Re: Re: IITK Linux mirror

[Dwivedi Ajay kumar <ajayd@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,
	I see quite a lot of questions and flames flaring around. Good if
it all turns out to be constructive :)
	Here I try to answer some of the questions in the posts.

> Is this plan out of the blue???
	Well Almost ;-) . After that long flamewar on mirrors in
india Ruchir mailed me regarding this, and I thought it would be good if
we could have one. 
	He had also suggested setting up the LUGK and host its website on
IITK webpage, which I decided against after coming to know that you have
already setup a LUG @ kanpur.

> The bandwidth we have is too small.

	I agree. But does anyone else have a better bandwidth around? I
think we have gone into mirror business too much earlier. Maybe we would
only mirror small bandwidth things like LDP, RFC and part of kernel
archieve. Though noone here uses debian, I would try about it too :).My
plan is to (as Ruchir said) set the ball rolling before I passout from
here.  

> IITK can really spearhead this cause. They just dont like to collaborate.
>You need offline initiative if you really wanna succeed

	Most of us are from far off places, with no friends in city. If
you expect us to go around asking people to switch over to linux, I would
say ... forget it. I haven't been to city even for a movie during the this
year :(
	You have been helping your friends adopt linux, great. So have
been us. Believe me, we also have i810's, ALS4000 sound cards, flaky rams,
and what not. And we don't know abcd of dialup networking.

> I am not against mirrors, but THIS aint no way to propagate Linux in
> premature India.

	We are not saying that we are going to do the most proper thing by
setting up the mirror. We are just doing one thing.

> I have been personally coaching interested students and professionals
> about Linux. HAVE YOU BEEN ????

	I think this issue is being raised again and again on this
list. I don't understand why people want to know how much someone is doing
for linux in India. 
	What is wrong if I contribute to linux or other opensource
software instead of preaching linux to the common Indian. This is what
most of us interested in computers at IITK want to do.
	Would you ask linus or ESR how much they have done to spread linux
among the masses? (not that I am comparing ourself with them, at least
not yet ;-)
	Everyone can't do everything. Let some of us develop things and 
make linux more comfortable and the rest help spreading it.

	So list please do not try to judge someone's contribution by how much
linux preaching he is doing / has done.

> I support the Mirror, but I think that it wont be a great achievement
> for the Linux movement in India. PERIOD.

	Great :). I never said any thing like "Linux is dawning in india
with the setting up of a Linux Mirror at IITK" ;-) Did I?

> You can go to the IIT campus and burn CDs as well, you know ...

	Yes, LUG Kanpur is welcome for this. We even have the RH7.1 Beta
available :). Bandwidth isn't that big a problem for us anymore. The
problem is we students don't have CD writers in their boxes. I almost
always do network or harddrive installation. If you can arrange for CD
writers, we can lend you the CD's to copy :)

> having a mirror close at hand means he can ask his friend to download
> it, and then there are all the goodies (linuxdocs, rfcs, perl modules,
> kernel etc) which will take the fraction of whatever time it took to
> download from some mirror stateside.

	True... This is also one of the reasons I gave when asked what
benefit is IITK going to get out of this mirror. We won't have to go to
the sites which atpresent everyone here does for anything they need.

PS: Saurabh, I feel like I know this name and we have met. Know Gaurav
Agarwal? We have probably met in Hall V.

-- 

#!!!	If anything can go wrong, _FIX_ it. (To hell with MURPHY)
	
						Ajay kumar Dwivedi
						 ajayd@xxxxxxxxxx