Beam Telecom (formerly Beam Cable), a popular ISP in Madhapur, Hi-tech area at Hyderabad is using Joomla for their portal. This screenshot was taken before they fixed their database migration :)

On September 19, 2009, Software Freedom Day at Hyderabad, I visited Devnar Foundation for the Blind, a follow-up to last weekends’ installation.

Most of their systems have been donated. So, there are different motherboards, and brands. Apparently, the local AMC support guy who had come today didn’t have drivers for different proprietary OSes, and for different motherboards. I then migrated their office computers to Fedora 11 :)

Now, they have HCL, Wipro computers running Fedora. I have disabled many start-up services, to boot the systems faster. I also adjusted Orca pitch, rate settings for clarity. It should take them some time to get accustomed to the American accent.

Thanks to Prof. Haasan, Department of Astronomy, Osmania University, I have deployed Fedora 11 repository (29 GB) at one of their department systems.

They are interested in creating a Fedora Spin for Astronomy, and release it, as this is the International Year of Astronomy. I have provided Rahul Sundarams’ e-mail contact to them.

Today, Sunday, September 13, 2009, I deployed Fedora 11, and Fedora 11 offline repository at Devnar Foundation for the Blind, Mayurmarg, Begumpet, Hyderabad, India.

They have been using a proprietary software on a proprietary system, and wanted to explore better alternatives in this regard.

I was given a 256 MB RAM system, with 40 GB hard-disk. This system did not have Internet connectivity. The offline repository really helped. Most of the systems are donated by companies for the school to use. The school follows the Andhra Pradesh State syllabus, and this year they have introduced Intermediate (after Board X). They write their exams on slate or on Braille paper (which I believe, is very expensive). Some students stay in the school hostel, while others’ are day scholars.

They do have one MountBatten Brailler (costing around 1,00,000 INR) which can produce output to a computer or a printer. It also spells out the input. I didn’t have time to test it with Fedora (serial, parallel ports).

A junior teacher, Miss. Shashi, did try out Orca with the Gnome shortcut keys, listening to Orcas’ audio output. She was able to navigate through the Gnome menus, and use Openoffice.org Writer. They did want spoken American English, which is default in Gnome. It will be good to have those Orca audio recorded in Telugu or other regional languages in India.

There were some very interesting questions like:

• Orca loads only after logging in – which spells out menus, the frame window that is selected, keys pressed etc. So, grub which loads prior to all these doesn’t announce the choice of kernel. So, how does one choose the right kernel?

• A sound can be played after gdm loads? Otherwise, they wouldn’t know if the system booted to gdm or not. If there are multiple user accounts, some application need to spell-out the login names?

• By default there is no shutdown sound in Fedora 11? How to set one?

• Some applications pop-up menus didn’t support tab feature, so one had to remember to use shortcuts like Alt+S to Save, or Alt+C to Cancel.

I shall check these requests with the Orca project team, and any other queries that they might have as follow-ups.

I would like to thank Padma Shri Dr. A. Saibaba Goud for giving me an opportunity to deploy the solution at their school. Thanks to Rakesh (“arky”) Ambati for introducing me to them, who also works for Braille Without Borders. Eric Ofori from South Africa will be following it up with support for the school staff (about 40 in number). If anyone who is coming to Hyderabad and who would like to help them, please do contact me offline.

With all due respect to the physically challenged, I did not take any photos.

Today, Saturday, August 22, 2009, I conducted a Fedora workshop at ACE College of Engineering, Ankushapur, Ghatkesar Mandal, Ranga Reddy District, Andhra Pradesh, India.

I have addressed “i-want-2-do-project. tell-me-wat-2-do-fedora”, “Packaging RPM”, “Badam Halwa of Embedded Systems” presentations. The attendees were Computer Science and Information Technology Department students, and faculty. I would like to thank Mrs. K. Jaya Bharathi, Head of the Computer Science Department, for coordinating with me for the past one month in organizing this workshop.

They don’t yet have a Fedora Lab. I have provided them with Fedora 10, 11 repositories for their offline use (53 GB). I have also given them Fedora 10, 11 DVDs.

Ghatkesar is 25 km from Hyderabad, and one hour drive from Hyderabad through NH-7.

As customary, here are some pictures taken during the visit.

I had conducted a Fedora workshop (“GNUtsav”) at National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala, Tripura, India on July 18-19, 2009.

I would like to thank the Fedora project for sponsoring the event. Special thanks to the student volunteers who worked hard in organizing the event. Mention must be made for the support of the faculty, Prof. Swapan Debbarma, Prof. Anupam Jamatia (“ajnr” on freenode), and Prof. Dwijen Rudrapal.

My presentation sessions included:

• i-want-2-do-project. tell-me-wat-2-do-fedora.
• Badam Halwa of Embedded Systems
• di-git-ally managing love letters
• Fedora Electronic Lab (demo)
• Packaging RPM – Red hot, Paneer (butter) Masala

The presentations are available from http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads.html

It has only been two years since this Institution has started. It is 25 km from Agartala city. The Institute has 50% reservation for State students, and 50% for students coming through an All India Engineering Entrance Examination. People speak Hindi, English, Bengali, and Kokborok.

