NIT, Durgapur Celebrates Software Freedom Day

This year 20th September happens to be the Software Freedom Day, one of the most important day in software calander. For those unaware, let me briefly tell you the importance of this day.
Software Freedom Day(SFD) is an annual worldwide celebration of free/open-source software. SFD is a public education effort, not only to celebrate the virtues of free/open-source software, but also to encourage its use, to the benefit of the public.^[1]
Software Freedom Day was established in 2004 and was first observed on August 28, 2004 when over 70 teams participated. Since that time it has grown in popularity as more than 300 teams from over 60 countries celebrated on the second SFD, held on September 10, 2005. The primary sponsor for 2005-2006 was Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu, a GNU/Linux distribution.^[1]
We too celebrated the Software Freedom Day in NIT, Durgapur. It was a celebration marked by the installation of GNU/Linux and bringing awareness among students. It was Computer Science Lab that was going free and open this time.
At 10 AM we gathered at the Computer Science Lab. We began the celebration by showing a happy birthday video from comedian Stephan Fry, as this year happens to be the 25th anniversary of GNU. This is one must watch video. Then followed a short and interesting presentation on FLOSS/OSS which was given by Biswas Parajuli and Raj Agrawal. The basic purpose of the presentation was to bring awareness among novice.
Then came the practical implementation of all these, Installation. We decided to install a lightweight distro Fluxbuntu. The responsibility of installation was shared among all present there, especially Sushil Pandey and Vignesh Prabhu. I would love to share some of the pictures which were captured during the celebrations.
While preparing for the slides i came across some really interesting sites which i would like to share with you.
Richard Stallman Talks about GNU’s 25th Anniversary
Why Open Source Software?

References:

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1. ^ Software Freedom Day

Damn Small Linux on VirtualBox

Recently, few days back i wanted to do some server side programming for which i wished  someone could allow me to use his system. I approached one of my friend asking for some room in his hard disk, annoyed was he, suggested virtual machines to be  the best solution.

So, what is virtual machine? Ans:Virtual machine is an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine. And VirtualBox is a graphical tool to implement virtual machine.So VirtualBox  is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. What a virtualizer does is allows an unmodified operating system with all of its installed software to run in a special environment, on top of your existing operating system. This environment, called a “virtual machine”, is created by the virtualization software by intercepting access to certain hardware components and certain features. The physical computer is then usually called the “host”, while the virtual machine is often called a “guest”. Most of the guest code runs unmodified, directly on the host computer, and the guest operating system “thinks” it’s running on real machine.And the best part of it is Open Source Software.

And now i needed to make a choice for the operating system which would present virtually on my current OS (Ubuntu, Hardy). So i chose Damn Small Linux as the best suited OS for this purpose as it is defined as :

Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed. Damn Small also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD.And this was what i was looking for. The ip of your virtual os is different from the real os. This makes it a totally different system ( ofcourse virtually ).

It also has additional features like XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, Netrik web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US English), a word-processor (Ted), three editors (Beaver, Vim, and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript printer support, NFS, Fluxbox and JWM window managers, games, system monitoring apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, some wireless support.

Damn Small Linux can also be installed on your system and its requirements would amaze you.

Minimum Requirements (non-graphical Linux)

• 486dx or 100% compatible processor
• 8mb ram (16mb recommended)
• CDROM drive
• 1.44mb floppy drive (for boot floppy, if needed)
• Monochrome (2 color) monitor

Minimum Requirements for DSL with X-window

• 486dx or 100% compatible processor
• 16mb ram (24mb recommended)
• dual-speed CDROM (quad-speed or better recommended)
• 1.44mb floppy drive (for boot floppy, if needed)
• VGA monitor and video card
• a mouse (serial, ps/2, usb)

So isn’t this liner just meant for it?

Get it up, keep it up… LINUX: Viagra for the PC

Damn Small Linux Virtual Box Test