Dear Mr. Lars Nooden ,
Thanks a lot for the early reply and a quick review. Here is the answer to the couple questions that you putted forward.
The स्वतन्त्र DVD could be a thumb drive or usb stick, too, since those are
commonly available in 4GB+ sizes. What is the target audience?
-- The expected size is 3.8 GB.
-- Basically we are tagetting a large mass.
-- Childrens
-- School Students
-- Programers
-- Designers & Developers
-- Network Managers
-- System Administrators
-- Most important target are people who are experts and attached to the world of Properitory.
(People do work in windows by installing add-on software by two means : Either they purchase it or pirate it. To be very frank my place is a center for piracy. People are not rich enough to purchase. In this regard we tried to migrate them to Linux. But it is becoming bit difficult in their part to suddenly switch to Linux. To make an environment for we have taken an initiative to substitute all the day to day usage with Open Source instead of piracy.)
-- and many more . . .
+ It might be useful to avoid the M-word. The center of attention
should be on the FOSS tools or at least the generic, general activity.
The generic activity can be listed instead of specific proprietary
brands, for example, "productivity software" or "office suite" Second,
the FOSS tools should be approached as fine tools in and of themselves,
so it is important to avoid framing them as copies or analogues since
many actually came first.
-- Yes ,the center of attention is on FOSS. Generally what personally i felt that people cant identify a software with their description. They identifies it popularity.
eg. Adobe Photoshop -- Ya John , it's too costly. Oh! look over here , There is GIMP absolutely free. How's it ? Let's have a look at it.
+ Since there can be many choices, pick one from each category and then
mention the others. As usual it is a matter of picking the right tool
for the job.
-- Ok it will be updated.
+ Berkeley DB and Sqlite are not really equivalent, since Sqlite is sql
(ISO/IEC 9075) and Berkeley DB is a hash table (or something like that).
Berkeley DB used to be FOSS and though I can't get to the source from
Oracle's site, Oracle still seems to imply that it remains FOSS via dual
license:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/htdocs/licensing.html
-- Look Lars ! Oracle licenses are very critical. What i feel is Oracle people doesn't any thing to be open source but just they are trying to show off as they contribute. You will to shocked to read the license of OpenJDK.
+ Of the databases, there is a hierarchical database language M aka
MUMPS aka ISO/IEC 15852:1999, which has several implementations and is
useful:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mumps/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fis-gtm/
http://71.174.62.16/MDC/
The FIS implementation, GT.M, has a VM 'toaster' for those still plagued
by legacy systems. (GT.M might have a blob, though)
-- None of them is available in Windows readily.
+ The plug-ins and add-ons for Thunderbird and Firefox could be
highlighted. Again, here the ala carte nature of computing. Maybe pick
three of each to describe and then mention how to search through the
others.
-- We will put a few important plugins in a directory with an instruction sheet to install the plugins offline.
+ There should be "advertisements" for some of the major desktop distros
and live CDs ( Knoppix, Fedora, Kubuntu, Haiku ) to encourage people do
download and try them.
-- There would be Operating System Page which will be having info about few Distros and a link to their Download / Order page.
+ There should be "advertisements" for nice desktop environments and
window managers. An important concept is the ability to customize the
desktop environment or plain window manager to suite local needs. A lot
of must-have features like virtual desktops, multiscreen and multi-seat
are unknown to Windows victims.
+ There should be an "advertisement" for WINE. It is not an emulator,
but an implementation of the Windows API which may allow users to
upgrade to a good system while still keeping legacy applications
available until they can be replaced.
-- Ok this we will make it as What all we have in Linux. It's possible to switch from Windows to Linux. Not a big deal !
+ FileZilla probably belongs up in the 'Communication' section, since it
is an all around tool for file transfer.
-- Network tools are communication devices. Putting FileZilla in N/W signifies it's for administrators. Communication tool is for users.
