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GNU/Linux – Random thoughts and serendipity http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog A collection of jottings on various issues that excite no one else Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:26:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6.17 21471312 A book on FLOSS and Hegemony http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/09/18/a-book-on-floss-and-hegemony-2/ http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/09/18/a-book-on-floss-and-hegemony-2/#comments Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:26:11 +0000 http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/?p=691 Continue reading A book on FLOSS and Hegemony →]]> The actual title of the book is ‘Hegemony Resistance and Computing: A Study in Postcolonial Political Economy‘. And, as the author mentions, it took six years to write, a bit longer to haggle over the title and, finally, the short-hand of the title stuck 🙂

With the aim of initiating a conversation (link to discussion group) he has put for download a pre-release version of the book. I’ve been lucky, along with Sayamindu, to have had the chance to read drafts, drafts of drafts, notes of the chapters. Discuss over the issues put forward and sometimes help in looking up references or, cross-checking them. The book also got me to read up afresh on Hegel.

We often joke that he is going to end up with a triptych – the first book was a popular primer on GNU/Linux and was written in Bengali. Let’s see how that works out. It would be appreciated if feedback is provided to the author.

]]> http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/09/18/a-book-on-floss-and-hegemony-2/feed/ 1 691 On the road to an Indian language GNU/Linux OS http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/05/27/on-the-road-to-an-indian-language-gnulinux-os/ http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/05/27/on-the-road-to-an-indian-language-gnulinux-os/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 07:05:21 +0000 http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2010/05/27/on-the-road-to-an-indian-language-gnulinux-os/ Continue reading On the road to an Indian language GNU/Linux OS →]]> The history of Indic localization of Linux (GNU/Linux …) may never be written down with the amount of detail that it deserves. Especially to ensure that the significant events are well recorded.

Lest we forget, with the help of sayamindu and karunakar I came across the following dates:

  • IndLinux Hindi v0.37 (Milan) released on October 2003. It was a LiveCD that allowed you to check out a localized GNU/Linux desktop environment, input and display
  • The AnkurBangla LiveCD was also released somewhat later that same year
  • From May 2004 onwards, the Utkarsh Project released and maintained Gujarati Localizations
  • In November 2004, Fedora Core 3 shipped and you could choose to boot into an Indic locale and get your work done. You can also check this page for the RHEL release that happened.
  • In 2006, the IndLinux project released Rangoli
  • In June 2007, Debian Etch was released with an installer localized in Indic languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil). As a consequence, Debian (and Ubuntu) users may experience a full Indic-localized system from scratch.

So, before you go and listen to folks talk about the “first Indian language GNU/Linux Operating System” on the media channels, keep these dates in mind.

Update: This does not in any way claim to be the only dates that are relevant. So, if you do recall the dates of releases from other groups working on Indic L10n on Linux, please feel free to leave them in comments with URLs if possible.

The post is brought to you by lekhonee-gnome v0.9

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