Linuxers February 2009

linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

86 participants
76 discussions

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties
by Venkatesh Hariharan 09 Mar '09

09 Mar '09

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties http://osindia.blogspot.com/2009/02/draft-foss-manifesto-for-indian.html With elections approaching in April 2009, it was time to create a draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties. This is a first draft and I have written this keeping in mind that most Indian politicians would not be familiar with FOSS. Hence, the usage of simple language that anyone can understand. If you feel that any section here needs improvement, please let me know. Comments/suggestions welcome. venky ==== A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties The Free and Open Source Software community in India calls upon political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos. FOSS is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. The open, inclusive and participatory nature of FOSS is a natural fit for the vibrant traditions of Indian democracy. Since software is the foundation of the knowledge economy, India's IT infrastructure should be built on FOSS and not on closed, proprietary software systems. We believe that encouragement of FOSS will result in: * Development of the domestic IT industry * Creation of jobs * Encouragement of skills development and upgradation * Enable localization of software to Indian languages * Reduction of India's dependence on monopolistic proprietary software vendors * Encourage the usage of open standards * Bridging the digital divide * Rapid modernization and computerization of India's education system * Technology upgradation of India's Small and Medium Enterprises * Efficient usage of budget outlays for e-government * Faster technology development through Collaborative Innovation We call upon political parties in India to support the Indian FOSS community by: 1. Encouraging the use of FOSS in Indian education system. This will inculcate the virtues of collaboration, sharing and participation in children from a very young age and make computerization of schools affordable. 2. Eliminating proprietary software from the education syllabus and making the syllabus vendor-neutral, thus giving teachers and students the choice of software that suits their budgets and needs. 3. Using FOSS in e-government to the maximum possible extent and ensuring that government tenders are open and do not favor proprietary software vendors. All software developed with tax-payers money should be released under a FOSS license to encourage collaboration; and the sharing of code and best practices. 4. Mandating the usage of open standards that are free from royalties and vendor lock-in so that the interaction between the government and citizens happens in a free and open manner befitting a democracy. 5. Encouraging freely shareable, FOSS based knowledge repositories like Wikipedia in Indian languages. 6. Encouraging the usage of the collaborative model of FOSS in scientific research. Science thrives on collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. The current trend of privatizing knowledge leads to secrecy in science and reduces collaboration. We must use the FOSS model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of knowledge to spark a renaissance of knowledge in India. 7. Eliminating software and business method patents that have lead to huge amounts of litigation in developed countries. Indian traditions have held that knowledge grows by sharing and diminishes when hoarded. Patents on software and business methods grant undue monopolies on ideas and prevent independent invention and the sharing of knowledge. India has one of the most youthful populations in the world and it is important that they have access to the tools with which the information society is built. The freedom to modify the source code, the ability to share knowledge and build communities make Free and Open Source Software the best, long-term model for India's development. We therefore urge all political parties to encourage the usage of FOSS for India's development.

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High Resolution video conferencing.
by Rony 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

Hello, There is an advt. of CISCO where a group of people from China and Some European country come face to face virtually on huge screens. Is this really possible or just trick photography? If possible, it would not only help in overseas conferencing but also in huge office complexes where one has to travel a long distance or even a few floors to get to the boss's cabin or some place else. The normal video conferencing has a very small screen where one cannot even move one's head or it would get out of the visible area. With high resolution videos, a huge life size image is possible and groups of people can talk to each other. It has a fantastic effect and looks really good. Keeping aside the cost and availability of net bandwidth, is this possible with Linux. If it is not very expensive, could we actually setup a prototype in HBCSE during our forthcoming GLUG meets over the months? A LAN cable should provide good bandwidth for intraoffice video conferencing. We can link up two classrooms or the lab and classroom. We already have a projector and a 17/19" LCD screen. I am sure this has good commercial potential too for big corporate offices. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

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Mediawiki - How to get maintenance tags?
by Mehul Ved 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Hi, While putting up Rony's article, I felt the need to put up a maintenance tag[1] for the page to get attention to the requirements. I went through the Mediawiki guidelines to see that they have a defined template for it.. What would be the best way to use that template on ILUG-BOM wiki or any other personal wiki for that matter? 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Maintenance -- If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?

