[ILUG-Cochin.org] August 2008 Meeting Details

[Sameer Mohamed Thahir]

Warm Greetings To The FOSS Community,

The Meeting for the month of August was conducted successfully.
Strangely, we had very less turnout at this months meeting, almost
half of last time.

But anyway the small number did not hamper our 11th year celebration,
and also gave way to great brainstorming sessions.


Some brief snapshots from the meeting.

Date: 24-08-2008
Time: 2:30pm - 6:30pm
Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building,
Broadway Enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam
Attendance : 15

The meeting started of late waiting for people to arrive.
The first session was the discussion on the agenda topic.

Agenda : Nurturing Young Minds using the Concept of Free Software


The discussion started with the moderator, giving
an idea of what Free Software is and how it has brought about a concept
formed on truth and freedom.


Then the discussion went on talking about independent thinking.
The significance of independent thinking and the effects of what
happens when some entity tries to control your thinking were discussed
in the light of several examples, mainly proprietary software. The 
audience agreed
on the fact that independent thinking leads to greater productivity and 
development.

Also How Self learning and development was achieved with the help of free
software community was discussed. The fact that the mind gets involved in a
lot of activities and gets into work with a lot of developers and groups 
will
benefit the individual.

Similarly, the aspects of community learning and community development was
also discussed.

The discussions slightly drifted from
the topic, to discuss how free software has helped create a community
around ILUG Cochin over the last 11 years. Since the 11th year was a very
important landmark for ILUG Cochin, the points that were being
discussed revolved around what was the future activities of ILUG Cochin.

There was the customary introduction, in between.

The discussion concluded with the possible way of attaining the above goals
in best and effective manner. The role of a teacher in an educational 
institution
in a school/college is very significant where a child will start 
learning the very
concept of sharing. The attendees also agreed on the importance of teaching
ethical values in every field, in the present day were moral and ethical 
values
are deteriorating at home, school and society.Especially in the field of 
Information
Technology and Computer Science, talking about ethical values was very 
important,
especially explaining the concepts of Licenses, patents etc..

The discussions went on till 4:00 pm.


1th year

Kurian had bought a cake for the 11th year, ( venkat bought it last time)
and we moved to the cake cutting session. The Plum Cake was tasty
and enjoyed by everyone with tea.


GNU/Linux Booting Sequence by Sameer at 4:45pm

The intention of the session, was to help users to troubleshoot their
PCs, when the booting issues occur. The simple objective, was to
give them an idea at a very high level, and so that, they can atleast
point out at what stage the machine has problems.

The sessions started with explaining about the basic PC booting sequence,
starting from CPU Reset to control going to the MBR. There were lot of
questions in between.

The speaker talked about Boot Loader, MBR,PBR. Since the topic was a bit
confusing for new users,there were lot of questions. Once interesting
question was how the boot loader could access the hard disk(raw access).

The speaker continued with the explanation of what a kernel is, what are
modules and how the kernel loads into memory and what happens
next.

The sequence went on smooth, although the attendees got confused and 
sometimes
bored by the underlying technical details, but the presentation got on
the right track after few minutes. The booting sequence in user land, 
was very
interesting for several. The final step of a display manager and getty 
loading
was also explained. Once the session had completed, there was a volley 
of questions
many concerning the Initial RamDisk.

The speaker cleared all questions and doubts before winding up the 
session, although
it was almost 6:15pm.

The session was fruitful for many of the attendees who wanted to know about
the different levels of booting.

Many questions which were out of scope of the presentation were skipped.

The concluding session saw Jay jacob, encouraging the audience to start
contirubting to FOSS projects, because it was one dark area for ILUG 
Cochin.
He also asked people working with small hobby Free Software projects
to complete them and release them into the community.

In the light of the Free Software related meeting( organized by IT 
Mission of kerala) attended
by JJ, he assured everyone that funds for projects would never be an 
issue, once the idea
was concrete. He also referred to the Governments plan to hold a Free 
Software International
seminar and asked the members to showcase their skills.

The meeting wound up by 6:30pm.

Thanks to Kurian for the cake.
Sreenadh for organization.
Thanks to Madhu for the snaps and video.
Thanks to Ajith, Shibin and Nitish for the arrangements.
Thanks to Venkat and Binny for the snaps.



We thank all the attendees for coming and request all to put in their
feedback for the meeting on the Mailing List or my email so we can 
improve future
meetings.


Further details of the meeting will be available on the
website in a few days.

Photos of the Meeting are available on the home page.

Hope the next meeting is bigger and better :-)

Attendees

Aji Aype
Shibin K Reeny
Ajith C
Nitish Kumar
Kevin Sha
Rajagopal V
Fr. V.V. Thomas
K.Ashok Shenoy
Kurian Mathew Thayil
Binny V.A.
Madhu K.K
Sreenadh
G.Venkata Subramahnian
Sameer Mohammed Thahir
Jay Jacob




Thank You

Regards
Sameer Mohamed Thahir
Co-ordinator (Indian Linux Users Group - Cochin / Kochi
Chapt_er_
sameer.thahir at gmail.com

Website : www.ilug-cochin.org
IRC : #ilugkochi on irc.freenode.net
ML : mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org