+ Bluefish could be added somewhere, either in development because it
does a lot or in web design where it's used a lot. When I've asked
beginners, they've preferred it over Quanta or Kompozer.
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/
-- We have already added Amaya Web Editor but as you putted a lot of effort in writing a long mail we wil add it up. Just Kidding ! Bluefish Editor seems nice also costs very less . Only 4 MB.
+ R Project (science and engineering) is *big* among statisticians and
professionals working intensively with statistics. Even the big
proprietary names like SAS and SPSS are providing hooks to the R
programming language.
http://www.r-project.org/
-- Added up. It's some thing special.
+ Perl and CPAN. Since python is mentioned, perl could be too. It is
the glue that holds the net together.
http://www.cpan.org/
-- Added up Strawberry Perl 5.12.1.0 which include CPAN modules.
+ Cytoscape (science and engineering) is a java-based tool for network
analysis to visualize interaction networks and pathways and integrate
networks with annotations. It was developed for bioinformatics and
molecular interaction but useful in other visualization tasks and the
core functionality is expandible through plugins.
http://www.cytoscape.org/
-- Added up . Cytospace v 2.7.0. It greatly depends on Oracle Java SE. Can you please suggest me any proprietary alternative for it.
+ Fritzing (science and engineering) is Electronic Design Automation
software, even developed a University just like all other cutting edge
software. IMHO better than Kicad.
http://fritzing.org/
-- Added up .Fritzing. Suggest me any effective proprietary alternative for it.
+ Koffice has a lot of great tools, and supports OpenDocument Format.
Kexi (database) is one that users of old systems might find convenient.
Kplato (project management) is another.
http://wiki.koffice.org/
-- First we planned to put KOffice but as we are adding Go-oo. We have discarded the idea.
+ A point of information: Go OpenOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.org and
not the same as OpenOffice.org The reason for the fork was the
inclusion of some controversial items and licensing. Either way, the
important item is support for the OpenDocument Format.
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.go-oo.org/
-- Currently i am talking with the officials of CDAC , India to support us. So that we will put Bharteeya Open Office. It is a Multilingual Suite of Open Office.
+ VirtualBox and Qemu are good VMs, useful for development. The
proprietary product it is compared to is so bad that comparing
VirtualBox to it implies that VirtualBox is not any good either.
http://www.virtualbox.org/
http://wiki.qemu.org/
-- Instead of Oracle Virtual Box - A Properitary product from Oracle we will use Virtual Box Open Source Edition. look @
vbox32.sourceforge.net
+ Zim, Basket and Knotes are good for notes and can be listed with
Office & Design
-- We have already listed WikidPad. But we will add this if space permits.
+ Digikam is quite nice for managing digital photos.
http://www.digikam.org/
-- Currently we are trying to add KDE on Windows. We are testing for it's value. Once that work wil be done we will be adding it to the project.
-- OpenCMS is a very bulky CMS as compared others. More over wat about it's support,upgaradation, themes and so on... So it becomes bit expensive to put.
+ Mail can be provided by Postfix, Exim, Dovecot. Mailing lists with
searchable archives via Simpa and GNU Mailman.
+ Bedework is a standards-compliant enterprise calendar server designed
in particular for higher education.
http://www.bedework.org/
+ Kolab and Citadel are standards-based groupware servers, built out of
smaller, commodity components. Citadel is fully GPLv3. Kolab is the
product of a series of contracts for the federal office for Security in
the Information Technology in the German Government.
http://www.kolab.org/
http://www.citadel.org/
+ LTSP and K12LTSP would be suitable for many work or school environments.
+ SE Linux, AppArmor, and systrace are worth mentioning for *production*
severs, not devel.
-- I am unable to get the exact usefulness for us. This goes to advanced Administration.
I hope that i have answered almost to your question.
Thanks again for your valuable suggestions. I would be very much happy if you could suggest some thing more and update the wiki by your own and let us inform back through the mailing list.
Regards,
Manmohan Brahma