Guwahati, Assam is the main connectivity for this part of the world, or, flying from Kolkatta, West Bengal is the other option. Subsidized rate flights are available from major domestic carriers in India. Helicopter service between North-Eastern States is also available, but, is expensive. Bus journey from Guwahati, Assam to Agartala, Tripura is very tedious, and might take atleast 24 hours. When passing through the dense forests, CPRF escort is required due to insurgency problems in forest areas.

Students have access to distros at the labs, as well as in the hostel. Power cuts are quite common here. Mobile cell coverage is nil or works at only few places. Internet connectivity is nil or very slow on campus. Hence, we have provided them with an offline Fedora 10 repository (around 24 GB) that they can use in their computers or in the LAN. Special thanks also goes to dgplug user group from Durgapur, West Bengal for the offline repos. There are few browsing centers in the city that students can use, but have to travel the distance from the campus. Work is in progress to provide students with a Fedora 11 repository.

Agartala is a very scenic, lush green, and very peaceful place. Hopefully when the construction work on campus is completed in the next six months, they will be better equipped with Internet access for communicating online, and for VoIP sessions.

As customary, here are few photos that I took during the trip.

I would like to thank the Free/Open Source Software user group members of Jaipur and the Jaipur Engineering College and Research Centre Foundation for organizing http://fosjam.in between May 16-17, 2009 at their college premises, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

The event has been organized in 10 days time, with heavy discussions on #lug-jaipur on irc.freenode.net. I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the students. The online registration rose to 280+.

We had students coming from outside Jaipur as well, and it was a mad rush. The organizers didn’t have the heart to say “no”, but, they still managed to accommodate 200 people. This, I assume, is the first time that this kinda workshop has been planned at this place. People, there is no need to panic! It is not the end of the world, yet, and this is not the last workshop that we are going to do in Jaipur.

The profiles of the user group members are at http://fosjam.in/about/about-lug-jaipur.

Special thanks to all of them for their energy, spirit, dynamism in organizing the event.

I also met students from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, (MNIT), Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology (SKIT), Gyan Vihar Institute of Technology et. al.

It was a pleasure to meet the Director of the Institution, Mr. Arpit Agarwal, a young, open-minded entrepreneur, who was very happy and eager to hear students talking about Free/Open Source. His continued support for this cause, is greatly appreciated. He is happy to help us in organizing more workshops for the young minds, or even a national FOSS unconference in Jaipur!

There are about 17+ colleges around Jaipur, and workshops have to be taken to other places like Kota, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner et. al. Most of them are affiliated to Rajasthan Technical University (RTU).

Some students are fluent in English. Most of them prefer to converse in Hindi. Of course, technical jargon is in English. So, it is mostly Hinglish.

A separate IRC session was organized to show people how to login and use IRC.

Lot of them use Fedora or some distribution, and are extremely happy with it. Those who enjoy it have realized the power of Free/Open Source Software. The others have started to realize that there is something important here that they can work with.

My presentations, code, documentation are available at http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads.html.

Some photos taken during the trip are at http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album56

The organizers could possible provide more concrete statistics on the event. Please bear for some time for people to get back their sleep, and you will hear more from blogs, event reports, photos.

I addressed the following topics for a Free Software workshop at NBKR Institute of Science and Technology, Vidyanagar, Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh, India on Saturday, May 2, 2009:

• Career opportunities with Free Software
• i-want-2-do-project. tell-me-wat-2-fedora
• Mailing list guidelines
• Communication guidelines
• Fedora sub-projects
• Embedded Systems concepts

I would like to thank Rajesh Sola, Lecturer, for organizing the workshop, and for coordinating with me for the past couple of months for this workshop.

The CS labs have Fedora installed. I have given them Fedora 10 DVDs and stickers (thanks to Rahul Sundaram) which they can distribute to other engineering departments.

Pointers to fedora mailing lists, IRCs have been given to the students.

Some photos taken during this trip and at the venue are available at: http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album55.

I would like to thank Prof. Ranjith Kumar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Government Engineering College (GEC), Barton Hill, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India for coordinating with me for the past one month for the National Seminar event on Embedded Design with GNU/Linux that was held on Saturday, March 21, 2009 http://fsc.gecbh.ac.in.

I would also like to thank the Directorate of Technical Education, and Kerala State Council for Science, Technology, and Environment for organizing the event.

I discussed basic concepts of embedded systems, and gave a demo of gEDA tools suite (gschem, pcb, qucs, iverilog, gtkwave) on Fedora 10.

Some photos taken during the visit are available at: http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album54

I would like to thank the organizers, sponsors of fossconf.in 2009, students, faculty, ILUGC members and well-wishers for a wonderful event. It was good to catch up with lot of ILUGC members after a really long time!

Please find my presentation slides on “Badam Halwa of Embedded Systems” at: [odp][pdf]

Few photos that I took are available in my /gallery.

More photos available in my /gallery.