A day-long workshop titled “Migrating to Linux: Introduction to Open Source Tools” was held at North South University today. It was jointly organized by Bangkadesh Linux Users Alliance and North South University Computer Club. The speakers were BLUA members Toby Phillipe, Mir Mahbub Alamgir, Ahmed Rafiq-ul-Islam, Mohammad Salman, and me.

Speakers: (clock-wise) Russell John, Ahmed Rafiq-ul-Islam, Toby Phillippe, Mir Mahbub Alamgir, and Mohammad Salman. At Boomers, Banani.

The workshop was divided into two sessions. The first session started at 11:30, when I started off by giving introductory lectures on Linux and Open Source software. I did a lot of Microsoft-bashing as well, which was my favourite part. The next presentation was Mr. Mahbub Alamgir’s, who talked about Ubuntu and Kubuntu. He demonstrated a Kubuntu Live CD and guided through the installation process. The lunch break was announced 13:30, and all of us had our lunch at Boomers. The second session started at 14:15. Mr. Alamgir continued his presentation and showed the basic desktop usage. Toby Phillippe, our “bideshi” member was the next presenter. Toby used an OOo Impress presentation and gave a lot of helpful tips to the participants on migrating to Linux from Windows. He talked about the Open Source alternatives of Windows programs, which was appreciated by the participants. His presentation was very professional, and I’m sure that he has a lot of public speaking experience. Ahmed Rafiq-ul-Islam’s presentation was next, who talked about the command line interface and it’s necessities. He taught the basic shell commands that are needed for everyday system administration. Since the participant were new to Linux, they had a little difficulty understanding, but I’m sure all of them enjoyed his presentation. Mohammad Salman was supposed to talk about server setup and administration, but we had to cancel his presentation due to lack of time. We took a quick decision on organising another workshop sometime soon where he’ll show Apache, BIND, mySQL, and sendmail installation and workaround. Overall, the workshop was a success. It had strengthened our ties with NSUCC, who’s support was invaluable. My personal thanks goes to Saumen, who coordinated the event from their side. Thanks to NSUCC president Zia bhai and all the the volunteers who helped enormously. Check out http://gallery.linux.org.bd/thumbnails.php?album=24 for photos of the event.

I just cleaned up the old wiki page on Software Freedom Day (SFD) site and updated with the SDF 2006 celebration information. On September 16th, Software Freedom Day 2006 will be celebrated around the world including Bangladesh. This year’s budget is 30,000 taka and BLUA will be organizing it as usual.

Please bookmark Bangladesh wiki page and visit it often to stay updated.

Timeline: March 9 – March 13
Location: Central Gono Bidyalaya, Sonargoan

We organized a 5-day long Teacher Professional Development (TPD) training at Central Gono Bidyalaya at Sonargoan. The training provided 18 school teachers with intermediate-level IT skills while simultaneously teaching active educational methodologies. Over the course of the training, participants learned to use Fedora Core 5, OOo Writer, OOo Impress, OOo Calc, Nvu, KolourPaint, The GIMP, along with digital camera operation and the Internet. Food, accommodation and the training itself was provided free of cost.