India Linux Users' Group (Goa) holds its May 2006 meeting on coming Saturday, May 27. It is open to all. Venue, as usual, is the Goa Science Centre, and we meet between 3 to 5 pm, followed by informal discussions and tech chats over a contributory cup of coffee alongside Miramar beach. Please pass the word on to others who might be interested.
This meet's focus will be: * All about Fedora Core 5 (a discussion) * Graphic tools and FLOSS. WHAT IS FEDORACORE 5? Fedora Core is an RPM-based Linux distribution, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project, sponsored by Red Hat. The name derives from Red Hat's characteristic fedora used in its "Shadowman" logo. However, the Fedora community project had existed as a volunteer group providing extra software for the Red Hat Linux distribution before Red Hat got involved as a direct sponsor. Fedora aims to be a complete, general-purpose operating system from open source software. Fedora is designed to be easily installed and configured with a simple graphical installer and the 'system-config' suite of configuration tools. Packages and their dependencies can be easily downloaded and installed with the yum utility. New releases of Fedora come out every six to eight months. The name Fedora Core distinguishes the main Fedora packages from those of the Fedora Extras project, which provides add-ons to Fedora Core. Fedora was derived from the original Red Hat Linux distribution. The project envisages that conventional Linux home users will use Fedora Core, and intends that it replace the consumer distributions of Red Hat Linux. Support for Fedora comes from the greater community (although Red Hat staff work on it, Red Hat does not provide official support for Fedora). Similar to the Red Hat products the Fedora Core Project is using codenames for their distributions. Fedora Core Version Name Date 1 Yarrow November 5, 2003 2 Tettnang May 18, 2004 3 Heidelberg November 8, 2004 4 Stentz June 13, 2005 5 Bordeaux March 20, 2006 Fedora is sometimes called Fedora Linux, though this is not actually the official name. More details at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Core_5 Some unofficial Fedora Core sites: Unofficial sites * Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes Extremely useful step-by-step installation guide http://www.stanton-finley.net/ * The Unofficial Fedora FAQ http://www.fedorafaq.org/ * The Unofficial Fedora Starter Guide http://easylinux.info/wiki/Fedora_fc5 * Fedora Forum @ LinuxQuestions.org Fedora Forum sponsored by Fedora Project http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/forumdisplay.php?forumid=35 * Fedora Forum Gallery Screenshots and workstation layouts http://www.fedoraforum.org/gallery/ * FedoraNEWS, Fedora Weekly News http://fedoranews.org/ * Fedora mailing lists on gmane.org http://gmane.org/find.php?list=fedora * Fedora Core Installation Notes http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_5_installation_notes.html * Fedora Solved No questions - only answers http://www.fedorasolved.com/ * Personal Fedora Core Installation Guide http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc5.html * Screenshots of Fedora Core 5 at OSDir.com http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=596&slide=28 * Fedora Core at DistroWatch.com http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora * Linuxiso.org http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=64 [Above information and links based on Wikipedia.] LIBRE GRAPHICS: A profile of some of the applications driving the use of Free Software and Open Source as a choice for professional graphics and design. Scribus -- the runaway success story of FLOSS graphics. A solid, professional DTP solution. The latest release of Scribus (1.3.3) offers features not available as standard in professional DTP software, such as the ability to generate barcodes completely within the software. It would be unthinkable for a commercial and proprietorial DTP product to come from zero lines of code to a reliable, professional tool in five years. Inkscape -- A group of developers decided that what the world needed was a fusion of the traditional programmer tool-style SVG editors (which deal mainly in exposing the XML and allowing programmers to change properties of nodes and such) and the world of drawing tools. The result -- Inkscape -- one of the more visible success stories in FLOSS graphics software, and a vindication of the idea that open standards and free thinking can change the world. Gimp -- If you asked 100 average GNU/Linuxers to name a graphic application, it's a safe bet that they'll shoot one word straight back at you: Gimp. It's now more than ten years since Spencer Kimball announced the project to create a FLOSS application capable of rivalring the professional (and pricey) alternatives on the Mac and Windows. Gimp has come a long way, but it still gets criticised for its lack of some key features, and the slow pace at which development is taking place... Says Sven Neumann: "CMYK will not be available as a mode for storing pixel data. But as soon as we have colour management implementation properly, it should give people most of what they have been asking for. I also think that the most important feature missing in Gimp at the moment is support for high colour depth. More and more cameras are offering this data, and we shouldn't just throw it way on import." Xara: It's a professional design tool that went over to the FLOSS world recently. Says Xara CTO Neil Howe: "The main reason (for open sourcing Xara after more than ten years) is that we want to see the product take off a lot more than it has. The problem we've got is that we're a very small company with limited resources. People are always telling us how good as a drawn tool Xara Extreme is, and we just wanted to get it out there in huge numbers. I think that by making it cross-platform to bring it to the [GNU]Linux users, and the Mac users, making making it open source, we can do that." [Based on a report in Linux Format] -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 ---------------------------------------------------------- _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. Goanet mailing list ([email protected])