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Kubuntu 8.10 on LG X110 [Installation Report]
by Rony 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Hello, Today Kubuntu 8.10 was installed on the LG X110 netbook. Unlike Acer which has no recovery CD and uses a 20 GB hidden partition, LG's X110 comes with driver CDs and there is only one partition of 160 GB that's installed with Doze XP home. A Moserbayer DVD writer temporarily plugged into an external USB IDE HDD adapter was used as the external USB CD drive. After booting flawlessly into the Live session of Kubuntu 8.10, installation is pretty simple. When you come to the partitioning part, it stops at the first option to partition the disk 50-50 for Doze and Linux. Select your option and the rest of the installation is automatic. If you choose 50-50 then the first time you boot into Dose post installation, you will get a file system error and the scandisk option will pop up. Do not bypass it. Let it happen and it will restart the system after correcting the disk space entries. After that the system boots into doze normally. After installation run 'sudo apt-get update' and install multimedia support with 'sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-extras'. It is better to run this command in a terminal or gui terminal like konsole as the Java license agreement choices cannot be navigated properly through a GUI package manager like Adept, Synaptec etc. It will hang there. To add firefox3, simply use 'sudo apt-get install firefox'. Please note that Firefox 3 is a gnome package and it will download a bulk of gnome based support packages. For the webcam interface use 'sudo apt-get install luvcview' Luvcview is a nice software but the gui needs a little getting used to. Pictures clicked are good and in a raw format. You can later convert them into your favorite format. It does video recording too. While the Realtek LAN is up automatically, the Realtek wireless drivers need to be installed and that is done from this site http://julienpecqueur.com/tutoriaux/install_driverwifi.html The site is in French but the commands to be executed are in English so simply copy/paste them into a terminal. Remember, the 'uname -r' is to be replaced by the actual output of 'uname'r'. So do that first and make a note of it. Download the tarball and untar it using 'tar xzvf rtl8187se_linux_26.1023.0928.2008.tar.gz' then go ahead with the rest of the instructions. Basically you download the builder packages and build the drivers from the tarball. Then you save the modules into the respective locations. Bluetooth is still a gray area and hopefully it will get resolved soon. What is surprising is that peripherials like BT, Camera, Cardreader etc. do not show up in lspci. I will see if the output can be posted to the list. Maybe there is a patch in the Doze side to get these devices detected. Anyway the system is now up and running with Kubuntu 8.10 with LAN and Wireless support and Camera. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

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proposed pycon india
by Kenneth Gonsalves 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

hi, bangpypers are discussing a proposal to hold an Indian pycon conference in september. If you are interested, please check out the bangpypers mailing list archives and the wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/ProposalForPyConIndia -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

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Re-[Announce] Free Software camp for Ngo's and voluntary organizations, March 24-28, Madhya Pradesh India
by Rajeev Nair 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Hi all. We are pleased to announce our 7th free software(FOSS) camp called Ngo in a Box for Ngo's and similar interest groups,scheduled to be held from March 24-28 in Madhya Pradesh India. This is a 5 day residential workshop and limited scholarships are available to select participants who will be provided with free training ,boarding and lodging. Full details and application forms are available at our website http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org Application deadline is March 5th 2009 so hurry up! All those on the list who have contacts in Ngo's can pass on this information to them. regards rajeev nair Project Coordinator Ngo in a Box - South Asia rajeev.nair(a)mahiti.org

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] A small suggestion
by Sanjay Singhvi 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

When I said my comp crashed I meant that when I "hit the button" all that happened was that the power led glowed - no display and no led even for the hard disk. However, it turned out that is was more my hopes that had crashed. The BIOS had got corrupted and a call to Acer helpline fixed that. The comp is up and about again. BTW +1 from me. Sanjay

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Security fix for webcams
by jtd 26 Feb '09

26 Feb '09

http://valhenson.livejournal.com/29588.html Mic is not fixed yet.. -- Rgds JTD

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connecting to gmail via imap over squid
by sameer shinde 26 Feb '09

26 Feb '09

Hi All, I'm using squid3.0 as our proxy server to serve the internet users, which is working fine. Now I want users to access IMAP(say gmail on imap) over my proxy. Can anyone let me know, How do I do this? Is there any way I can do it with squid? Is there any other way? So far what I've read on google is, as squid is an http proxy, it only supports http/ftp protocol. not fully for even https. Is there any other way to proxy remaining protocols like imap/imap4/pop3/smtp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sameer Shinde. M:- +91 98204 61580 Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.

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[Info] More Netbooks.
by Rony 25 Feb '09

25 Feb '09

Hello, This is just for everyones' information that more manufacturers have jumped into the netbook bandwagon and one such model is from LG. A client of mine bought it from Vijay Sales for 19K. Specs:- LG X110 10" screen 1.2 Kgs 2.5+ Hr batter life Atom Processor 945 Mobo 1 GB RAM 160 GB HDD 1.3 MP camera 3 USB 1 VGA LAN and Wireless (lspci showed them as Realtek devices and the wireless was not detected by Lenny Live) Bluetooth One MM card slot Speakers. Mic and H/P sockets Preloaded with doze home edition I found the screen to very bright but the camera was darkish, compared to the Aspire One. The dealer told him that the camera can be made bright through software settings but I have not tried it. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

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Linuxers February 2009