Thanks to all those who attended the FOSS session on “Emacs a day keeps the vi-zing away” on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at Department of Astronomy, Osmania University.

The key bindings used in the session are available at emacs-a-day-keeps-the-vi-zing-away.txt

Eighteen people attended the session. We explained few key bindings, and then the participants tried it out on their systems. If they got stuck, then we helped them out. We waited for everyone to get the commands working on their system, before moving to the next set of key bindings. No-one is left behind :)

Those who didn’t know keyboard typing, had to search for the keys, most of the time. When they finally did, they were not looking at the monitor to see the output, because they were keen on typing the keys correctly! It will take them some time and practice to get used to it.

Most of them were able to understand the commands and try it out by themselves though. It was good to see some hands-on experience in the labs.

Nikhil suggested on doing a vim session, and I welcome the same. I’d encourage anyone to come forward to take sessions, or make requests to the group.

Thanks to Prof. Hasan for arranging the labs for the session. He suggested inviting the adjacent Mathematics Department students in future sessions. They are in the process of setting up another lab too.

I gave a brief session on installation concepts, and methods, FOSS - history, and communication tools at the Software Freedom Day celebrations at Primora, Hyderabad. Krish gave a demo of LiveCDs, and Manish gave a demo on Compiz.

Thanks to Primora for offering us their office space for this meet-up.

Few photos taken during the meet are available in my /gallery.

mukt.in was organized in CSE department, Osmania University, Hyderabad, between August 1-3, 2008. Thanks to all the volunteers, speakers, organizers, and sponsors for their support and contribution.

Couple of my presentations are available: Inky Pinky Poky, and Openmoko - Free Your Phone.

Some pictures taken by Jigish Gohil, and few at my /gallery.

More photos available in my /gallery.

More photos available in my /gallery.

I conducted a “Debian GNU/Linux Installation” session as part of the first day of the 15-day Industry oriented summer school program, conducted by FSF-AP chapter, today, May 16, 2008, at Satyam Learning Centre Institute of Engineering and Technology, Piglipur village, Hayath Nagar, Andhra Pradesh (few kilometers past Ramoji Film City).

I would like to thank FSF-AP for the arrangements. Due to official work, I was able to spend only one day. This program is conducted in parallel in three other colleges outside of Hyderabad. In the evening, they provide training on team-building, communication skills, personality development, and other soft skills. Please check for more details.

Students were mostly from Andhra Pradesh, and few from Tamil Nadu. The INR 1500 cost for the program is inclusive of stay, food, and training (lectures, and lab-usage) for the 15 days.

Most of organizers are volunteers - students, academicians or people working in the Industry in Hyderabad. They also meet during the weekends at:

FSF India A.P Chapter, Flat No.201, Karan Apartments, (exactly opposite to petrol bunk) Paradise, Secunderabad. Landmark: Beside Sandarshini hotel.

Hyderabad bus routes for reference.

Few photos are available in my /gallery.

I was able to get a 30-minute session during the “VLSI-Trends and Applications” workshop to talk about FOSS VLSI tools, conducted by the Department of Physics, Osmania University, Hyderabad, today, Saturday, December 15, 2007. Thanks to Jagan Vemula (Qvantel), and Dr. Lingam Reddy (Professor, Department of Physics, OU) for their help in this regard.

I did a short 10-minute presentation (with screenshots): [odp] [pdf]

I then gave a demo of VHDL examples, and showed them FOSS project websites (opencores.org, and opencollector.org, and Embedded HOWTO).

As usual students didn’t ask any questions during the session, but, had a long offline Q&A, and discussion after the session.

Few photos are available in my /gallery.

A one-day embedded/VLSI Free/Open Source workshop at BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru (Bangalore), Karnataka was organized today, Saturday, November 17, 2007.

I handled embedded, system architecture concepts, Linux device drivers, and an introduction to OpenMoko. Aanjhan addressed FOSS EDA tools, Verilog, embedded GNU/Linux labs HOWTO et. al.

I would like to thank Shashank Bharadwaj for working with me during the past few weeks in coordinating/organizing the event.

Students were mostly from EEE/ECE background. According to the few interested students, the institution management are quite willing to help/invest for the students, but, very few takers for it.

There are few permanent faculty, who teach different courses every semester. But, most of them move to the Industry.

During the workshop, I did emphasize on the need to use FOSS tools to enhance their skills, and get exposure to the Industry, FOSS community, and the real world.

Relevant links:

• fci wikia on BMSCE

• i-want-2-do-project-tell-me-wat-2-do

• Mailing list guidelines

• OpenMoko introduction

• Linux device driver code examples

I gave an introductory talk on the OpenMoko project at the Department of Astronomy, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, October 28, 2007.

The audience were introduced to the Neo1973 device and its accessories. The openmoko.org project documentation website was shown. The recommended flavor for working on OpenMoko is Debian or Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu.

The different methods of installation - online and through openembedded.org were mentioned. SSH into the device, and exporting the user interface were demonstrated. Software emulation through QEMU was also shown. Building a simple “Hello World” application was explained using autotools, Makefile and the ipk, bitbake packaging system. Audio and video were tested on the device. The next version of Neo and Openmoko is expected to have better hardware and more features.

The feeds of Neo and OpenMoko are at scap.linuxtogo.org.

I conducted a one-day Free(/Open Source) Software workshop for Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad in association with IEEE Student Chapter, Hyderabad, on Saturday, October 27, 2007.

Students were mostly from the Masters’ programme. The forenoon sessions included technical discussions/presentations - system, embedded, device driver concepts; Linux device drivers; introduction to OpenMoko: build, development for OpenMoko; demo of Neo1973.

The afternoon sessions were non-technical discussions - i-want-2-do-project.tell-me-wat-2-do, mailing list guidelines, Free Software communication guidelines, and brainstorming sessions.

More than half of the faculty from the University have done their MS/PhDs abroad. The university and the faculty have the freedom to implement whatever they like, which is cool.

The labs use Fedora/Red Hat/SuSE distributions. They run their own mail+web servers, and use NFS. There are few professors who give assignments with Makefiles, gdb, Linux kernel compilation, but, they are just starting, and experimenting with these. It was announced that INR 20,000 will be alloted each year for Free/Open Source events.

If anyone is interested in working with this team, contact me offline, and I shall provide the contacts.

Thanks to Dr. Vineet, Prof. Anupama, Dr. Madhav Negi (IEEE), Dr. Atul Negi for their help, coordination in planning this workshop.

Few photos are available in my /gallery.

Feedback/criticisms/suggestions on the presentations welcome, as always.