tuxmaniac’s blog

Ladies and Gentlemen.. Boys and girls.. The preparations for this year’s FOSS.IN just shifted to top gear from the Ubuntu-IN community side. As usual the Ubuntu Community Managers have been extremely kind enough to dispatch 500 Ubuntu Gutsy CDs (different variants for various architectures). They are all awaiting to be laid hands on. Thanks to loads of people who have been involved in getting this approval done in record time!! Great going guys.

As things are shifting to top gear we are facing quite some issues with respect to printing Tees. Due to various reasons the printer with whom we were planning to give the order for has backed out and now we need a replacement. If someone has any information on Printers in Bangalore, who can print around 30 Tees in 6-7 days, we would be immensely grateful. If so please ping either technofreak or me offline.

Its less than 2 weeks now and work is happening at all corners to get things done for the biggest FOSS Event of the year in India FOSS.IN

First Update from the Ubuntu-IN team. The sticker designs are out.

Go grab ‘em all at Debian/Ubuntu Project Day on Dec 4th 2007. More goodies to follow. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, hold your breath!! Its big than ever before!!

Thanks to Niyam for helping us out with the designs.

After a pretty long Saturday; Took a workshop for BMSCE College guys and was busy fixing a “Hard Disk partitions go missing” issue (will blog in detail on this later), I headed for BarCamp Bangalore 5 (Winter Edition) on a cold and lazy Sunday morning. Met up with Parthan and helped him around in the Registration Desk. We saw a “Collective Sticker” and decided to write the word “Ubuntu” in the space provided. Wrote it, stuck it on our T-Shirts and immediately a registrant asks “Where is the Ubuntu Collective happening?”. We looked at each other and said, ” Yeah!!! Hmm.. We havent decided yet.”. After similar queries from a couple of more guys we thought may be we could actually set up a BoF. We decided on the time, place and pinned it up on the schedule board. In the beginning, there were a couple of people and we started discussing on Possible projects, Experiences using Ubuntu, Ubuntu-IN Community, FOSS.IN project day and lots more. We actually ended up having 20-25 odd people with issues like “My Wireless doesnt work in Ubuntu. Is there a way out?”, “I want to connect my mobile to my laptop using bluetooth in Ubuntu. What should I do?” and lots more. People pointed out various sites and references and exchanged interesting ideas. the conversation even shifted to Ubuntu Mobile Team, Android, iphone and the likes. I showed them a small demo on the Bluetooth remote control and headed for lunch. An unexpected Collective ends on a happy note.

After lunch, we lazed around, met Hobbes`, dumbhead, vegpuff, tuxplorer and chatted away to glory! It was time to move out of BCB5 and head for dinner. Dumbhead took us to V.V.Puram’s Food Street. Man o Man, its a must visit for food lovers. The entire street has only “Road side eateries” serving right from Gulcand icecreams, Idlis, Benna Dosas, Pav Bhaji and chat items at a very economical price. All you delegates coming in for Foss.in take note of this place and ask your geeky/fossy friend to take you for dinner here (especially the mumbaikars ). Weekend comes to an end.

Special appreciation: Dumbhead, I have to appreciate your action towards that poor woman who asked for food. Hats off dude!

Complete photoset here

Some days back I got a mail from the editor of Schmapp guides asking for permission to include one of my photos of the Landing Bridges of Hamburg, Germany in their next online edition. I accepted it and today I got a mail saying it has been released. Check this link http://www.schmap.com/hamburg/tours_tour3/#p=63860&i=63860.jpg

Now, I am even more motivated to get a DSLR. Oh, Btw I also have a second career option

One of my IRC buddies (he no longer hangs around) wahjava pointed a link to a fedora page. Its on “Fedora Electronics Laboratory” which contains a list of packages for Electronic Engineers and most packages are those that I have contributed to. I am extremely happy to see that a LiveCD has been created too. I would love to try it and give feedback. The interview with Chitlesh, the guy behind this project can be found in here

This actually made me think of a similar possibility in Debian/Ubuntu. May be a organised set of meta packages which in turn will install and configure related packages? for Eg. If I need tools related to Atmel AVR Microcontrollers to be installed, just do “sudo apt-get install atmelavr” or some such?? I am not sure if this is a good idea but can be refined to make it a good usable/useful one.

Suggestions from the community are most welcome. Or does Debian/Ubuntu already have a project on similar lines? I see a project DIVE on launchpad but seems not be active.

Its been a long time since I celebrated my Birthday back at Home with Family. IIRC its almost 3 years since and today I am living it.. Thanks to all those who have been wishing me on IRC, Gtalk, Y!, Orkut, SMS and any other possible communication medium.
I am having fun! Looking forward to the long, challenging road ahead…

Never before have I found so many talks in a Conference in India , I am curious about. Looks like FOSS.IN has changed the trend. I would be happy to find these talks in the final list.

1. Harald Welte - OpenMoko: What, why and how
2. Holger Hans Peter Freyther - Using OpenEmbedded to power Open Devices
3. Pramode C.E - FreeBird - A GNU/Linux based mobile robotics platform for introductory Computer Science and Engineering education.
4. Rakesh Peter - Hacking the Air Waves with GNURadio
5. Thomas Gleixner - Turning Linux into a Real-time Kernel
6. Naba Kumar - Introduction to Maemo development
7. Naba Kumar - Anjuta DevStudio; where we are and where we want to be
8. James Morris - How and Why You Should Be a Kernel Hacker
9. Lennart Poettering - The PulseAudio Sound Server

Be there.. It can never get bigger than this. FOSS.IN

Disclaimer:  The above list is solely my interests and does not relate to, in any form any other organisation/individual ’s point of view.

Hey! the Anjuta team has listed tasks and based on the priorities even assinged bounties to many of them ranging from 25 USD to 700 USD. Here is the link http://www.anjuta.org/tasks

After a very interesting trip to Coorg last week (I thought of blogging but never had that kick to ) and interesting developments at office over the past few days , am back home in Chennai for a 10 day vacation. Hope it goes to completion without any interruption.. Right now am enjoying the stereo systems (listening to old tunes), proper sleep, some good food and ofcourse internet connection (Its a freaking 2 Mbps)!!

Wish you and your family a very Happy and Safe Diwali!