Warm Greetings To The FOSS Community,
The Meeting for the month of April (27/04/2008) was conducted successfully.
The were 20 people who attended the meeting, which gave way for great
interactive sessions. This was one meeting were we had female attendees as well.
Date: 27-04-2008
Time: 2pm - 5.30pm
Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building, Broadway Enclave,
Broadway, Ernakulam
The meeting started of at 2:15pm with an introduction to Free Software, Open
Source Software
, GNU Movement, GNU GPL License etc. After that the attendees introduced
themselves.
With a few questions from the attendees the discussion was wound up.
The session shifted to the main agenda. The concept of "Free Software
Compatible Hardware"
was discussed, the need for Free Software Compatible Hardware was explained.
The attendees
agreed on the point that the new users were constantly concerned with
compatibility issues for
hardware while using Free Software.
There was a small discussion on concepts like device drivers and firmware.
There was a discussion on communication between the hardware and device drivers
taking
the example of a keyboard by which the attendees got a clear idea to the
purpose of device
drivers.
The moderator put forward several issues that was faced while using proprietary
drivers.
The moderator also provided some information on the aspects of how a hardware
evolves
from an idea to a final finished product. The discussion mainly concentrated on
the aspect
of the Freedom required while using hardware without any vendor lockin
problems. The
aspects of reverse engineering was also mentioned.
Several examples were put forward by the attendees citing issues faced while
using the proprietary
drivers and how free software drivers sometimes provided better quality.
The speaker talked about how anyone with a basic knowledge of programming and a
logical
understanding of hardware details can develop device drivers. This encouraged
several of the
attendees to try their hands at device driver programming.
The discussion moved on the aspect of how to configure a new hardware in free
operating
systems. Another valid point discussed was of how to go about purchasing new
hardware and laptops
that are free software compatible.
The moderator presented a flowchart that explained the entire process of how a
new
user will purchase hardware and try to deal with it.
The discussion also focussed on the importance of documentation and how to
compromise
on HIFI features for free software compatibility.
Finally the meeting concluded with important action items for the community to
encourage
Free Software compatible hardware. The main points were
- Using Free software and spreading awareness about it
- Create a database of Free Software Compatible Hardware available in local
market
- Awareness activities to promote Free Software Compatible Hardware
- Learn Device Driver programming and hardware concepts and start writing
drivers.
- Maintain documentation.
- Help developers by testing new drivers on specific hardware models.
After the discussion the members moved on to have Tea.
After the tea break it was time for the technical session "Multimedia on
GNU/Linux" by Sreenadh
The objective of the session was to introduce the attendees to the multimedia
capabilities of the
GNU/Linux OS. The speaker started of with talking about the various multimedia
applications
starting with "Mplayer" and "Audacity". He also showed the audio and video
playback
capabilities of mplayer,xine and vlc. The technical presentation was cut short
due to the ill
health of the speaker..
Another person who continued the presentation, talked about other
multimedia alternative applications in GNU/Linux also answering few queries
from the attendees.
The trailer of the Open Movie "Big Buck Bunny" was screened along the Open
Movie
"Elephants Dream". There was a brief explanation of the concept of an Open
Movie.
Concluding session
The concluding session discussed the OOXML issue in the context of the Candle
Vigil conducted
at Bangalore. Several attendees were of the opinion that a similar event needed
to be conducted
at Kochi. The discussion evoked several responses, concluding on the note that
there needs to
an awareness campaign initially before an aggressive one.
Also as usual there were discussions on how each one could volunteer for ILUG
activities.
The members explained one by one what they planned to do after the meeting.
Several people
talked about trying new distributions. Most importantly many of them talked
about trying their hand at
device driver programming, which was indeed encouraging. The meeting concluded
at 5:40 with
a vote of thanks.
Further details of the meeting and photos will be available on the website in a
few days.
We thank all the attendees for coming and request all the attendees to put in
their feedback
for the meeting on the Mailing List so we can improve future meetings.
And hope the next meeting is bigger and better.
Attendees
R.Geetha
Shilpa P Maskara
Anoop Viswanath
Arun Kumar K.C.
Sudeep S
Shibin K Reeny
R. Satheesh
Kurian Mathew Thayyil
Vineeth T.V.
Fr.Thomas V.V.
Raneez
Sanjai
Sreenadh
Devaraj K..P.
Binny V.A.
Bilal M.K.
Sabir
Jay Jacob
G.Venkata Subramahmanian
Sameer M Thahir
Thank You
Regards
Sameer Mohamed Thahir
Co-ordinator (Indian Linux Users Group - Cochin / Kochi Chapter(ILUG-Cochin))
sameerthahir at yahoo.com
Website : www.ilug-cochin.org
IRC : #ilugkochi on irc.freenode.net
ML : mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org
Bollywood, fun, friendship, sports and more.. You name it, we have it on
http://in.promos.yahoo.com/groups/bestofyahoo/
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