The document provides a roadmap for students to leverage free and open source software (FOSS) to become self-reliant. It discusses how FOSS like Linux can provide cost-effective alternatives to proprietary software. The roadmap suggests students learn programming, databases, and analytics skills in languages like C/C++, Java, Python and tools like MySQL and R. It also recommends areas like app development, Raspberry Pi, and data analytics for students to explore. Universities are urged to train faculty and incubate ideas to realize the goals of an self-reliant India by leveraging open source software and fostering entrepreneurship.

1. A Roadmap for Students
Using FOSS (Free and Open
Source Software) and
Reaching Goals of
Atmanirbhar Bharat
Dr. PK Mishra
Chief Technology Advisor
Presented at International Webinar Series on Open Source and
Digital Technologies on18th September 2020
(pkmishra@adapro.in)
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2. Agenda
• What is OSS and FOSS?
• Why do they matter?
• Building up on OSS / FOSS Advantages
• Scenarios of success with UNIX / Linux
• How Does a Student capitalize on these
• Suggested Areas to Learn and Practice
• How make ourselves Self-Reliant?
• Discussions and Suggestions
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3. I Draw Upon My Experiences @
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4. Atma-nirvar Bharat
Self-Reliant India
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 One major ingredient for being self-reliant
nation, is to have access to BEST_in_Class High
Technology (Patents and People)
 Only way to achieve it, is to provide high
quality, standards based education in our
universities that allows innovative minds to do
focused research without significant barriers
 It helps to create products, processes and
practices that are sustainably scalable
 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) can be
an enabler as we increasingly become digital

5. But What is FOSS ?
What is Open Source?
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6. Open Source Software (OSS)
• In 1970/80s software was sold as-is-what-is basis with no scope for
implementing new ideas and functionality as the source code was mostly
kept away from the paying users.
• Worse still, pricing model of the software by major hardware selling firms
made buyer very unhappy
• This encouraged a major movement towards community driven software
development efforts, quite often with better ideas and algorithms. It led
to better quality peer-reviewed software faster at lower cost
• FREEDOM to modify the source code and use the software as appropriate
to ones needs, was the driving principle. Entities like Free Software
Foundation (FSF) led the way. Universities all over USA and Europe started
developing lot of software on these lines.
• Many such collaborative efforts produced a healthy ecosystem of useful
open source software(OSS) of high quality with almost zero cost. Present
day projects like SourceForge and GitHub carry forward similar ethos
• UNIX as an OS, was enhanced by the huge body of free GNU software
• Easy and convenient licensing policies like GPL have also helped the
spread of OSS
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7. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
• By 1990/2000 decades Personal Computers had become
common. Cost of essential software from big players were
mounting to the level of being unaffordable
• To make computing affordable, activists again promoted the idea
of using free software that in most cases overlapped with those
with open source
• Much of these actions were against the huge monopoly Microsoft
wielded due to the popularity of MS DOS/Windows and MS
Office. Many other commercial software were also targeted
• Lot of personal users and even corporates opted for these zero-
cost, functionally equivalent options, replacing paid software like
Windows and Office. Experiences have been good
• Thus FOSS software has gained ground in the last few years and
continues to gain wider acceptance. Linux and LibreOffice are
perhaps two best examples of FOSS that have had great success.
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8. Dennis Ritchie
Ken Thompson
Few Significant OSS Personalities
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Linus Torvalds

