I don't seem to fathom the fixation of comparing Desktops?

To put it very simply Desktops are for personal users!

In govt / educations / business uses the stress should be on purpose built applications. There is no need for fancy desktops!

MS is a PERSONAL COMPUTER user (CONSUMER) oriented product. I have seen friends and colleagues buying upgrading their pcs just so that they can talk about it with your friends / colleagues who have just got it. Its like your wife demanding a fully loaded BMW to drop the child to the school just because your neighbour does it in her fully loaded MERC!! It the MO thing, MO GRAPHICS, MO MULTIMEDIA, MO MONEY .......

I bet 90% of the users don't use 90% of its features.

Specially in case of India S/w for govt / education / etc it should be no - nonsense, no frills attached, lean and trim and think Linux fits the bill.

Parimal Shah

-----Original Message----- From: linuxers-admin@mm.ilug-bom.org.in [mailto:linuxers-admin@mm.ilug-bom.org.in]On Behalf Of linuxers-request@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: 16 April 2002 07:31 To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Linuxers digest, Vol 1 #451 - 10 msgs

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Promoting Linux (Philip S Tellis) 2. qmail book (Girish Hanchate) 3. Re: Promoting Linux (nici bhatt) 4. Re: qmail book (ranjeet@nttindia.com) 5. Re: qmail book (Parag Mehta) 6. Promoting Linux (RNS) 7. Re: Promoting Linux (Keyur Shroff) 8. Promoting Linux (Darshan.Wakchaure@lntinfotech.com) 9. Re: Promoting Linux......a la carte (Trevor Warren) 10. Re: Promoting Linux (Philip S Tellis)

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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 18:07:28 +0530 (IST) From: Philip S Tellis philip.tellis@iname.com To: Linux Users linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Keyur Shroff wrote:

"Linux India Initiatives"

Information may kindly be furnised under the following heads :

1. Linux - The need;
2. Demand profile segments - such as Home, Education, Research, Govt, Defence, Business, Embedded systems etc.

India is a developing country, and as such, we should look to finding low cost solutions while not compromising on quality. While our software industry has been successful world-wide in providing solutions for business consumers, software as a product remains too costly within our own country. We must also realise that much of the software in use within our country comes from outside. This in turn translates to a large sum of Indian Rupees flowing into foreign companies.

Most proprietary software comes with a licence agreement that restricts the redistribution of the software. Persons who do redistribute the software, in violation of the licence, are labelled as software pirates. While it is accpeted that software piracy is a problem and must be curtailed, it is also possible that we aren't striking at the cause of the problem.

What most software consumers fail to realise, is that software is not a product that one buys off the shelf like a tube of toothpaste. The reproduction costs of software are negligible and there are no raw materials involved. The software industry is therefore falls into the services sector rather than the manufacturing sector. More time is spent in providing support for software than is spent in developing it.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that the software itself should not be priced highly, but after sales service and support should be charged for.

This is where the GNU/Linux system fits in. The licencing terms of this system state clearly that anyone has the right to obtain and redistribute copies of the system. The software is provided free of cost.

This immediately affects the business of software pirates, as there is no way for them to sell at a lower price that which is already free. Further more, it translates into greater cost effectiveness for the consumer.

There then arises the question of support and services, which is what this sector is all about. As mentioned earlier, software falls in the services sector, and therefore, the primary business for linux vendors is in providing services.

This is one area in which India can play a big role, and provide these services to the rest of the world.

As consumers too, one must realise the difference between support contracts for proprietary software and free software. Proprietary support agreements give you support only for the systems that you have purchased support for. In other words, if you own ten systems, but only have licences for five of them, you will get support for those five only.

With free software, this is not the case. Any software contract that you sign with your vendor is independent of the number of copies of the software that you own. Most vendors will most likely just require that the distribution that you use was one published by them.

There are several segments in which linux can play a major role, and is ready to do so at present.

Linux and other free Unixen like *BSD have been very popular as servers. These systems are robust and have average uptimes that run into years. Add to this the ability of linux to emulate legacy file servers like Windows NT and Novell Netware (using samba and mars-nwe), and you have a system that can do well to replace any server running these systems.

Businesses could do well to adopt it if only on the server side. The reduction in costs would be tremendous, and uptime would increase.

One also needs to consider that a well set up linux system needs almost no system administration or maintenance.

When considering client side applications of linux, we would need to divide the business sector into those that develop software, and those that use it. Software developers may need to use systems for which they develop, ie, someone developing for Windows would have to test his software on Windows.

For persons who simply use software, it is much easier to use a linux based system. All software needed can be installed centrally, with client machines acting as simple X displays. This can significantly reduce the hardware requirements of the company, while also ensuring that a sysadmin needs to maintain only a single machine rather than the fifty machines that the company has.

