[Linux-discussion] foss in book fair
A. Mani
and Baisakhi Linux's.
The quantum of sales (hectic) has been very good in both, with the
latter doing even better.
I was helping with support at the IOTA stall on Sunday... answered
lots of questions mainly.
There are a few books and compilation of articles (incl mine) at the
IOTA stall. A book on basic computer operations and GNU/Linux (in
Bengali) has been selling at over ~10 copies per hour. Both fedora12
and Ubuntu-9.10 dvds (@Rs 15/- per dvd ) have also recorded good
sales. Remixes might have been a better idea though. ... because often
the questions were about ... directions to rpmfusion.org and
medibuntu.org
Dipankar Das's book ...nobody bought a copy :) (at least on sunday)
The NLTR stall has Bengali keyboards and the latest version (2.0) of
Baisakhi available.
Best
A. Mani
--
A. Mani
ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS
http://www.logicamani.co.cc
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Indranil Das Gupta
> There are at least two stalls for foss in the IT park section - IOTA's
> and Baisakhi Linux's.
>
> The quantum of sales (hectic) has been very good in both, with the
> latter doing even better.
> I was helping with support at the IOTA stall on Sunday... answered
> lots of questions mainly.
Thanks a lot for helping out! :)
> There are a few books and compilation of articles (incl mine) at the
> IOTA stall. A book on basic computer operations and GNU/Linux (in
> Bengali) has been selling at over ~10 copies per hour. Both fedora12
> and Ubuntu-9.10 dvds (@Rs 15/- per dvd ) have also recorded good
> sales. Remixes might have been a better idea though. ... because often
> the questions were about ... directions to rpmfusion.org and
> medibuntu.org
This idea was proposed but then discarded by the IOTA authorities for
the following reasons.
a) the possibility that inclusion of 3rd party repo / .debs / .rpms on
a remix / respin may lead to accidental trademark / tradename
violation, w.r.t "Derived works"
http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy and
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/TrademarkGuidelines#Distributing_combinations_of_Fedora_software_with_non-Fedora_or_modified_Fedora_software
b) from Fedora / Ubuntu branding may lead to confusion among potential
users, and thus no/little sale.
c) in case there was substantial mods w.r.t "a" above, it would
necessitate devising a new name for the distro. This was unacceptable
on the ground that such an attempt would lead to brand erosion of
Baisakhi Linux
d) the burden of support and update of the remix as a after-market product.
> Dipankar Das's book ...nobody bought a copy :) (at least on sunday)
Er... what's so funny about that? And afaik, there was exactly *one*
copy of it sold on Sunday, with a bit of drama involved. However, I
heard the report of it only via media and is not exactly in a position
to comment.
What I can however comment is that the positioning of the book hasn't
been the best possible and neither has been its pricing. FWIW, the
"The OpenOffice.org Handbook" which has seem some brisk sales at the
State Conf, enjoys nearly 120% cost subsidy (in other words, its been
marked down at less than 50% of its original cost of printing).
Dipankar-da's book enjoys no such state subsidy support. :)
> The NLTR stall has Bengali keyboards and the latest version (2.0) of
> Baisakhi available.
cheers
-idg
A. Mani
>> sales. Remixes might have been a better idea though. ... because often
>> the questions were about ... directions to rpmfusion.org and
>> medibuntu.org
>
> This idea was proposed but then discarded by the IOTA authorities for
> the following reasons.
>
> a) the possibility that inclusion of 3rd party repo / .debs / .rpms on
> a remix / respin may lead to accidental trademark / tradename
> violation, w.r.t "Derived works"
> http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy and
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/TrademarkGuidelines#Distributing_combinations_of_Fedora_software_with_non-Fedora_or_modified_Fedora_software
>
> b) from Fedora / Ubuntu branding may lead to confusion among potential
> users, and thus no/little sale.
>
> c) in case there was substantial mods w.r.t "a" above, it would
> necessitate devising a new name for the distro. This was unacceptable
> on the ground that such an attempt would lead to brand erosion of
> Baisakhi Linux
>
> d) the burden of support and update of the remix as a after-market product.
last one is not a big problem, these days Linux distributions have
matured a lot.
One way of circumventing these issues is to make an extra dvd
including a set of 3rd party packages and extra packages with a simple
install script... that is ideal for users with insufficient or no net
connection.
