Checkout some snaps of event
Download some goodies
LUG-Indore celebrates software freedom by organizing an annual Linux and OSS event. This year also we organised one such technical fest, on 2nd Nov, at DAVV Auditorium. This event is organized to affirm, promote and encourage the development of Free and Open Source Software. This event is an opportunity to bring together people and create awareness related to OSS and Linux.
Event started at sharp 11 AM. Dr Chandwani, Director, IET, DAVV was chief guest of the event. Mr Amal Singh, CEO, ScorpioInformatics and Dr Srinivasan, Project Scientist, NRCFOSS, Anna University, Channai were special guest. Dr Suresh Jain, HoD, Comp Sc, IET, Mr Ramesh Thakur, IIPS, Dr Murthy, Principal, CITM and HoDs of several other Engg Colleges were event’s ‘guest s of honor’. Ms Vinita, 3rd year Comp Sc student of Swami Vivekanad Engg College, did the compering. After presenting welcome bouquet to honorable guests, Dr Chandwani was requested to give a welcome speech. He told about IET’s initiatives to promote FOSS in it’s campus. After this Mr Amal Singh shared his industry experiences on FOSS. Since his web hosting company runs all Linux Servers, he gave some real world stats about Linux and FOSS in general. He also announced that ScorpioInformatics will offer free hosting to any educational institute participating in Linuxindore2007 as a gesture of affection to LUG-Indore.
After this Dr Srinivasan is requested to give keynote address. He talked about NRC-FOSS and it’s objectives. He told National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) aims to contribute to the growth of FOSS in India through Research and Development, Human Resource Development, Networking and Entrepreneurship Development, as well as serve as the reference point for all FOSS related activities in the country including the creation and maintenance of this national FOSS Portal. The National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) is funded by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), Govt. of India, and is being managed jointly by the Chennai division of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing(C-DAC) and AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University,Chennai.C-DAC is an Autonomous Scientific Society of the DIT, Govt. of India and AU-KBC Research Centre is an Autonomous Research Centre of the Anna University. He also Discussed about setting up a research centre at Dept of Comp Sc, IET to promote FOSS and encourage students to work on FOSS projects. He praised the efforts of LUG Indore to push Linux. He promised NRC-FOSS will support LUG-Indore for their future efforts.
After this a series of seminars and lectures started on various topics related to Linux and FOSS in general. First of all a presentation on ‘The wonderful world of Linux’ was delivered by Prabhat, Moderator, LinuxIndore. It was all about Linux history, present, future, features, applications offered. It was well received by audience.
Next was a demo of 3D Desktop capabilities of Linux, which was presented by Prabhat. Audience was stunned looking at the features and flexibilities offered by 3D Desktop package ‘Compiz-Fusion’. Mandriva-2008 Free edition was used to show 3D effects. Prabhat demonstrated many features of ‘Compiz-Fusion’, like water effects, wobbly windows, animation, cube rotation etc. It was really enjoyed by the audience.
After this wonderful visit to 3D world, Ankush and Abhishek, both from IIPS, DAVV presented a seminar on ‘Firefox - Next Generation Web Browser’. They talked about it’s origination, present status and future releases. Abhishek talked about the Firefox 2.0 history and feature list of Firefox 3.0. Ankush talked about the cool features of FF as well as extensions and plug-ins. He talked about popup blocker, privacy features, session management, tabbed browsing, spell checking, search facilities and some more features of FF. He also talked about Add-ons and plug-ins. Audience really enjoyed the seminar looking at the feature list and flexibilities offered by FF.
After this there was a 30 mins break, for lunch and snacks. Session started again at 2:30 PM. Mr Vaibhav from The Stepping Stones, presented a wonderful seminar on ‘PHP and Ajax – future of web’. It was well received by audience. He talked about the security and flexibilities offered by PHP in Web Development. He compared two main stream web technologies LAMP and .Net and proved .Net is poorer in terms of technology and it’s licensing policies, ultimately results in costly solutions. But LAMP being the leading framework for web development offers a good array of tools to make good programs and that too in little cost.
Next Mr Ajeet Maya, VP, Engineering, Sofmen Technologies, shared his company’s experiences with Linux and FOSS. He told they could cut down production cost upto 70% after migrating completely to Linux. All their servers as well as development desktops are Linux based. He also talked about the flexibilities offered by FOSS in terms of licensing issues. He said, IT industry should adopt FOSS as it can not only save money but can let them become innovative.
Next seminar was on OpenOffice. It was presented by Prabhat and Govind. This talk was about OO and it’s packages. Prabhat talked about advantages, availability, packages of OO. After the presentation, there was a demonstration on how to use different packages of OO, like, Writer, Calc, Base and Impress. Audience was convinced to use OO as office suite, as it offers lots of tools, full compatibility with other office suites, virus free and most importantly freely available.
After this C/C++ and Java programming tools were demonstrated by Prabhat. Anjuta was demonstrated to the audience. It is compared to other IDEs and proved that it beats every other IDE in terms of features and tools. Few programs of C and C++ were made using Anjuta as IDE and most of the audience was convinced to work on Linux to complete their day to day programming assignments. After this Java programming was demonstrated using Eclipse IDE. The features and tight integration with other applications and tools were sufficient to convince audience to use Eclipse on Linux for their Java programming tasks. This was very informative session and audience received it very well.
Next Kapil and Prabhat demonstrated ‘Live CD Installation’. Prabhat talked about partitions, naming conventions and some more hardware related issues. Booting process was explained. After it, Kapil demonstrated Linux Live CD installation. He showed, how to create partitions on disk, choose applications and install them.
Next was the most interesting and most interactive session, “Quiz Time” . Vinita asked questions based on Linux and OSS, and distributed prizes to the winners. Dr Murthy was the judge of the quiz.
At the end of the event Mr Murthy was requested to give guidance for future. He praised the efforts of LUG Indore. He told that his Engg College is completely running on Linux. His students are working on several projects based on LAMP and Java. He invited other engineering colleges to join the party. He shared his experience of Linux Vs MS-Doz. He said, since RGTU (Rajeev Gandhi Technical University, MP) has tied his hands , as there are few programming labs on MS technologies, otherwise he would have never ever let MS-Doz into his campus. LUG is pleased to hear this. If this spirit comes to all Engg Colleges, may be we can come out of trap of proprietary softwares.
Event was ended by a vote of thanks by Prabhat, Moderator, LUG-Indore. He said, LUG-Indore is very thankful to all the distinguished guests Dr Chandwani, Dr Srinivasan, Mr Amal Singh. He especially thanked Dr Suresh Jain, Dr Murthy, Mr Ramesh Thakur for their efforts to make this event a great success.
No event is successful without active participation of volunteers and Linuxindore-2007 was not an exception. Prabhat thanked all the volunteers Harshit, Ankur, Amey (interestingly there were 3 Ameys !!!), Lalit, Vinita, Archit, Ashutosh, Namit, Purvesh, Govind, Kapil (2 Kapils !!!), Jitendra, Ankush, Abhishek, Praveen, Gaurav, Varun, Chetan. One name needs special mention Mayank Goyal, LUG-Indore’s official treasurer. He also designed all the promotional materials of Linuxindore-2007. He co-ordinated the event with Prabhat, as well.