Search Results: "srud"

8 October 2023

Sahil Dhiman: Lap 24

Twenty-four is a big number. More than one/fourth (or more) of my life is behind me now. At this point, I truly feel like I have become an adult; mentally and physically. Another year seem to have gone by quickly. I still vividly remember writing 23 and Counting and here I m writing the next one so soon. Probably the lowest I felt ever on my birthday; with loss of Abraham and on the other hand, medical issues with a dear one. Didn t even felt like birthday was almost here. The loss of Abraham, taught me to care for people more and meet cherish everyone. I m grateful for all the people who supported and cared for me and others during times of grief when things went numb. Thank you! Also, for the first time ever, I went to office on my birthday. This probably would become a norm in coming years. Didn t felt like doing anything, so just went to office. The cake, wishes and calls kept coming in throughout the day. I m grateful for the all people around for remembering :) This year marked my first official job switch where I moved from MakeMyTrip to Unmukti as a GNU/Linux Network Systems engineer (that s a mouthful of a job role, I know) where I do anything and everything ranging from system admin, network engineering, a bit of social media, chronicling stuff on company blog and bringing up new applications as per requirement. Moving from MMT to Unmukti was a big cultural shift. From a full-blown corporate with more than 3 thousand employees to a small 5-person team. People still think I work for a startup on hearing the low head count, though Unmukti is a 13 year old organization. I get the freedom to work at my own pace and put my ideas in larger technical discussions, while also actively participating in the community, which I m truly grateful of. I go full geek here and almost everyone here is on the same spectrum, so things technical or societal discussions just naturally flow. The months of August-September again marked the Great Refresh. For reasons unforeseen, I have had to pack my stuff again and move, albeit to just next door for now, but that gave me the much need opportunity to sift through my belongings here. As usual, I threw a boatload of stuff which was of no use and/or just hogging space. My wardrobe cupboard finally got cleaned and sorted, with old and new clothes getting (re)discovered. The Refresh is always a pain with loads of collating stuff in carry worthy bags and hauling stuff but as usual, there s nothing else I can do other than just pack and move. This year also culminated our four plus years of work for organizing annual Debian conference, DebConf to India. DebConf23 happened in Kochi, Kerala from 3rd September to 17th September (including DebCamp). First concrete work to bring conference to India was done Raju Dev who made the first bid during DebConf18 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. We lost but won during the next year bid at DebConf19 Curitiba, Brazil in 2019. I joined the efforts after meeting the team online after DebConf20. Initially started with the publicity team, but we didn t need much publicity for event, I was later asked to join sponsors/fundraising team. That turned out to be quite an experience. Then the conference itself turned to be a good experience. More on that in an upcoming DebConf23 blog post, which will come eventually. After seeing how things work out in Debian in 2020, I had the goal to become a Debian Developer (DD) before DebConf23, which gave me almost three years to get involved and get recognized to become a DD. I was more excited to grab sahil AT debian.org, a short email with only my name and no number of characters after it. After, quite a while, I dropped the hope of become a DD because I wasn t successful in my attempts to meaningfully package and technically contribute to the project. But people in Debian India later convinced me that I have done enough to become a Debian Developer, non uploading, purely by showing up and helping around all for the Debian conferences. I applied and got sponsored (i.e. supported) for my request by srud and Praveen. Finally, on 23rd Feb, I officially became part of Debian project as 14th (at the moment) Debian Developer from India. Got sahil AT debian.org too :) For some grace, I also became a DD before DebConf23. Becoming a DD didn t change anything much though, I still believe, it might have helped secure me a job though. Also, worth mentioning is my increased interest in OpenStreetMap (OSM) mapping. I heavily mapped this year and went around for mapathon-meetups too. One step towards a better OSM and more community engagement around it. Looking back at my blog, this year around, it seems mostly dotted with Debian and one OSM post. Significant shift from the range of topics I use to write about in the past year but blogging this year wasn t a go-to activity. Other stuff kept me busy. Living in Gurugram has shown me many facades of life from which I was shielded or didn t come across earlier. It made me realize all the privileges which has helped me along the way, which became apparent while living almost alone here and managing thing by oneself.

19 April 2020

Bits from Debian: DPL elections 2020, congratulations Jonathan Carter!

The Debian Project Leader elections just finished and the winner is Jonathan Carter! His term as project leader starts next Tuesday April 21st and expires on April 20th 2021. Of a total of 1011 developers, 339 developers voted using the Condorcet method. More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2020 page. Many thanks to Jonathan Carter, Sruthi Chandran and Brian Gupta for running. And special thanks to Sam Hartman for his service as DPL during these last twelve months!

27 May 2012

Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter

In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the Debian Edu and Skolelinux mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor since then, helping to make sure the Debian Edu Squeeze release became as good as it is.. Who are you, and how do you spend your days? I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography, Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon, also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of our computer network. Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter (4 months). How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu project? We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me, one more reason to stick to Skolelinux. What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu? Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware, up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your administration costs tend towards zero. What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu? While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux within the new setting of the version to come. During this process, the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional, i.e. harder to understand for novices. Which free software do you use daily? LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox), KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver) Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools to use free software?
  1. Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the difference between proprietary software products, and free software developing.
  2. Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large share among German Skolelinux schools.
  3. Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
  4. Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be shared world wide (school books e.g.).
  5. Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre) office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
  6. Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
  7. Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And keep sending documents in ODF formats.

15 June 2011

Christian Perrier: So, what happened with Kikithon?

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain:

13 June 2011

Christian Perrier: So, what happened with Kikithon?

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain: