785), France (6479), Spain (5558), Great
	Britain (5307), Canada (4600), Italy (4517), the Netherlands (3595),
	Sweden (3300), Finland (3137 users). India is ahead of Russia,
	Mexico and China. Probably improved connectivity to the Net here
	would make more people aware of the Linux Counter, and give users a
	better chance to register. 

	Linux Counter recently completed 10 years of its existance. This
	compiler (FN) is proud to be associated with this initiative, as a
	volunteer covering Goa-India. More volunteers welcome for regional
	Indian states. If you use GNU/Linux, acknowledge your debt to the
	volunteers who (and the philosophy that) made it happen! Not just
	Linux the kernel, but also GNU! Register at http://counter.li.org

'INDIA'S BIGGEST OPEN SOURCE EVENT': Linux Bangalore/2003, what is called
"India's biggest Open Source event", is being held from December 2-4 at
Bangalore, India. For details visit http://linux-bangalore.org/2003

Organisers have just announced that speaker registration for Linux
Bangalore/2003 is now open. If you wish to be considered to give a talk at
Linux Bangalore/2003, check http://linux-bangalore.org/2003/register/

Speaker guidelines at: http://linux-bangalore.org/2003/guides/speakers.php
Speaker registration will be provisionally open till November 8th. Some 70+
talk slots will be available. Talks will be selected after that.

Those wanting to keep abrest with plans for the event, join the list by
sending a blank email to linux-bangalore-2003-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

	LFY ANNOUNCES Linux Asia 2004 IN DELHI, FEB 2004: Linux For You,
	Asia's first Linux magazine, today announced holding of Linux Asia
	2004. The event is aimed at shifting Linux from labs to offices. 
	Linux Asia 2004 will be held from February 11th - 13th, 2004
	(Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) at The India Habitat Centre, New
	Delhi. It says it will be "the largest ever event on Linux in
	India". 
	http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/03/09/29/1618251.shtml?tid=52

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
###########################################################################
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

BUY GNU/LINUX CDs at Rs 30 per CD (plus postage). This network, run by
Aniket Navelkar <aniket@gmx.net> is supported by the GNU/Linux Users Group
of Margao, Goa. To place an order for your personal copy and for further
info, pls contact aniket@gmx.net. Payment via cash, DD, money order or SBI
electronic transfer.

Distros currently available include Debian 3.0, Redhat 9.0, Mandrake 9.1,
Knoppix 3.3 and 3.2, GNUWin 2.1 (GNU utilities for Windows!), FreeBSD 5.0,
Server Optimised Linux (SOL), Dynebolic 1.03a3, The Open CD (for Windows
platform), FreEDUC (educational software that boots from a CDrom), SUSE
LiveEval, Gnoppix (no, this is not a spelling mistake!), Slackware 9.0,
RockLinux 2.0 (lots of Windows Managers Qvwm, Fwvm2, icewm), Conectiva 9.0
(four-CD set), ArchLinux 0.5, ArkLinux, and GSCP Distro (the easy-to-set up
version of the Goa Schools Computers Project).
http://www.ilug-margao.org/html/cd_library.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
###########################################################################
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

TeXLIVE 2003 CD NOW ON SALE: Radhakrishnan CV <cvr@river-valley.org> tells
us that the TeXLive 2003 CD has been released (stable final release) and the
have the iso images of demo, install and live versions of the CD/DVD. Says
he: "Install version is what a normal user would need. Live version is
ready-to-run TeX system for 12 operating systems in a DVD without installing
unto your harddisk and demo is a scaled down live version for Linux, Win32
and Mac OSX alone."

All the bzipped ISO images are at: http://sarovar.org/projects/texlive

PDF and JPG files of all the CD/DVD labels and covers are also available at
the same site. You might find details about TeXLive at:
http://texlive.sarovar.org

"Be warned that bzipped images of install and demo CD's are roughly 270 MB
and 571 MB respectively. Compressed DVD image is 516 MB.  The page might
show you the filesize as single digit bytes, that's because it is a symlink
from the mirror folder.  TeXLive is an ongoing project at TUG, so we would
sync the newest stable releases always," says he.

TUGIndia is making available the TeXLive 2003 collection (3 CD set released
by TUG), beautifully packaged in a nicely printed CD cover. It looks like a
collectors item.  They have fixed the price at Rs. 1,000 per set including
forwarding and shipping costs. Says CVR: "We would dispatch CDs to the
individual/institutions who have already paid the cost (of Rs. 500 which was
the cost of previous release of TeXLive) and waiting for TeXLive's release
without any burden of extra cost. This is in recognition of their patience
and interest in TeXLive."

People who are fortunate to have a fat bandwidth can grab the images from
sarovar.org. They are free to make copies and distribute, but respect the
licences of the packages.  Says CVR: "Recently, Springer-Verlag copied
TeXLive 7 CD and distributed along with one of their LaTeX books with
explicit instruction on the CD that 'contents of the CD should not be copied
or distributed' which is a clear violation of the licences of thousands of
packages in the CD.  By doing such a thing, one invites the wrath of TUG,
FSF and obviously runs the risk of litigation."

Compilation of the TeXLive CD is the result of the hard work of hundreds of
developers' for several months apart from the terrific work of several
thousand contributors who wrote all the software solely for the benefit of
the user community.  By purchasing the TeXLive, the cost of which is only
that of the media and shipping, you promote a great movement that stands for
software freedom, adds the Indian TeX Users Group.

