Introduction to FOSS world

An Introduction to Free and Open Source World By – Narendra Sisodiya http://narendra.techfandu.org (C) Narendra Sisodiya, Licensed under CC-By-Sa 2.5 In

CC-By-SA 2.5 In This work is Licensed under Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 India

You have Freedom

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work Share

Under the following Conditions

Attribution — You must attribute the work by proving the name of author and homepage. (Narendra Sisodiya http://narendra.techfandu.org)
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Who I am I am a independent FOSS activist, supporter, contributor, a jQuery lover who is working on Project Eduvid. Contact : [email_address] Twitter : http://twitter.com/eduvid WebSite: http://narendra.techfandu.org

why FOSS, why Linux (1)

Freedom matters
Free of Cost (Not always)
No Vendor Lock in
Open Standard (odt, png ..)
No Virus at all
Compatibility with other OS
Fast Boot – 1 minute to Boot
Automate Jobs using Command Line.
Schedule jobs using crond

Most companies use FOSS tool even they produce non-foss product (Ex java tools)
XFS on Linux can scale upto a million TB (NTFS is just 16 TB)
Linux can scale to 1024 processors on a single computer
Fastest Super Computer to Server of google to mobile and your Airtel Beetal router use Linux
Support 100+ file system

http://cityblogger.com/archives/2007/01/24/101-reasons-why-linux-is-better-than-windows

Speed – everyday = installday
Community Support
Excellent for programming
Plug-n-boot–testdrive w/o install
Linux can run on old hardware with 32 MB ram
Support Dual boot
Install from network, usb, cd/dvd

Everyday updates
Now Google and most MNC support FOSS
Growth rate of 25% per year.
Lost of choice for software
No piracy
True 64 bit distro available
Easy test drive (Ex Mysql is free of cost)

3D Desktop - Compiz Fusion
No need for extra device drivers
Multiple Workspace
Purpose based Distro
Most documented OS
No Defragmentation needed
No more BSOD
No Reboot – I did not turnoff my lab PC for 8 month after install

Built in virtualization ( XEN / KVM / VirtualBox / etc )
Linux is used in embedded device as well
Now Mobile comes with Linux – Openmoko, Android
BUG tracking system

Behind Software you

RMS

One of the greatest person cum ideal in digital industry.
1983, launched the GNU Project
GNU is a Operating System. Full project was never completed.
1985, set up the Free Software Foundation
Wrote GNU GPL license
GNU development tools, ex gcc compiler
Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft

Richard Matthew Stallman aka rms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

Free Software Definition

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Linus Torvalds

1991, a Finnish student, used the GNU development tools to produce Linux, an operating system kernel
Kernel was the missing component of GNU Operating System
MCC Interim Linux, (1992) was first Linux Distro
GNU/Linux is appropriate term.
Soon many community Distro developed

Debian , FreeBSD, OpenBSD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

Free vs Open Source

Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free. -
http://www.fsf.org
Free denotes “Freedom” and not Free of cost

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.
http://www.opensource.org/

Suggested to read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software

MIT License Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

GPL ( a CopyLeft )

GPL and many Free Software licenses are Copy left
CopyLeft is legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software
GPL v2.0 and GPL v3.0 available
Most popular license
Its a viral license.
I like viralness – Open Source to open Sorce, business to business.

Creative Commons

Attribution (By): Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
Noncommercial (nc): Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
Non-derivative (nd): Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.
Share-alike ShareAlike (sa): Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work
16 Possible combination , Only 11 are Valid (nd+sa is invalid)
I really Like – CC-By-SA and CC-SA (neki kar dariya mei daal)
http://www.reasonforliberty.com/ethics/choose-creative-commons-over-copyright.html
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

FOSS economics

Common way

Dual license model Ex- MySQL
Dual product model Ex-
Professional services model Ex- JBoss

http://www.spacebug.com/how_to_make_money_from_open_source.html
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3686616
http://tinyurl.com/66y774
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron-9.html

Linux Distro

Distro = a GNU/Linux Operating System Distribution
There are more then 300 Linux Distro exist

http://distrowatch.com/

Redhat is most successful distro for commercial usage
Mint, Ubuntu , Fedora, Debian, OpenSuse are most popular
Most distro has Live DVD/ Live CD/ Live USB possible

Let me coin – Plug-n-Boot

You can create your own Linux Distro

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
http://tinyurl.com/88wja3 Custom Fedora Spins

Installating Linux

Download Your Desired Linux Distro, Or take a copy of from your friend. (its totally legal)

In IITD , http://10.10.4.1 is local mirror

http://www.howtoforge.com/ Website contains a “Tutorials with screenshots” for instructions to install.

Notice the Feedom

Installing a new Software

Every Distro maintains Repo (repository) of Packages/Software
Every Distro install a new packages from online repos

sudo yum install vlc
sudo apt-get install vlc

yum (Yumex) and apt-get (Synaptic Package Manager) are package manger

GUI software interface for installation of new packages

You can also install using source code

make configure; make ; make install

Demo

Common Software (1)

Education

Moodle , OpenAdmin, NewGenLib, open-ils,
Denemo, Gcompris, Gnu Paint, Inkscape, Kalzium , Kanagram , Kig, kpercentage, kstars, ktouch, kturtle, kvoctrain, kino, qcad, screem, scribus, tomboy, tuxmath, tuxpaint,

OpenSuse has Li-f-e - http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live
Ubuntu has special Disto http://edubuntu.org/
http://www.i4donline.net/oct04/ict_edu.asp
http://www.edubuntu.org/applications/8.04
http://bit.ly/4BqzN

http://www.linuxalt.com/ Visit to get Alternative Softwares in linux

Common Software (2)

Music , Audio n Video

(play) vlc, mplayer, gmplayer, Cheese (web cam tool)9
(Audio edit) – Audacity, Traverso
(Video edit) – Avidmux,
(CD /DVD) – DVD styler , InfraRecorder, K3b
(Screen Capture) - xvidcap and istanbul
special Disto www.64studio.com
http://www.opensound.com/ossapps.html

Common Software (3)

Internet

Firefox is “The Best” internet browser, Opera is also cool.
Do not use “IE” - it is just a crap software
Pidgin – Internet messenger (gtalk, yahoo, irc )
Gyachi (yahoo messenger for Linux)
Transmission, (bittorrent client), gftp
Many many other software
gwet -c http://download.com/file.zip OR use proz

Common Software (4)

Engineering

A hell lot of tool are available – just search on google
Eclipse is most popular IDE for programming
gcc toolchain is for system programming
GTK and many GUI framework are available.
Titanium is latest API for building cross-platform Desktop (window , linux) and Mobile application (iPhone, android)
TinyCAD, Qcad, ( http://opencollector.org/collector.php )
FreeCAD, SweetHome 3D
Fedora Electronics Lab Spin

Common Software (5)