LINK: Linux... a (delayed) report from Bang!inux

[Frederick Noronha <fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Much of this will not be new/news to members of Linux India. Just sending
it across, as something I wrote recently.... FN

INDIA-BANGALORE-COMPUTING
by Frederick Noronha, India Abroad News Service

BANGALORE, March 6: Linux, the free operating system that is shaking up
the commercial world of software, has already outgrown 'Mac'
(Macintosh) globally.  Indian corporate houses as well as academia are
increasingly moving to it, key figures linked to the Linux world said
here.

"Linux is already bigger than the Mac. This is a revolution which is less
than ten years old. The next target, if there is one, could be to overtake NT (the Window's operating system aimed at the corporate world)," said Wrox Press general manager John Franklin.

Wrox is once again staging an ambitious Linux meet -- in this 'Silicon
Valley of Asia' -- for the second successive year. 

Meanwhile, the co-founder of the KDE (K-Desktop Environment) Martin
Konold announced plans to work on Indianising their product shortly. 

KDE is a Linux-based lookalike, and answer to the dominant Windows feel
of computer giant Microsoft. Products like these have helped make software like Linux easy to operate even for home-users and non-techies.

"We are working on (a Hindi version of KDE). For us at KDE, it's a very,
very important task," Konold told India Abroad News Service, here. He said that Indianising the product, in local languages here besides Hindi too, would help take Linux to the commonman of the world's second-most populous country.

"We already have the code in place. Hindi is not that
difficult. Languages like Hebrew and Arabic -- which are written from
right to left -- pose problems," he said.

In order to make Linux software products like KDE relevant to more
populous areas of the globe, work was being done with the Koreans and
Arabs already, he said.

"We already have several Indians working on our project, (though not
necessarily in the translation and localisation)," Konold said. 

He sited the work put in to create the "very, very good KDoc" which has
been written by the Australia-based expat Indian, Sirtaj Singh, he said.

In addition, there were plans to make KDE relevant to the needs of
countries like India, by putting this desktop-interface on "smaller
machines and embedded systems", he said.

Giving importance to a software 'sleeping giant' like India, some
prominent personalities from the open source/free software world have
been coming for Wrox Publishers' annual event in this city, showcased as 'Bang!inux' (rpt Bang!inux).

Last year, Richard Stallman, one of the founding-fathers of the 'free
software' movement globally came for the inaugural Bang!inux meet, while
this time there were big names like Rasmus Lerdorf, who put together the
powerful web-scripting tool called PHP (rpt PHP).

Wrox's Franklin pointed out that, globally, Linux was gaining on market
share -- specially in the ISP, web, fireware, scienific and
number-crunching segments -- and this was causing a lot of worry among
other operating systems.

He pointed out that Indian universities like Pune in Maharashtra had
based all their e-mail operations on Sendmail, which is from the
Linux/GNU stable. In addition, he said, departments like the Computer
Science department, Maths and Chemistry departments were basing their
work heavily on Linux software.

Some of Bangalore's 400-strong club of Linux enthusiasts was also present
at the meet, and the Linux-India network of volunteers put up technical
sessions which drew wide participation.

"Linux-India has been in existance for about four years now, and our
participation is quite national and representative. Bangalore and Delhi
are hubs of Linux activity, and here itself were have 400+ members on our
electronic mailing lists, and more are joining by the day," said veteran
computer guru Gopikrishna Garge. (ENDS)