Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Our Serious Experiments with FOSS

I have followed Linux since 15 years ago. The first time I tried to install, it took me more than two months to get a working system. Linux and FOSS software have evolved since then.

Our labs use Ubuntu. I learnt about Ubuntu about 3 years ago when my son came back from his college with Ubuntu loaded on his Notebook. The usability focus of Ubuntu is really amazing. The resistance to virus is a great feature. No need to look for drivers: all drivers are built in. I use Ubuntu 95% of the time. Windows takes the rest.

Our programming labs for C and C++ have been using GCC on ubuntu from the start.

Recently, we faced the issue of using Autocad for Engineering Drawing. I knew about Q-CAD which has a community edition available on Linux. I told Prof. Bamadev to try this. He was reluctant to start with. But I prevailed. He told me he does not have ubuntu on his machine. I gave him a VDI image of Ubuntu and made in work in his machine. I demonstrated how to make it work.

The next day when I visited the Lab, I found students using Q-Cad for Engg Drawing Lab. Bamadev told me that he had worked late into night working with Q-Cad and is comfortable now. The students had no clue about what they were missing as this was their first CAD software.

Our efforts will be to adopt FOSS as far as possible for following reasons: free, different, and innovative.

2 comments:

jitesh upadhyay said...
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jitesh upadhyay said...
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