9. COST
SECURITY
CHOICE
RELIABILITY
Re-use
No lock-in
Freedom
ROI
TCOPeer review
Flexibility
Open Source – Key AdvantagesAdvantages of FOSS
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Technical Business Financial
Standards
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10. UNIX and its many components
from GNU were some of the
earliest pioneers in promoting
open source software. Linux an
inspired clone, continues to do
the same
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11. UNIX / Linux
Architecture
Architecture of UNIX / Linux
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12. Top Characteristics of UNIX/Linux
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Multitasking
UNIX lets a computer do several things (run thousands of threads/processes) at a time with
no unwanted interference with each other. All these happen very smoothly in a time
continuous manner and common resources are shared and coordinated using very mature
scheduling policies
Multiuser
The computer is used by a number of users, appearing as if it is fully owned by him — to run
programs, access files and communicate. All users are isolated from each other and there is
no unwanted interference between programs run by them. Interactions between users and
processes are allowed strictly as per pre-defined policies
Security
UNIX is secure by design. All physical and virtual resources have strictly enforceable access
control policies. All activity units (processes and threads) run within their own private memory
spaces. Inter Process Communication (IPC) mechanisms are strictly enforced to facilitate
only allowed interactions. Over years, all components (kernel, system calls, libraries, tools,
utilities and applications) have gone through many rounds of security related improvements
and provide a lot of user confidence
Portability
It is possible to implement UNIX on almost every new hardware as almost 99% of the code is
written in C, a language designed for portability. Changes in code is minimal. The modularity
of the OS components allows easy updates and upgrades. Almost all other standard
components of UNIX are also written using C/C++. POSIX and UNIX standards compliances
are other advantages that ease the task of migrating code between UNIX/Linux and even
non-UNIX systems.
Programs, Tools,
Utilities, Libraries
and User
Applications
UNIX has hundreds of programs, utilities and tools. Most utilities like shells, compilers etc.
behave similar across all implementations. Most programs written in C, use a common layer
of libraries of functions and system calls, that interact with kernel to get user-initiated tasks
executed. All these together provide a formidable array of tools and resources to write new
generation applications that can coexist with old legacy applications. It is a complete machine
to host any kind of workload.

13. - UNIX is over 50 years old and pretty mature,
has many accolodes and influenced many new
products including MacOS, Linux, Android and
even Windows
- Now UNIX Trademark is owned by The Open
Group, even though many successful UNIX
versions existed around the world some
prominent ones are AT&T UNIX, BSD UNIX,
ULTRIX, OSF/1, Digital UNIX, Tru64UNIX, AIX,
HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, UnixWare, SCO UNIX...
- Current generation of UNIX are massively
scalable, highly reliable, very secure and are
used for large scale mission critical commercial
applications. But they are also quite costly to
own and run and have a shrinking market share
- UNIX versions conform to almost all published
standards. A few relevant standards from our
purpose are, POSIX and Single-UNIX-
Specifications 2005
Current Status of UNIX
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14. Few Useful Facts about Linux
 A Modern Operating System that runs on almost every modern processor x86, x86-64,
PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, ARM etc.
 Usable in any scale from tiny IoT devices, to Supercomputers to cloud scale Data
Centers and normally costs less
 Started as UNIX clone in early 1990s with GNU style licensing
 Linus Torvalds is effectively the father of Linux kernel and still closely controls
Linux Kernel Development, now in version 5.8… 5.9
 Open Source Model – any one can get, use and modify the source code
 A Linux Distribution has a Linux kernel and most other components from GNU and
other Open Source Software projects like Apache and hundred others
 Many people therefore call it GNU/Linux
 Cost of Linux OS is low – in most cases free. One may still need to buy the support for
trouble free use in business critical scenarios
 Known for High Value Proposition (TOC, ROI) relative to UNIX / Windows
 Popular Linux Distributions
 Enterprise Grade - Redhat, SUSE, Oracle
 Personal / Free – Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, Slackware, BOSS ….
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15. Typical Layout of Linux Apps
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16. Few Suggested Essential Software
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Software Category Comments
Mozilla Firefox Internet Browser It is a very capable internet browser known for its
reliability, speed and security.
LibreOffice Productivity Tool LibreOffice is a complete office suite that offers
presentations, documents, spreadsheets and
databases can completely replace MS Office
Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client /
Address Book
It is very capable client and a very good substitute for
MS Outlook
GIMP Image
Manipulation
It offers similar features to very expensive tools from
big names like Adobe, Apple and Corel
VLC Media Player Universal Media
Player
This multimedia player is pretty capable and run on
almost all platforms
Blender Video Editing It is a 3D graphics and animation tool that supports
motion tracking, simulation, animation, video editing,
rendering, modeling etc.
GNU Compiler Collection Compilers Provides very mature compilers for C/C++/Fortran on
almost all platforms

