[Subject Prev][Subject Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Subject Index][Thread Index]

Re: Re: Please share your linux experiences....



[long post]

Arun Sharma saw fit to inform LI that: 

>> That would explain at least part of the apathy I am experiencing on these
>> lists.

Not exactly, Atul ... if you see the LUG meetings at ILUG-HYD (or $LUG for
that matter) you get newbies asking the same old questions from time to
time.  In fact, we ~do~ have a pointer to http://www.exocore.com/linux as
a footer on our lists.

Thaths - as an alternative to reinventing the wheel by writing an LI FAQ
by ourselves, there's a pretty neat set of howtos at
http://www.local.net/~jgo (starting from installation, mounting drives etc
to qmail / procmail / kernel compiling.  It also includes stuff like
support for Yamaha sound cards).  

It ~is~ rather old - written some years ago, and customized for RH 5.x
(sometimes) - but it is FANTASTIC.

The entire set (in html format) can be downloaded as a gzipped tarball -
and I'd recommend that you mirror them on LI along with the tarball (or at
least link to it).

>  To sum it up, Linux is no longer a religion. It's just an OS for me.

Pretty good summary.  Linux is all about freedom of choice - and a viable
alternative to Windows.

However, there ~is~ one segment that's being neglected - all the schools
and colleges in India which currently teach kids DOS, Windoze 3.1 (yeah,
still - there's a small course on '95 thrown in) and programming in C,
ForTran, COBOL, Pascal ...  

Their unix knowledge is (often) restricted to ls, cp, rm ... shell scripts
on junked up vt100 terminals connected to an equally ancient SCO box.  
Most local Engineering colleges, several RECs, and FWIW, even BITS Pilani
still run a fairly old version of SCO (connecting to it either through
telnet from a winbox, or through diskless terminals)

I know, my sister's at BITS right now <g> <asbestos underwear on, just in
case an irate BITSian throws an old diskless vt100 dumb terminal - or,
even worse, a winbox - at me>

Linux can run far better, given the same set of hardware.  Old DOS boxen
(even diskless 8088s - which are still around in those colleges) can be
made into diskless linux terminals (or even XTerms).  HOWTOs are at -

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Diskless-root-NFS-HOWTO.html
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html

If they can learn all these, they ~can~ switch to Linux - especially as
DOS is, at heart, a cut down version of unix, with astonishingly similar
commands (try comparing the syntax of grep on *nix and find on DOS, for
example).

Further, C, ForTran, COBOL, Pascal etc are ~all~ available for free on
Linux.  Shell scripts have been known to run on linux, and so have ls, cp,
rm etc etc :)

If we (tinw - there is no we) target linux at schools and colleges (more
aggressively), where most kids get their first exposure to computers, we
are going to boost Linux far more than by keeping on targeting the
corporates.

BTW, ILUG HYD will shortly be contacting several engineering colleges (we
contacted a few already, and I have it on good authority that one gent
claimed that Linux was "out of syllabus", and they could only use Unix as
per university guidelines) ...

We are also thinking of writing a HOWTO (a couple of guys from BaaN
volunteered to do this at our last meeting) doing an one to one mapping
between various stages of a standard BE / B.Tech (Computers) with Linux.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.  Contributions welcome :)
  
-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian + President, CAUCE India + www.india.cauce.org
Stopping Spam In India + suresh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx + Spammers are Losers
--
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.