Avinash Joshi

After the Success of FOSSTER ‘09 that was conducted on 28th and 29th of March, 2009; FOSSTER ‘10, the National Level FOSS Conference at Amritapuri Campus is back. It will be held on 20th and 21st of February, 2010.
FOSSTER now has an official website http://fosster.co.in [we we not able to reserve fosster.in - which is [...]

Slowly but surely, we’re getting an idea of what Google’s Chrome OS will look like. We know that it will be Linux-based and that the primary interface will likely be the Chrome browser. Still, the search giant was not content to simply turn a Web browser into an operating system. Soon Google was launching a [...]

I have been thinking about this for a long time… I always ask and wonder for myself, “How do I get a fancy progress bar in the terminal (i.e., using C/C++ code)???” I got this thought when I was coding for my huffman lab program. I was thinking “If we input a large file > [...]

I was just surfing on the internet. As you all would have known by now, I am a FOSS lover and promoter. This little thing never struck my head! Why? Just have a look. It has to change!!!
Source: http://www.gendershouldntmatter.org/

Gender balance, global:

In the ICT sector:

In the Free Software community:

Seriously,
Is the free/open-source community missing something?
 

I was sitting in the “Internet Coding Lab” and writing the C code for Huffman encoding. I always use Ubuntu and vim as it is the best for coding in any language. Please do not forget to download the book “A byte of VIM” (Details at the end of this post)
 
Some VIM Tips and tricks
================================

PS: [...]

Many of us who love to work on Linux enjoy the privilege of using a plethora of commands and tools. Here is an effort to introduce you to a few very simple- to-use, yet enormously effective commands. The intended audience may belong to all classes of Linux users and the only requirement is to have [...]

We can play songs and videos from the terminal in a GNU/Linux or Unix machine.
The player is “mplayer”. MPlayer has a GUI version too. It is GMPlayer

Just a few screenshots to show you how we can play songs and videos on GNU/Linux or UNIX
To install this:
1. SOLARIS/OpenSoalris: http://blastwave.org
2. Ubuntu: In the terminal, type “sudo apt-get [...]

Everyone using unix in their job will once in a while have to run a long running process. Usually right before leaving the office to go to dinner. If you have to check on it later to make sure it finished right then you are stuck with redirecting the output to a file and look [...]

Partitioning your hard disk using GParted
GParted is THE BEST Gnome Partition Editor application. Before attempting to use it, here is some basic background information.
Let me give you a brief insight as to why it is the best partition manager:
FEATURES:

It is a GNOME based partition editor
It is OpenSource
It is based on Debian
The size is just 95MB!!
Since [...]

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time. But could not find much time for the same. Anyways Once you install Ubuntu and OpenSolaris together (on the metal installation i.e., dual boot) you will face some grub issues.
There are two ways in which you can install the two operating systems:
1. Install [...]

One of the several advantages of having many GNU/Linux distributions is that there is always one distribution that meets specific needs for a group of users with similar interests. Whether you are a student or a scientist or someone who believes in some religion; you could use one of these special purpose distribution and share [...]

Adobe has just released Reader for Solaris x86 (it has been available for Sparc for some time).
How to install it:
1. Download the installer from http://get.adobe.com/reader/.
2. Open a terminal and make the installer executable:
chmod +x Desktop/AdbeRdr9.1.0-1_i486solaris_enu.bin
3. Start the installer:
avinash@avinashj:~$ pfexec ./Desktop/AdbeRdr9.1.0-1_i486solaris_enu.bin
Extracting files, please wait. (This may take a while depending on the configuration of your machine)
This [...]

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed Lenny) after 22 months of constant development.
With 12 supported computer architectures, more than 23,000 packages built from over 12,000 source packages and 63 languages for the new graphical installer, this release sets new records, once again. Software available in [...]

December of 2008, I attended and gave a talk on OpenSolaris at the FSFS conference @ Trivandrum (http://avinashjoshi.co.in/2008/12/09/fsfs-day-one-2008-09-12/). This is where I was enlightened about the reality of GNU by Richard M Stallman. Let me just put down my thoughts (mostly taken from http://gnu.org)
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like [...]

I guess we all know that Ubuntu 8.10 ships with OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 and, if you want to use the new and improved version, then this guide is for you! However, we will not do a fresh install of the OpenOffice suite, as we will instead only upgrade the current version in Ubuntu Intrepid.
What do I [...]

!Ubuntu Rocks!
Introduction:
Today morning as I got into my class, my little friend Aswathy (I call her achu) bounced up and asked me for help. On enquiring, what the matter was, she told me that she wanted to install IBM RSA for her projects; but she was having vista!! Ok now I knew that RSA works [...]

I depend on Reliance ZTE/CDMA for Internet access. I configured the dialing by using the wvdial PPP utility, and I issue the wvdial command ( See my earlier post on connecting to internet using Reliance ZTE modem ) to connect to the internet in Ubuntu 8.10. There were some issues and drawbacks with the wvdial [...]

Your modem is a peripheral device to Linux, like a CD-ROM drive, hard drive, or a mouse. Your modem will be connected to a serial port, which means that one of the serial devices in the /dev directory actually points to your modem. You may notice that there’s also a file, /dev/modem, which serves as [...]

2nd International conference on Freedom in Computing, Development and Culture. 9-11, December 2008 at Mascot Convention Center, Thiruvananthapuram
The Free Software Movement, started about a quarter of a century back, pioneered the various movements for freedom in the digital world – for instance, free knowledge represented by Wikipedia or freedom of creative works from copyright restrictions [...]

I keep telling my friends – “There is no place like 127.0.0.1″
To me, this means there is no place like LINUX/UNIX!
You will ask me “Isn’t 127.0.0.1 there in windows?”
Ans: Yes it is there, but when i do a ipconfig, it will not display the loopback interface. But it does get displayed in LINUX/UNIX on typing [...]