>
>> Dipankar Das's book ...nobody bought a copy :) (at least on sunday)
>
> Er... what's so funny about that? And afaik, there was exactly *one*
> copy of it sold on Sunday, with a bit of drama involved. However, I
> heard the report of it only via media and is not exactly in a position
> to comment.
AFAIK it is a polemical work, emphasizing the superiority of CLI over GUI tools.
Others said that in the book "Linux ke ulto palta bhabe bole che". I
don't know about the media report and the reported sale.
Sayan "Riju" Chakrabarti
Hash: SHA1
> One way of circumventing these issues is to make an extra dvd
> including a set of 3rd party packages and extra packages with a simple
> install script... that is ideal for users with insufficient or no net
> connection.
This would be VERY nice. A major problem I personally face while
installing Ubuntu (mainly) on friends' systems is their complaint on
"too much internet dependency". As a matter of fact, I had to write a
hack to enable them "sharing" downloaded .deb files in a manner which
is easy to n00bs. (Here's the script if anyone is interested:
http://sayanriju.co.cc/debshare.html)
And about these stalls in general, they speak of very impressive
efforts. I myself bought a FC12 dvd yesterday (attempts to taste
something YUMmy besides apt-get and pacman!). I am not too sure how I
can be of any help, but would be glad to help in any way I can.
- --
Sayan "Riju" Chakrabarti
Kolkata, India.
- ---------------------------------------------------------
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xB6506B6F
Alt. Email: s26c....@gmail.com
Website : http://sayanriju.co.cc
- ---------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 6:32 AM, A. Mani wrote:
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Indranil Das Gupta
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Sayan "Riju" Chakrabarti
<m...@sayanriju.co.cc> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>> One way of circumventing these issues is to make an extra dvd
>> including a set of 3rd party packages and extra packages with a simple
>> install script... that is ideal for users with insufficient or no net
>> connection.
>
> This would be VERY nice.
Something like that should be available from the IOTA stall either by
today or latest tomorrow. Add-on DVDs for Fedora 12 as well as Ubuntu
9.10. Each packs in about 1.8 GB of data.
Word of caution: you would need about 15 - 18 GB of free space to
install them on the hard disk, and are meant to work with a *FRESH*
install of Fedora 12 (installed from the i386 DVD) or Ubuntu 9.10
(installed from the i386 DVD).
These would be priced at Rs. 70/- if i recall correctly.
cheers
-idg
Sayan "Riju" Chakrabarti
Hash: SHA1
- --
Sayan "Riju" Chakrabarti
Kolkata, India.
- ---------------------------------------------------------
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xB6506B6F
Alt. Email: s26c....@gmail.com
Website : http://sayanriju.co.cc
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> Word of caution: you would need about 15 - 18 GB of free space to
> install them on the hard disk,
Could you please elucidate a bit more on that, Indranil da?
You must been one'd need that much space if she decides to install ALL
the packages included therein. In general, there should be a way to
choose precisely what packages one wants to install. Something like an
addon-repository-on-dvd, and not something like, say, Ubuntu Ultimate
Edition.
Indranil Das Gupta
<m...@sayanriju.co.cc> wrote:
>> Word of caution: you would need about 15 - 18 GB of free space to
>> install them on the hard disk,
>
> Could you please elucidate a bit more on that, Indranil da?
> You must been one'd need that much space if she decides to install ALL
> the packages included therein. In general, there should be a way to
> choose precisely what packages one wants to install.
Aah, I quite agree with you! :) however, at the time when the scope of
the add-on was decided upon\, the people in the meeting at IOTA opined
that the entire bundle be loaded up to give the user a "complete
experience". There was a certain logic at play here - if the user
*did* know about the packages he/she wanted, they could do the same
with a regular DVD and online howtos. The assumption was that the user
did not know the "what" and the "how", and hence had to be "loaded up"
with apps ala Mac OSX
Thus you have the all-or-none scenario. Although for someone with your
bash scripting prowess (based on my reading of the debshare script),
it should not be a big thing to re-tool it. :)
FWIW, the next version of the ADD-ON DVDs would have a Ubuntu One like
UI which would allow for pick and choose.
With HDDs standardizing at a minimum of 160 to 250 GB, 15 GB is not
too much to ask for.