This is what I got my hands on yesterday, it is new revised Syllabus for 11th and 12th grade. Needless to say that I am thrilled with this news

For the uninitiate, this is the turning point we have been waiting for that would take Linux to every computer user. Imagine millions of students who are aware of what Open Source Software and Linux is before they join universities. Who in their right mind is going to use Vi$ta after trying out openSUSE 11.0 in all it’s compiz glory?

openSUSE-Education is also better placed to cater to this immediate huge demand for Linux distribution specifically tailored for education. With KIWI-LTSP the school administration does not have to worry about getting every computer installed with the OS that is required to meet this new education board’s directive. All that the computer department admins have to do is install KIWI-LTSP on one server to run as many PC they need.

Finally some sanity in our education system :))

Just back from a two day ZenWorks Linux Management training at Novell office in Bombay. On the third day, did a little bit of tourist thing, visited Kanheri Caves.

Here are some of the pictures.

Rest of the images here.

Back from 6 days of Paragliding pilot training course (P1), logged 7 minutes of flying time.

Full album here.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday tried building Compiz Fusion git packages, compiz-fusion-plugins-git packages, that has new cmake build system, are broken in home:cyberorg repo

Thursday getting everything organised for Symposium on Open Source Software this Saturday and Sunday

Phew!

Some Statistics:

• Over 100000 visitors in three days
• Novell sent 300KG of magazines, posters, caps to give away
• We “sold” 200 Sabayon Live CDs that runs Compiz Fusion out of box on any hardware
• We gave away over 100 openSUSE DVDs
• There were three seminars on Linux and Open Source out of total 10

Here are some pictures from the event(click the image for entire gallery).

Here are the designs that are going in print for the IT(BITA 2008) exhibition we are participating at Akota Stadium, Vadodara, India this 25 - 27 January 2007.

Handbill Front:

Handbill Back:

Calander/Bookmark:

Handbills are 8.5″x5.5″ and the calender is 7″x2″.

I am sure these handouts, live CDs and demo of Compiz Fusion in all its glory would raise little interest in what GNU/Linux OS is capable of and make Linux more popular.

On Sunday 4 pm I would be doing a presentation at the seminar hall highlighting all the goodies openSUSE brings to the home user.

An interview of yours truly
http://news.opensuse.org/?p=511

When guys like Richard Stallman are fighting to maintain the freedom of software developers and users, compiz-fusion project goes and picks a paid, closed source and proprietary software for it’s community forum

I had made my views quite clear when the discussions were going on and I am still not convinced that this is the thing to do. It seems there is no free alternative the guys who do all the hard work of maintaining the forums could use, so here it is. But then again, I also think that we could have found someone from such a large community who would be more than willing to take on the challenge of keeping the free forum running smoothly.

A bit dramatic, but I’ll quote this I just read on Jeremy Allison’s blog post Tablets from the Mountain.

“Freedom isn’t free
No, there’s a hefty in’ fee.
And if you don’t throw in your buck ‘o five
Who will?”

I was out attending a two day National Conference on Open Source Software here in Ahmedabad, India. Sparing couple of inspiring talks by prominent FOSS speakers, the entire event was a shame, I am sure the organizers worked very hard putting this event together, however as one participant put it “M$ would have done far better job of executing the event”.

There were two workshops on the second day, I attended “Development track” part, it is best that I do not mention anything about it.

I would like two days of my life back.

On the bright side, Ankit Patel who is leading a team of translators at Red Hat has promised to help with Gujarati translations of Compiz-Fusion, met up with one of our heroes C Umashankar who singlehandedly migrated the entire Tamilnadu State IT infrastructure(over 40000 desktops and servers) to SUSE Linux. We need more people like him around.

There were couple of guys from Mozilla foundation, Seth Bindernagel and Chris Hofmann who made a good impression about Mozilla’s role in making web experience better and safer. Switch to Firefox if you already haven’t.

Another good thing that was highlighted (although most participants lost it by that time) was http://www.icosindia.com/ initiative that would help nurture students interest in open standards and building open source applications for various industry verticals.

Hopefully, Novell will participate in the event next year and will be more appropriate to the name “National Conference”.

Words or pictures cannot replace the experience of actually being in mountains, but here are some anyway.

Enjoy