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[LI] Minutes of the ILUG-Bangalore meet, 23rd Jan, 2000



Program:
6:00 pm         Welcome & registration
6:25 pm         KD - ILUG Bangalore & Bang!inux
6:50 pm         Venkatesh Hariharan - indLinux
7:20 pm         Khader - Debian install
7:30 pm         Snacks
7:50 pm         Khader contd ..
8:10 pm         Atul - wind up

With much enthusiasm (ILUGers turning up much before any of the
co-ordinators), the 1st ILUG meet of 2000, began unpromptly at 6:30 pm.
KD, our MC for the evening welcomed all ILUGers and gave a preview of
the evening's program. 

He introduced Deepak Thomas, Bangalore representative of WROX, who then
took centre-stage, and explained about Bang!inux. He listed the speakers
coming in for the conference and the topics to be covered, and requested
help from LI's local chapter to demo Linux power. Are we looking at a
recreation of IT.COM'99??, .... most ILUGers (or at least the
co-ordinators) reacted!! We've barely recovered from the last time!

Venkatesh Hariharan, a IITian (Institute of Information Technology,
ITPL), took over, and spoke about the development of Linux in Indian
languages making it more accessible to the masses. The response to this
was a bit lukewarm from the mostly english-speaking ILUG group, but the
concept and importance of such a project came across clearly. Several
members of the audience are themselves involved in projects on these
lines, and it is hoped that we will see something coming out of this.

Khader started his long awaited debian install, ably supported by his
assistant for the evening - Shanker "Shanu" Balan, the ILUG-Cochin
coordinator who turned up as a surprise guest for the meet.

This time the process passed through without major hiccups, unlike the
last time this was attempted. Accompanied by a few comments and queries?
from our official inquisitor, Sachin Garg (also our
projector-provider!!),
the text install took about 30 minutes. It came across fairly clearly
that
a Debian install is no harder or easier than any other Linux
installation,
though debian clearly requires knowledge of what needed to be done.
Despite the much anticipation, ILUG-Bangalore lived up to its reputation
of being fair and "secular" when it came to technology - no
distro-bashing
happened, and all queries and discussions were purely technical in
nature.

Snacks provided a break from screen-watching. It was noted that the
meet,
which is usually male-dominated, featured some lady-students from RVCE.
It is hoped that the perceived gender-bias when it comes to Linux takes
the beating it deserves over the next few meets.

Khader came back with his work machine and demo-ed the UI of Debian with
translucent screens. Very evidently, there was nothing Debian-specific
about using a Debian machine - apart from a few technical queries ("how
to
configure sound", "how to install packages"), there were no issues at
all
- in fact much of the discussion was aimed at the FrameBuffer
Device installation on Khader's machine. Atul, who had been pretty
silent
so far ("burnt out" was a comment that could be heard :), asked a number
of questions, and mentioned that the performance was good enough to be
an
effective workaround for the problems faced by newbies with unsupported
display cards.

Atul then wound up the evening with some discussion over Bang!inux. A
mini-IT.COM show, and the promise of IT.COM 2000 to come!! He also
announced a sys-admin linux conference in Goa, on Feb 5-8. It was
decided
to take the discussion about Linux India's involvement in Bang!inux to
the
main LI list, to decide the kind of support, and the terms, that would
be
offered.

A relatively quiet ILUG meet ended as ILUGers took the rest of their
fellow-shipping to the foyer. 

Members present - 50
Cost - 4000/-
ILUGers contribution - 2100/-
GT Enterprises  sponsorship - 2000/-
Amount carried forward - 100/-

Jessie
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