The document presents an overview of Linux and its significance in research and technology, particularly for linguists and the blind community. It highlights Linux as a free, open-source operating system developed by a global community, offering tools for efficient data processing and collaborative development. It also explains how to obtain Linux and ways to contribute to its ecosystem.

1. Linux For Linguists
Rakesh 'arky' Ambati
www.braillewithoutborders.org
SCL 2009
Hyderabad

2. Who's Talking
● Works for Braille Without Borders to develop
accessible technologies for blind
● Using and contributing to Free software since
college days
● Founder of FSUG­Bangalore
● Member of Ubuntu Bug Squad Team
● Learning Computational Linguistics by doing it

3. What is Linux ?
● Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)
Operating System
● Developed by worldwide hacker community
● Efficient use of resources
● Runs on every kind of hardware, even outdated
hardware
● Software for every purpose
● Secure, No Virus No Malware

4. Linux in Research
● UNIX spawned the Internet. Linux runs the
internet now.
● Linux is extendable to your needs
● Rich Toolset
● Collaborative development
● Powerful data processing capabilities

5. The Toolbox
● Standard UNIX commands
● Shell Scripting with Bash, csh, ksh
● Regular Expressions (regex)
● Programming Languages
Perl, Python, Lisp (Ruby, Java ...)
● NLP Modules
CPAN (NLP::*), Python Modules, NLTK

6. The Toolbox continued
● Unicode standards support
● Power text editors
Vi, Emacs and lot more
● Typesetting Programs
TeX, LaTeX (LyX editor)
● Version Control
cvs, svn, git

7. How to get Linux
● Download from Internet
● Ubuntu can send you one
http://shipit.ubuntu.com
● Ask your local Linux User Group(LUG)
● Take your copy here before you leave
● And don't forget to share it

8. How to Contribute
● Report Bugs
● Submit patches
● Translate the software
● Write documentation
● Be a Linux advocate
● Be a local Linux guru

9. Thank You
Any Questions?