17. Prominent
Desktop
Options
Enterprise
(Supported)
Linux Options
Major
Contributors
to Linux
(OSS)
Major Players in Linux Ecosystem
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18. How Do the Students
and Researchers
Benefit out of all
these?
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19. Roles ~ Skill Level ~ Learning
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- Linux and Software development skills are in great demand and will grow
- Based on your mindset and ability decide what kind of role you want
- Programming skills in C/C++, Java, Python, R, Shell Scripting and host of new
generation languages are in demand
- Database skills to use at least one of MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQLite/MongoDB
- Being a cross-platform developer with Windows is also a great advantage

20.  Essential to know the platform better than an ordinary user. Try things on OWN PC
 A typical Linux (UNIX) Server or Desktop provides ample of opportunity to
experiment, practice and learn. Do not be shy of the command prompt.
 Learn at least one programming language and one scripting language well
 Languages : C / C++ / Java / C# / Swift
 Scripting : UNIX Shell, Perl, Python, JavaScript
 Database and Analytics : MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, R
 IDE & Development Tools : GNU, Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio, GitHub
 Practice Cross Platform application development for Windows/Android/iOS. Can
do it using systems like Mono, Xamarin, .NET Core etc.
 These basics will help you in developing modern Apps and evev create
microservices used in new generation business software systems
 By no means Windows and MacOS are enemies. If you love them, all of the above
are still possible from your career point of view
Where Should a Student Start?
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21. Data Analytics
• Who Needs It
• Almost everyone. As digital footprint increases in all aspects of our
life, data driven automation will be norm in businesses, corporates,
defence, Governments etc.
• Researchers in Science, Engineering, Medicine, Agriculture and
Humanities
• Technologies involved and skills required
• BigData, DataMining, NoSQL DB, Hadoop, AI, ML
• Tools to Learn and Use
• R
• GNU Octave (Similar to very successful commercial product MATLAB)
• Scilab (Similar to very successful commercial product MATLAB)
• Be focused
• The vastness of analytics can not be covered by one person. Pick up
an area based on your interest, background. Specialize in one of
these areas.
• R can be a starting point
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22. Raspberry Pi
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• Increasing level of automation and digitalization requires a
lot of new context specific product development (hardware
and software) – mainly in IoT segment
• Raspberry Pi being a single board micro computer is a great
starting point to learn, practice and invent
• Very low entry barrier as it is cheap and can be as-easy-as
programming in Linux/Windows
• Hundreds of well documented use cases and applications
are readily available that can guide students to explore and
create new products and solutions
• Good Design makes products more successful. Designing
has to be learnt and emphasized
• Follow the Design/Develop/Test/Deploy cycles
professionally

23. App Development for Mobiles
• Many young students show interest
• Developing a complex App requires
a larger team with multiple skills
and bigger investments
• But start with some easy to
comprehend idea and create an
App in a group of friends
• Hundreds of free tools are
available. Can try one of MIT App
Inventor or Glide
• For serious Android apps use
Android Studio.
• Visual Studio allows cross-platform
App development
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MIT App Inventor
Glideapps.com
Android Studio
VisualStudio

24. Steps to Atma-nirvar Bharat
• Universities alone can motivate, teach, guide and incubate
new ideas of our bright students in a mass scale – Train the
faculty accordingly
• Data is the new fuel. AI and ML led Software is new the
engine. We need to create solutions for existing problems
and futuristic solutions by fusing Software with Data –
Create Models and Prototypes
• Using OSS and FOSS, we avoid the problem of reinventing
the wheel. The inherent collaborative methods help to carry
big chunks of knowledge workers together and work
towards new inventions by reducing cost and time - Setup a
software center with specialization on OSS
• Teachers, Academia, Universities and Governments should
come together in pushing this agenda in a big way by
nurturing the next generation of talents for our country
• Inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship among students
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25. In Summary
• We discussed about the evolution of Open Source,
FOSS, UNIX and Linux
• We talked about contemporary systems, some of
their features and how they can be leveraged
• A roadmap was prepared for students to do self-
help and be ready with contemporary technologies
and relevant skills in three areas with great
potential
• We also suggested ways to be followed by the
university and the authorities to realize the goals of
Atma-nirvar Bharat by leveraging OSS and FOSS
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