Most office productivity tools are available for linux. Word processors, spread sheets, and presentation utilities exist with several variants avaialable depending on your preferences. Legacy applications written for DOS or Windows can be run in emulated environments like dosemu or Wine.

For research institutes, the main appeal of linux would have to be the large community that uses it and the spirit of sharing ideas between groups. In many ways, the development of the GNU/Linux system has proceeded in much the same way as science has progressed over the last two centuries. There is open collaboration between groups at distant locations with everyone benefitting.

With large numbers of universities around the world using some variant of unix or linux as their base systems, persons in India could benefit from the existing knowledge and experiences of these.

This large community of scientific users has resulted in a plethora of software written specifically to aid in research, and built to run on linux based systems.

Educational institutes, at least those running courses on engineering and computers benefit for the same reasons. Additionally, students of computer science and engineering benefit from having the source code of a working operating system to look at and experiment with. Regardless of the field of computer science that they specialise in, having access to the source code for the tools they use and possibly try to develop will help them eventually.

Another place where educational institutes can benefit is from the ready availability of projects that can be given to students as classroom assignments or semester projects. By working on an existing project, possibly collaborating with other developers around the world, the student gets a good idea of what it is like to work in a team and develop quality software, rather than writing the same old ten line assignments every year. Building a working software that is actually used by people, and then providing support to them builds in the student a sense of achievement and responsibility.

This can only work towards producing a much more capable work force graduating from college every year.

School education can also benefit from the use of linux. Cost reduction would be the primary reason. Schools would however benefit from the large amount of educational software available for linux. Students of higher classes can even be recruited to write software for students of lower classes. Computers are already taught in school at all levels, but what is taught leaves a lot to be desired.

At present students learn to use specific software, as a result of which, they are none the wiser when confronted with a new system. Giving students some variety in what they learn, or even allowing them to learn how to get the job done rather than how to use a tool would leave them better off later in life.

There is of course a lot more that I could write about this topic, but right now my eyes are closing and I can't stay focussed any longer.

Will try and write something about why developers benefit from developing for free software.

Ciao,

Philip

-- When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.

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Message: 2 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 06:19:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Girish Hanchate girishhan@yahoo.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: [ILUG-BOM] qmail book Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi,

can anybody suggest same good book on qmail on linux or any informative sites on qmail.

Rgds girish

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Message: 3 From: "nici bhatt" nici_bom@hotmail.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 13:51:30 +0000 Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi It is really good to know that out government is willing to promote linux , it will be really good idea to push this at extreme level so no doubt can cause this idea a premature death.

Here I have some points to raise my voice for, and they are as we should not make any point which make this operating system is nice for email,firewall and proxy...etc. specific as I have seen lot’s of people use linux for this purpose so my request to all of you is don’t try to prove that by doing this we can save lot’s of money because we know that this true but on other side you are doing injustice to all open source developers who have put their efforts for porting other application and this full scal os limits to one corner.

So moral of story please come out of this mind frame that this is all linux can do. There are lot many things that can be done. So keep vary general attitude and try to justify it commercially as well as technical aspect of the operating system, I mean limitation of other operating system, commercial and technical comparison chart and availability.

I will defiantly like to write some article on this issue but that will take some time so till then you people can contribute lot’s .

Happy usage of linux.

_________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

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Message: 4 From: ranjeet@nttindia.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 14:11:26 GMT Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Re: qmail book Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi girish.

http://www.qmail.org/ http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html http://www.lifewithqmail.org/

our trevor's SITE : (works very well)

http://www.qmailtheeasyway.com/

now before posting always make sure that u have checked the LIST archives, www.google.com/linux. Don't just get spoonfeeded by others ..... they will like it if u do some part on ur own and come up with the difficulties while installing/configure/tweaking or something like it .....

if I'm wrong, please correct me luggers..

Regards, Ranjeet

Girish Hanchate writes:

Hi,

can anybody suggest same good book on qmail on linux or any informative sites on qmail.

Rgds girish

---

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Message: 5 From: "Parag Mehta" pm@linuxindia.org To: "linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in" linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:29:01 +0550 Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] qmail book Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi Girish,

lifewithqmail.org

or book on qmail from sams publichers very good book..

best regards,

pmehta

On Mon, 15 Apr 2002 06:19:36 -0700 (PDT), Girish Hanchate wrote:

Hi,

can anybody suggest same good book on qmail on linux or any informative sites on qmail.

Rgds girish

---

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Message: 6 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:35:55 +0530 (IST) From: RNS shastrakar@hbcse.tifr.res.in To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi group,

Trevor good work , but as Keyur said , try not to defame MS ( though they deserve to ) , remember who your audience are ( Somewhere u mentioned M$crosoft-please remove it). Moreover, few stuffs which ppl think makes win score over gnu-linux (atleast on thier desktop ) is user- friendlyness, though this hurdle has been tackled to large extend- ppl dont realize it. I think that has to b stressed more , along with linux strong points like security and upgradibility. Other stuffs seems to b fine.

