IT MIGHT BE a bit too late to talk about an August-datelined issue of a magazine, but ... better late than never.
Just to highlight some of what one found interesting in the AUGUST 2005 issue of Linux For You magazine. Send in your comments and feedback to lfyedit@efyindia.org
INDIA IS BEGINNING to contribute to the global FLOSS pool, and thereby erasing the stain of being just a net taker rather than a net contributor. Results are just in from the first Code Scholarship challenge, initiated by the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology (KreSIT), IIT Bombay, and Red Hat India. It is designed to encourage FLOSS developers in India. Some 2000 students registered. Finally, 34 teams bagged awards. First was VPS 1.6.0 (Virtual Private Server) developed by the Army Institute of Technology, Pune. Next was Octave-GTK by the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli; and ranked third was a College Information System, developed by the Institute of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad. Prizes totalled a million rupees in all (Rs 10 lakh!)
* An advert from Collabnet says it is hiring people with over five years experience in developing or testing web-based enterprise applications. See http://www.collab.net/cspl.html * Multi-boot your system with dual hard disks. Install and experiment with multiple distributions on one system, which has two hard disks. * Sri Lanka is having a series of major Free/Libre and Open Source Software events. See http://www.fosssl.org * Mandrive Limited Edition 2005. * Intel Compilers 9.0 for Linux * Communication between independent processes by FIFO. * An interview: Jim Stallings, general manager Linux of IBM. * Working with databases in Mono. See how to connect to and query a database in Mono, as it can communicate with almost all FOSS and commercial databases. * BEA brings Java onto Linux. * vsftp -- securing your data behind seven walls. * Easy database development using Rekall. * JCodeFlow, debugging made easy.By Raja RK * Apache for PHP Developers (Part I). By Nirav Mehta. * Sunbird and iCalendar. Sharing calendars. By Reuven M Lerner, courtesy Linux Journal. * Administering Linux Systems. By Sanjay Gupta, Novell, Bangalore. * Network Simulator: an open source design and testing tool. Aniket Jain. * Object creation and garbage collection in Java. By Lakshmi Narayanan N of HCL Technologies. * Blocks functions in Ruby. By Premshree Pillai. Technical Yahoo! * XML Python Part II. By Anand Pillai, H-P India. * Backups in a Snap with rsnapshot. Nilayam Sharma.Silicon Valley.
USER GROUPS IN INDIA: Currently, the list spreads over two pages (a few which I tried to check out had bad links though). From 80+ the number of LUGs, FSUGs and GLUGs has grown to 139! Next challenge: let's keep them active!
FOR NEWBIES: * Learn how to use Mozilla, the popular Web browser, to find information on the Net. * GIMP, a great image enhancement tool. Get exposed to GIMP and design whatever you want to.
Brief updates: * PHP 4.4.0 is released * Qt 4.0 is now available * Firefox 1.5 on its way
TOP TEN [GNU]LINUX GIZMOS: Motorola E680i [1] smartphone with 2GB storage camera and touch-screen; Samsung's multi-functional device called the Minikit [2] (camcoder, digital camera, MP3 player, voice-recorder, memory stick and Web cam!); Archos' Pocket Media Assistant PMA400 [3] with a 30GB hard drive, wireless Internet connectivity and direct video recording capability from TV; and Sony Ericsson's robotic camera ROB-1 [4] packed with a VGA camera and four LEDs.
There's also the TomTomGo [5], Linux-based in-car GPS navigation system; Jentro Technologies GmbH (Germany) Jentro Car [6] central technology platform for the network and control of in-car functions of a Mercedes; Citizen Watch and IBM Research's WatchPad [7]; Smartvue home security and surveillance system [8]; all-in-one AmstradE3 videophone [9] (to send email, SMS/MMS messages, surf the net and videoconference); GNU/Linux-powered broadband terminal/IP phone [10] from MontaVista.
EMBEDDED LINUX gadgets are doing great in Asia, specially in Japan, China and Taiwan, where major players like NTT DoCoMo and NEC are endorsing the GNU/Linux OS. Encore Software Ltd, the makers of the Simputer http://www.ncoretech.com and signup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/simputer announced recently plans to launch another GNU/Linux handheld called Mobilis, a "mobile desktop". Mobilis family of products includes Mobilis STN, Mobils TFT and Mobilis SofComp. The first two are tablet computers, that can bridge the gap between PDAs and laptops. SofComp is a low-cost desktop.
THIN DOWN ON [GNU]LINUX: Linux may be struggling to break Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop, but the thinner, leaner and meaner thin clients based on the [GNU]Linux OS are fast becoming the choice of both public and private enterprise. Some popular GNU/Linux thin clients are HP t5525 and t5125, Neoware Capio One and Eon, Netvoyager Lithium LX-104- and LX-1030 and LX-1020, Wyse Winterm 5150SE.
SOFTWARE ON THE CDs: MRBS or Meeting Room Booking Schedules; Alfresco for content management, Firefox, Xine, ackerTodo (Web-based to-do list manager), XMMS, D4X (download manager), BMDFM (binary modular dataflow machine), GIMP (GNU image manipulation programme), Pavuk (to mirror contents of WWW documents or files), Pundict (open source Punjabi dictionary for the Windows platform), PyPE (Python programming editor for the Windows platform), pxlib (simple and small C library to read and write), LibGTop (fetches system related info like CPU load, memory usage, etc), Xandros 3.0 OCE, easy to install.
[1] http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/0,,103,00.html [2] http://www.samsung.com/za/products/camcoder/minikit/avphh100b1e.asp [3] http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500595_specs.html? sid=j22323o2byk3sy3bcksky4 (long URL) [4] http://www.sonyericsson.com/rob1/main.asp?LangID=1 [5] http://www.tomtom.com/ [6] http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7438726816.html [7] http://www.research.ibm.com/trl/projects/ngm/index_e.htm [8] http://www.smartvue.com/ [9] http://www.armstrad.com/e3_intro.html [10] http://www.mvista.com/
FN