- Linux Workshop at Acharya Narendra Dev College ∞
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Our principal, Dr. Savithri Singh, feels that every computer science student in our college needs to be aware about FOSS and GNU/Linux. We’ve already had a Linux workshop for students last year, but that did not help achieve much as most students wiped out their Linux partition soon after the third semester where Systems Software/Tools was a subject. The college had a 3 day workshop from Jan 5th to Jan 7th for such students. We had Amit Karpe and Dnyanraj Mali from the Pune Linux Users Group fly to Delhi for our workshop. Because of them, for the first time, teachers allowed students to mess around with the computers in the college labs. After removing OpenLX that was installed during our last workshop, we had students installing Ubuntu 8.10 on all our machines. That was then replaced with a modified version of Kubuntu we call CSLinux because Canonical doesn’t bundle the packages we require on the disc they ship.
Now that students were familiar with installing Ubuntu/Kubuntu on the computers in college, they were confident to repeat the process at home. What students mainly worry about is migration of the data locked inside Windows. Since piracy isn’t tackled well in India, most users have all their data in proprietary formats on Windows. Playing your audio and video is not an issue because you can get the codecs on Synaptic. OpenXML is the biggest headache for most people. Unfortunately, OOo 2.4 is what comes with Intrepid Ibex. The simplest way to fix this is to upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3.0 or higher. All games are not fully compatible with Cedega, so you need to keep your Windows partition if you’re going to continue playing GTA IV. For non-gamers and those who don’t use Windows-specific applications, Linux can take up all the hard disk space.
Niyam Bhushan captivated the audience with his speech promoting FOSS, shocking the audience with his biased opinion on important issues. He believes that Microsoft retrieves the hard disk index of Windows users while they update their software through the internet. Apparently, with all that information, Microsoft sends legal notices to some users pirating software while ignoring some users who promise to report others who pirate software. I don’t think Microsoft needs a huge file index to spot software piracy. The Windows Genuine Advantage program reports enough information to Microsoft for them to spy on users, just seconds after Windows connects to the internet. Even though what Niyam said about Microsoft’s practices has little truth, I think he achieved what the whole team of OpenLX promoters couldn’t when they organised the workshop last time.
On Day 2, after Niyam’s speech on the “10 reasons not to switch to Linux”, we had an installfest where members of the college staff were guided through the install process. Computers in different parts of the college were brought in to the cluster lab, so that we could help long-time Windows users migrate to Linux. Over a 100 Linux CDs/DVDs were burnt for students and faculty members so that they could switch to Linux at home. We listed all the packages they would have to download at home to recreate the same Windows workflow on Linux. Vedant, with his presentation, simplified the process of downloading and installing these packages by helping participants use the terminal, Adept and Synaptic package managers.
Day 3 was reserved for student presentations. Sudhang, Ankit and Animesh along with Dr. Sanjay Chauhan organised the ‘Clustering and Parallel Programming for Dummies’ part of the workshop. Unfortunately, most people were really tired by the time Sudhang came to talk about Parallel Programming which is why he couldn’t stress too much on Monte Carlo Simulations, Map Reduce and the other algorithms he was implementing on the cluster. Soon after lunch, I talked about Virtualization, focusing mainly on Platform Virtualization. Ajaz and Reyaz helped people adjust to OpenOffice on Linux while listing the benefits of using OpenOffice over Microsoft Office. Priyanka presented ‘40 Everyday Linux Applications’ to show everybody how intuitive Linux applications can be. The final presentation – ‘Setup LAMP and install Drupal in 10 minutes’ – by Dnyanraj Mali was a great way to end the workshop.
We discussed the future meetings of our Linux Users Group.
Our Principal distributed the certificates and delivered the vote of thanks.
That was a great 3-day workshop which has helped our Linux Users Group expand with never-before-seen-support from students of the college.
- 10 comments
I actually never planned to talk about Monte Carlo Simulations and all that stuff in great detail. I’m glad people were bored. No scary questions
You depress me. I can’t even talk about Monte Carlo Simulations as you ponder about scary questions that people might ask.
YOU depress me, with your website..making……things..
What I found most surprising was that your college principal supports open source so vocally. Computer professor?
@Ankur: She even knows Richard Stallman. Actually she’s a botanist.
I am really impressed with this. Firstly, the college being so supportive which isn’t the case in many organisations.
I have always been wanting to do something like this with my main objective being to support awareness. I guess something like ‘install fest’ would be the best way to go about it. Or calling the cops and reporting all those pirated installs.
Really great work
@Ankur You’ll be more surprised if you see her talking about FOSS & Linux.. and you wont believe that she is a botanist… Amit & me were surprised after talking with her..
India needs many more such Principals..
@Dnyanraj Maybe it’s time to conduct such workshops in schools where awareness levels tend to be higher. Too bad that the Indian education system doesn’t sort out students and put them where they belong and colleges are left with those who don’t care much about what’s being taught.
windows is better.
@abhishek Am glad that all of you think it was good idea to hold a Linux workshop. Remember, the success was due to enthusiasts (like you) among students and thanx to Niyam / Amit karpe / Dnyanraj.
Lets hope the FOSS and Linux movement spreads to other colleges (of DU for a start!!). We have set an example that others can follow!!