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Message: 7 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 19:21:20 +0000 (GMT) From: Keyur Shroff keyur@konark.ncst.ernet.in To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your valuable inputs. I have just sent them mail requesting them to give us one more day to send final draft. So tomorrow I'll reorganize contents given by many of you and then send it. By that time if you still want to add something please send your mails by tomorrow before 1 PM.

Thanks, Keyur

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Message: 8 To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux From: Darshan.Wakchaure@lntinfotech.com Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 20:14:30 +0530 Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

This is a multipart message in MIME format. --=_alternative 000EE73665256B9C_= Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi, A little more from my side too. Linux is/should be treated just like anyother Desktop OS. Like Unix and Windows , Linux can be made as a server with much more flexible environment . At the same time this OS has more more power as a Desktop OS as compared to any other operating system in the market. The strength lies in understanding and working with the utilities provided by the open source community. These are simple marvellous. Also the graphics resolution on the desktop of this os is far better than Windows. Linux gives the feel of Unix and the easy of Windows- a perfect os.

Cheers, Darshan

The trouble with life is, you're half way through it before you realize it's a "do it yourself" thing. =========================== _\ /_ mail-me-at : darshanw@blackcodemail.com / \ ===========================

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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif"><br> Hi,</font> <br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">A little more from my side too. Linux is/should be treated just like anyother Desktop OS. Like Unix and Windows , Linux can be made as a server with much more flexible environment . At the same time this OS has more more power as a Desktop OS as compared to any other operating system in the market. The strength lies in understanding and working with the utilities provided by the open source community. These are simple marvellous.</font> <br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">&nbsp;Also the graphics resolution on the desktop of &nbsp;this os is far better than Windows. Linux gives the feel of Unix and the easy of Windows- a perfect os. </font> <br> <br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Cheers,<br> Darshan</font> <br> <br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">The trouble with life is, you're half way through it before you realize it's a &quot;do it yourself&quot; thing. <br> ===========================<br> _\ /_ &nbsp; &nbsp;mail-me-at : darshanw@blackcodemail.com<br> &nbsp; / <br> ===========================</font> <br> --=_alternative 000EE73665256B9C_=--

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Message: 9 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 10:05:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Trevor Warren trevorwarren@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux......a la carte To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

--- Keyur Shroff keyur@konark.ncst.ernet.in wrote:

From: Keyur Shroff keyur@konark.ncst.ernet.in To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Many many thanks Mr Trevor Warren. You have >nicely

[snip] hello there Mr. Keyur, Trevor here.........

U can just say sir, i am just doin my bit for the community that has given me somethin that i live for and i am proud to be part of.

I think Philip has put forward some very good points wich you could make incorporate in ur presentation abt Linux advocacy.

If there is anyway i may help to push Free Software usage in our upcoming policies of E-governance .........just mail me nd let me know. Attack will b the buzz word...;)

Trevor Warren

put your thoughts. It seems to me that not many people on this list are really interested in promoting Linux. Or that they have not taken this very seriously. Or they don't have much faith in our Government.

Thanks and regards, Keyur

===== ( >- GNU/LINUX, It's all about CHOICE -< ) /~\ __ http://www.qmailtheeasyway.com __ /~\ | ) / mailto: trevorwarren@yahoo.com \ (/ | |_|_ \ Urgent ->9820349221@maxtouch.co.in / _|_| ___________________________________/

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Message: 10 Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 23:46:14 +0530 (IST) From: Philip S Tellis philip.tellis@iname.com To: Linux Users linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Promoting Linux Reply-To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in

Sometime Today, Trevor Warren assembled some asciibets to say:

Open source software is different from traditional software in that it holds no secrets -- the software's 'source code' is free for the end user to examine, modify, or build on. With traditional

Not true. Open source simply gives you access to the source code. It makes no provision for the modification or redistribution of that code. Free software gives you that freedom.

The Internet itself is Open Source Software's poster child, since it was constructed of components built almost exclusively under the Open Source model. Many, in fact, have likened Linux today to the Internet in 1990 (used only by the technically savvy, seeing yearly exponential growth, completely open, and perhaps poised to take over the world).

The seeds for the Internet were sown in 1969. It grew as a large experiment and yes, was used by geeks and scientists only.

Open Source is doing what God, government, and market have failed to do. It is putting powerful technology within the reach of cash-poor

Well, not what God, or government have failed to do. It's just that corporates have tried to stop it forever. The concept of free software has been around as long as there have been programmers. Proprietary software is only about 30 years old.

Philip

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