FSUG-Kochi meet at St. Alberts College, Ernakulam

After a long gap I went to FSUG-Kochi meeting. We have got a new place to meet, St. Albert’s College, Ernakulam. I was a student of that college long back. Since the meet was on a Sunday, I couldn't meet any of my professors.

Aniwar of CUSAT shared his experience of Asia Source (http://www.asiasource.org/). Then we discussed what we could do to promote Free Software with the help of students of St. Albert’s College.

My suggestion was to start classes on free tools like perl, python, gcc etc. This could attract the students to the movement. Vimal wanted to give lectures on Free Software advocacy, first. IMO it may produce a negative result. Once they get used to the technology, we can tell them about the underlying spirit. They will accept it better.

Difference of ideologies … that is the main thing in Free Software groups. Unity in Diversity, with all the differences we unite to say one thing … we all love Freedom. Not only in software, in every aspect of life, we love to be free.

Missing you all ... my dear friends

Gone are those days ... it will never come back. What is left ... a few sweet memories of those days. Friends, I don't know where are you, all. Of course some of you are in touch with me. For the rest, I am making this group "MGBCA" in googlegroups.com.

Hope this will help us for a reunion ... some day ...

Record your occations

I bought a Camcoder (Sony Hi8 CCD-TRV228E) recently. Though I am not an expert in photography, I have a passion for it. Who don't like to be screened. Everyone does ... So am I.

Occations should be celebrated. Once they are screened ... they are hard copies which create nostalgia.

Its past, present and future ... what make life. Don't forget the past. We need to build up the future from the experiences we had in past. This type of devices help us to remember the past ... even when our memory leaks out.

You made me a Windows user :-(

I went long with my experiments with GNU and Linux. I became quiet expert in mailing solutions, webhosting, setting up firewalls, proxies, database servers et all.

In India, to find a job which demands Free Software skills alone, is not easy. Especially when you wish to stay in your home town etc.

Currently I am employed in a company which work on Microsoft Products alone. I work here as Senior System Administrator/Release Engineer.

My main task is to create deployment modules for their product. We use Installshield DevStudio 9. This is a new area of computing in my life. I could pick up soon. Now I am quiet ok with this.

I am learning scripting also now.

I really miss the easyness I had in Free Software world, but I am happy that I am in my home town, I meet my family at the end of the day ...

I am forced to love Microsoft also :-(

Windows, XWindow & Me

Just like many others, I too started computing with Microsoft Windows. It was Windows 98 an OEM pack. That time, at office I was using Novell 3.11 and DOS based applications. To be specific FoxPro 2.6 for DOS. I really liked FoxPro mainly because of its simplicity and flexibility. But it lack the full functionality of an RDBMS.

One day I heard about a new Operating System. That was "Linux". One of my friend who runs a computer training center had a copy of Redhat Linux 6.0. I lend that CD from him and tried to install on my home computer. My friend Girish also was with me. But we couldn't complete the installation, as the HDD partition are was confusing. We were afraid of the data lose in Win partition.

Later with the help of my training center friend, I partitioned my 4.3 GB hdd and installed Redhat. Some days later I found from a bookstall, PCQuest an IT Magazine, has Redhat 6.2 version in its current release. I bought that CD and installed 6.2.

I started experimenting on the new OS. Since I am from Windows world, I never had the habit of reading manuals, docs etc. I expected every thing possible thru mouse clicks :-)

That time Chip, another IT Magazine shipped a version of Corel Linux which was based on Debian. I encountered with a new package management system called .deb in Corel. The boot loader was graphical where as RHL had command line :boot

Installation also was far better with Corel. I had dialup connection from Dishnet. I failed to connect internet through Linux. I understood that there is a user community in Kochi called
Indian Linux User Group Kochi. I contacted the organiser of ILUG-Kochi. He told me that
there is a person who is expert in Linux at Kakkanad. His name is Raghavendra Bhat and he
uses Linux only in his home PC. I called Mr. Bhat ( We call him Bhat Sir) .

GNU is Not UNIX

Bhat sir aka ragu was using Debian GNU/Linux. He was kind enough to teach me the basics of the GNU Operating system. I came to know about GNU, Richard Stallman and GPL. That was a new world of information. The idea of Free Software facinated me. I was always a freedom lover.

I bought a copy of Debian GNU/Linux Potato from him and installed on my machine. I could configure dialup and I started using internet through my GNU box.

I started using vi, mutt, fetchmail, exim. I joined the Linux India mailing lists. Guys there helped me a lot. I started learning Linux. I went through the howtos, guides etc available on internet. Bhat sir also used to give me the documents he reads, cut in a CD.
That helped me to avoid huge telephone bills :-)

I removed Windows from my HDD. I started using Debian for all of my computing needs.

I documented my experiences with GNU/Linux and hosted in my site, www.kumarayil.net.

Days past, I am now part of Free Software Foundation - India. I volunteer as FSF-I Webmaster. I am in the working group also.

Thus I moved from Windows to Window (X window) , then to CLI (command line interface) and lived happily there after.

My First Blog entry

Hey, this is my first blog entry. There is nothing special to mention this time.

--
MDK aka Dileep M. Kumar