A Fedora workshop was organized at Sandip Institute of Technology and Research Center (SITRC), Nashik, Maharashtra, India from February 2 to 3, 2013.

Day I

I began the day’s proceedings with the “i-want-2-do-project. tell-me-wat-2-do-fedora” presentation in the seminar hall at SITRC. The participants were introduced to mailing list, communication and effective project guidelines when working with free/open source software. This was followed by an introduction on window managers, and demo of the Fedora desktop, GNOME, Fluxbox, and console environments.

After lunch, I gave an introduction on system architecture, and installation concepts. Basics of compilation and cross-compilation topics were discussed. An introduction on git was given using the “di-git-ally managing love letters” presentation. After a short tea break, we moved to the labs for a hands-on session on GCC. This is a presentation based on the book by Brian Gough, “An introduction to GCC”. Practical lab exercises were given to teach students compilation and linking methods using GCC. I also briefed them on the use of Makefiles. C Language standards, platform-specific and optimization options with GCC were illustrated.

Day II

Lab exercises from the GCC presentation were practised on the second day, along with the creation and use of static and shared libraries. The different warning options supported by GCC were elaborated. A common list of error messages that newbies face were also discussed. After the lab session, I introduced them to cloud computing and OpenStack, giving them an overview of the various components, interfaces, and specifications. I also gave them a demo of the OpenStack Essex release running on Fedora 17 (x86_64) with the Horizon web interface.

The college was affiliated to University of Pune, and had deployed GNU/Linux labs for their coursework. Now they are autonomous, and want to explore and expand their activities. They have a local user group called SnashLUG. The college is 15 km away from the city of Nashik, which is around 200 km from Pune. The bus journey from Pune to Nashik takes six hours, and you can book tickets online through Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC). There is frequent bus service between Pune and Nashik.

Thanks to Rahul Mahale for working with me for the past three months in planning and organizing this workshop. Thanks also to the Management, and Faculty of SITRC for the wonderful hospitality, and their support for the workshop.

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