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Report from Bang!inux at India’s Silicon City, Bangalore
By Mayank Sarup <mayank@freeos.com>
Bang!inux was held for the second time, thanks again to Wrox. It was last year’s favorable response to the event that prompted Wrox to reorganize it this year. This year’s event was targeted at programmers and so the beginner and professional’s tracks were replaced with System/OS programming track, Linux-focused tracks and associated tracks for the enterprise. The idea was to get more people into Linux and Open Source development and get the corporate sector more interested in using Linux-based solutions. The location could not have been better chosen – the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore with its beautiful campus, loads of room and great ambience. Day one saw most of the exhibitors rushing to finish their exhibits. Since it was the first day, we really were not too keen on visiting them. More important were the daily sessions, which included some big names like Martin Konold of KDE, Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP and Damian Conway of Perl. What did cause problems for several people was the fact that there were two sessions running at the same time. John Franklin of Wrox said that the only other option to having two tracks running was having "a very long ... very slow day". Quite often, we were forced to choose and then run for the next hall in the 15-minute break between sessions. Overall, it was a very long and tiring day. The next day saw most of the exhibitors up and running so we could visit the stalls and brave the crowds. It was great to see that there is more than a casual interest in Linux, both as a development platform and in the traditional server platform. First stop was iCope (www.icope.com) with its ISDN communication suite. There was an ISDN dialer for Linux, which turned your desktop into a full-fledged ISDN terminal. More important was a solution that allowed machines on your Intranet to communicate via a single ISDN card on a Linux server. Windows machines are provided with a DLL that fakes an ISDN card and re-directs everything to a Linux server with an ISDN card. Communication is via TCP/IP. Send your faxes or even make voice calls through the server. Wipro, a leading software company in India, displayed a broadband video-on-demand box running on Linux. The bandwidth required is not likely to be seen for some time, but it is proof of the concept and highlights ability and willingness of a major software house to work with Linux. There was also wonderful presentation later by Narain Shenoy of Wipro on their experience with embedded Linux. The project was deployment of a HDTV solution on Linux. The product to be developed was a Digital set top box with a personal video recorder. Real time was required and implemented very successfully using RTLinux. SCO and Caldera were here too as one of the major sponsors. Caldera showed off Volution, a comprehensive network management solution. We'll try and get our hands on it but the presentation did get us acquainted with its finer points and the scenarios where Volution might be the way to go. IBM was here with the Linux wristwatch. The hardware for the watch came from IBM, Japan but all the software development is being done in IBM, India. What we saw here was not the completely built-up watch that was shown at Linuxworld but rather the disassembled version. The watch is built around the ARM 7 with 8MB of flash and DRAM. Kernel is 2.2.1, which stands at a little less than an MB, uncompressed. Navigation is via touchscreen or rollerwheel. Communication is via IRDA. An XFree86 4.0 framebuffer server is used for graphics (the watch can display photos too, albeit at 1-bit per-pixel color depth). Bluetooth is also supported. Battery life is 6 hours but work is being done on that. Oh, and it tells time too! CDC Linux were there to show off Beowulf computing. Unfortunately, power and voltage problems put a damper on their plans. Their 10-machine layout was plagued by machine reboots, which meant that they were unable to fully demonstrate the power of their Beowulf solution. Moving on to the talks, which were very informative and some of the speakers certainly made things very interesting. There was Damian Conway's talk titled "Perl Quantum Superpositions & First Virtue", where he looked at Quantum mechanics and how the same concepts could be used when programming using Perl. Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP was also there for a series of talks from basic to advanced PHP (Note: Our CEO didn’t recognize him and asked him whether he had done a lot of PHP development!). Some GNU/Hurd fans were around, with tips on getting involved in the development and how to install the GNU OS that was Stallman's goal. Martin Konold of KDE was great to talk to and interact with (we will put up an interview soon). His presentation on KDE/Kdevelop was well received. Michael Meeks of Ximian came with Bonobo. There was no rivalry here between the opposing camps and it was a very friendly atmosphere. One promising development was the Simputer prototype (www.simputer.org), designed by IISC professors. This device lies somewhere between a PDA and a full-fledged computer. The idea is to put computing in the hands of most of rural India and those that cannot afford a full-fledged computer. The device offers Internet access through a 2.4kbps modem, local language support, text to speech and a new IML browser that forms the interface for users. But in them midst of all this, the Linux community was not forgotten. The Linux-India LUG was given a separate hall for some free sessions. These covered Linux applications, solutions and were rather informal in true LUG fashion. There was a help-desk where you could go and ask for help and support. Some of these sessions were very informative and helpful too. At the end of three very full days, we came back wanting more. What was exceptional about this event was the accessibility and willingness of the speakers to interact with everyone. You could grab a speaker after the session for a one-on-one. You could ask questions, doubts and argue with them. The organization was very good and Wrox has done an excellent job yet agaub. We hope they will be back with a bang for next year’s event. Thanks guys!
Other articles by Mayank Sarup
Current Rating: [ 6.55 / 10 ]
Number of Times Rated: [ 11 ]
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