Localized Gujarati Geek

* My wife and kid (ie Kavin) went to Mumbai for enjoying Ganesh Utsav today. I came back home from station to home via AMTS (ah, that bought my 47 route memories of hostel days). During travel of that 15 minutes, I thought why Debconf can’t be in India? It can – May be DC 19 or 21? God knows – that is very long planning and I still have to be there at one Debconf But, but, as always – I am very optimistic.

I am looking for where in India it can happen.

Ahmedabad: Plenty of good venues, well connected, but in dry state – no alcohol ie no Cheese & Wine party! July/August is terrible weather for outsiders.
Bangalore: Very good connectivity (Internet/Reach), Venue is problem, Weather is good/ok.
Chennai: IITM. Probably, other venues? Debian is popular (I am only Indian DD, not connected to IITs). Weather?
Mumbai: Bad for organization of any event, costly – but IITB is plus point.
Pune: Weather seems good, good connectivity but no idea about venue(s).

Any other places?

Don’t shoot me, please

* We know that its time of election going in world’s biggest democratic country, India. Last and third phase will be on 30th. I am not sure I will go to my dear Palanpur and vote. Oh, I may go and vote! and will wait for sane result this time.

* Keeping tradition of cool posters, KDE India team has come with set of awesome posters again. Pradeepto announced here and here and I loved this for obvious reason!

* We need fresh blood! Yes. Like Lucas mentioned in his last post, along with Debian itself, many small teams and big teams are highly out-numbered and probably dying slowly. Currently, debian-in team has only two active members (jaldhar and if I count myself). We live on #indlinux at moment, which also leads to confusion about actual focus area of team.

So, here are some clear text messages:

- Debian-IN is team to work for ‘Indic’ packages as well as bringing new and fresh blood to Debian from India.

- Its not true that we only work for fonts, we have many other packages: aspell dictionaries and festival-* packages and so on. Update: QA Page for Debian-In-Workers. Thanks Runa.

- We aim to provide platform for upcoming DDs from India. Sadly, all DDs in India are highly isolated at moment.

- Hopefully, we will get #debian-in at oftc. Update: Recovered ‘dead’ channel now. Thanks to Ganneff and h0lger for help. Come and join us!!

Please note that we are considering developers only right now. We have already good numbers of users of Debian in India.

kthnx.

* No, I am not talking about current DPL election or upcoming state election of Karnataka. Add +1 if you like new logo of Debian-In-workers team. Thanks to Niyam Bhushan for creating it. The license is upto us and yet to decide, I also wants suggestion for it. If you don’t like it, put -1. If you like it, put +1 in comments.

* Laptop running Linux is yet dream for me! ASUS launched Eee laptop and PC and it is perfect for people like me And it can be hacked to do anything. Its fun!

* As Venky told already, economictimes.com did poll on Should India support free software to take PC penetration to the next level (yesterday). I did not get chance to vote (ah, in digest mode, so news always reach me late!).

The result is promising!

This is what happened to me today! I got letter from Custom Department about shipment of unusual parcel of Ubuntu cds. I just ignored it and thought that it was any ‘Natak’ of govt. But, I was shocked today by receiving Free Ubuntu cds charged with Rs.1,650/- !! Oh !! It happens only in India!