	INDIANISATION AHOY: That untiring campaigner on Indianisation
	issues, G Karunkar <karunakar@indlinux.org> -- incidentally, we're
	awaiting this guy at the 'Paradise LUG' chapter in Goa later this
	month -- informs us that IndLinux Milan CD 0.7-2 alpha has been
	released. Some time back the final release notes were yet to be up. 
	But, says he, you can track the release notes at
	http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxMilanReleaseNotes

	Download the ISO from (total size 531MB). 
	http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11495

	Features: * Based on Morphix 0.4-1 *  Gnome 2.4 desktop, OpenOffice
	1.1rc3 , evolution 1.4 * Extra apps added: Yudit, gtranslator,
	pfaedit, kbabel, gettext, balsa * Boot options for all major Indian
	languages added. Hindi (hi) -default, Bengali (bn), Gujarati (gu),
	Kannada (kn), Malayalam (ml), Marathi (mr), Oriya (or), Punjabi
	(pa), Tamil (ta), Telugu (te) * Language can be selected boot time
	by passing lang=code parameter eg. for Bengali, give morphix
	lang=bn; for Marati give, morphix lang=mr * Install to harddisk
	(morphix installer) work successfully, but use if carefully.

	Indic specific additions * two new fonts Gargi (devanagari), Padmaa
	(gujarati) - from http://www.indictrans.org * Locales for Bengali,
	Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi * Misc changes: switching between
	layouts in gkb appled done by \"Shift L + Shift R\" combination. 
	Default keyboard layout - Hindi , additional Bengali, Gujarati,
	Kannda, Malayalam, Tamil. OpenOffice configured to work with Hindi.
	Yudit also configured with Indic fonts & keyboard layouts

	Track IndLinux Demo CD development at
	http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxDemoCd

Check this mailing list, on Indianisation of GNU/Linux, at
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indlinux-news

	BILINGUAL WEB-PAGES: Harveer wanted to know how to make bi-lingual
	webpages with GNU/Linux.

	There are two ways to it you could use font based method, where you
	select the font and type, so font tags are used for it, and that
	particular font has to be installed on client side. Dynamic fonts
	can be used, but they won't work on GNU/Linux. Another way is to
	make webpages in unicode. On GNU/Linux you can use Redhat 9/MDK 9/
	Morphix, all of which have Gnome 2.0. Here you will have to do all
	html coding urself. Mozilla composer can also be used, but its not
	yet supporting rendering (the stable releases). Check out
	http://www.geocities.com/alkuma/seehindi.html, that should help you
	get started. On using yudit read
	http://www.indlinux.org/doc/yuditguide.html

Karunakaran says that they are customising Morphix to make it
indian-language enabled, with commonly needed apps. Quite some people have
show interest in that. 

Says he: "You can chekout what we are doing at
http://www.indlinux.org/wiki/index.php?IndLinuxDemoCd Also check with
http://smc.sarovar.org (the Malayalam localisation group). They made a
malayalam knoppix CD and it was probably used in some projects."

	FROM MALAYSIA: The Malaysian National Computer Confederation (MNCC)
	and Advanced Technology Studies Centre (atSC) have embarked on a
	plan to promote open source technology to schools in the country. As
	a start, they have initiated a pilot project, with sponsorship from
	local businessman Datuk Siew Nim Chee, to train teachers in open
	source software (OSS), says a report forwarded by Doug Loss
	dloss@bloomu.edu http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31762.html

GARGI RENDERS FINE WITH MOST TEXTS: Prof Nagarjuna G.
<nagarjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in> reports from Mumbai that the release of Gargi
1.1 seems to be rendering fine with most texts.  Mozilla build 1.5b with CTL
enabled is also available for download (15mb) from the link:
http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/ObjectType/lcalznproject/
http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/Objects/mozilla/
http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/Objects/howtoFont/ Says this doughty
campaigner: "Please give feed back on both mozilla and the fonts. We are
soon starting xmodmaps for indian languages other than inscript and the
printing problem. I will also write soon about the notes on the meeting that
we had regarding printing problem where developers from NCST and RedHat
participated along with Karunakar and myself."

	INTL OPEN SOURCE NETWORK: Irfan Khan <khania2@super.net.pk> draws
	our attention to a report on the International Open Source Network
	at http://www.developmentgateway.org//ict/dg-contribute/item-
	detail?item_id=350274&version_id=210589&from=alert

	The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of
	Excellence for free and open source software (FOSS) in the Asia-
	Pacific Region. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is tasked
	specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human
	resources in ...

INVITE TO JOIN THE 'LITTLE LEAGUE': Kunal <kunalbharati@yahoo.com> from Navi
Mumbai would like to draw the attention of smaller LUGs around India to join
the 'Little League', a network meant to promote GNU/Linux in the smaller
regions of the country.

He suggests that it might be "a good idea to mail the invitation to owners
of there respective glugs (GNU/LUGS) i.e. glug listed on (the indian FLOSS
magazine LinuxForYou) LFY ... and mention there that this list is not for
posting and technical problems ... but for discussion about activities that
each and every glug is doing".

Sukrit from Pondicherry is the founder of the Little-League concept. Active
campaigners from the smaller LUGs are specially invited. To join, send a
blank email to little_league-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
YOUR INPUTS and criticism to this newsletter are welcome.  Contact us at
fred at bytesforall dot org COPYLEFT 2003. May be freely circulated provided
entire text and credits are left intact. FN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net