My favorite sections in the NUS Central Library is the TK5I05.885 and QA76.76 – all catering to the latest and old books on various Computer technologies. Last semester, I had to write an essay for the USP application on a topic that talks about my interest. And guess what, I wrote about  Open Source. I had to keep it non-technical as mainly Arts Professors would evaluate that. (Disclaimer : I did not get through USP ).

So I looked up some books regarding the topics, and for that I had to look up in the above shelves of QA76.76. And there, sitting on the old shelves were the immense bundles of knowledge talking about the various aspects of Free and Open Source Software. I will be providing a list of books and locations at the end of this post so that any geek, passing the library can have a look at the areas.

Though, almost all these books are available freely over the Internet under the GNU license, getting some to read in the comfort of your bed is a boon in itself. And why not use the vast library that is full of smelly books, untouched for years, waiting for geeks?

I try to make it up to a habit that I have always craved for and sometimes achieved – “a book a week”. But a busy semester and less sleeping time pulls the habit down.

The most important aspect of FOSS that has inspired me is the point that reeks out from all the books that talk about history of Open Source – The way the eminent personalities coded day and night with huge motivations. I mainly refer to the “Rebel Code” by Glyn Moody. He gives a comprehensive insight into how the Hacker movement transformed into a highly organised rebellion – giving birth to GNU and Linux, as we know them today.

I think its better to read the books altogether, rather me giving brief reviews about each (I am still reading some of them, if you cant find them on the Book shelves, ping me, I will return those books back to the library).

You can get a simple list of all the books with the Keyword – “Open Source” at LincNUS -

http://linc.nus.edu.sg/search/Y?SEARCH=open+source&searchscope=16&SORT=D&submit=Submit

Other Books, pertaining to FOSS, I will list :  There are even more in the above link, and more that I am looking out for. Will update the list soon.

P.S. There are perhaps thousands of books that cater to the technical aspect of Open Source technologies such as PHP, Apache, Ruby etc. I talk only about the non-technical ones here.

But it seems that a new warfront is being fought in the sphere of soft drinks with Bing Soda, Microsoft Soda and Ubuntu Cola

We’ve come a long way since then, of course. From a single humble mailing list, we then set up our main site, linuxNUS.org, our wiki – Opensource@NUS, forums and our IRC channel, #linuxnus on irc.freenode,net (which you can join by clicking “Chat” at the top of this page).  We’ve ridden the recent social wave as well, turning up on sites such as Facebook and Twitter!

In this time, we’ve never stopped trying to promote, advocate and educate people about the use of open source software, organising activities that hopefully brought value to all involved. We organised Installfests, workshops and Hackfests, and even brought in external speakers to share their pet projects with us,  such as Mario Behling on LXDE, Ole Tange on OpenMoko, and Harish Mallipeddi on developing Facebook applications with Django. linuxNUS also produces a podcast, where we talk about stuff related to open source in Singapore. The linuxNUS Podcast has covered groups and events like the Free and Open Source Alliance of Singapore (FOSA), Software Freedom Day 09, and we even managed to squeeze in an interview with Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, when he was in Singapore.

It’s been a blast for us so far, and for those of you reading who have been part of activities, we really hope that you enjoyed the experience, and more importantly, gained something from it.

With that, we leave you know with a little something to mark our journey through the years

There. I’ve said it. Now I await the pitchforks.

Before you toss me into the vat of boiling oil for heresy, however, hear me out. We’ve all been in this fix before. We really, really, want to use only open source software, but there are just so many things that stand in our way.  That YouTube video your friends are laughing over? That’s proprietary Flash all right. That cool new game everyone’s been playing? Chances are (but not quite),  that it runs only on Windows.

Things get worse when you’re put into situations that are completely out of your control. In NUS, we most often run into such situations in the courses that we take. Perhaps the lecturer wants the class to use some software that only available on a closed platform. Or he wants you to develop code in a proprietary language. Or perhaps he just insists on sending out .pptx files. Every. Single. Time.

What’s an open source geek to do? Good question, we’re stumped too!

So here’s the deal, if you’d ever faced a dilemma like that in NUS, we want to know! What situation were you put in, by whom, and how (if at all) you managed to get around that. Drop us a note in the comments, and we’ll collate the results for a nice fancy table in a follow-up.

Oh, and general comments welcome too, of course.

After talking about the business opportunities with LXDE, Mario is now talking about the community at LXDE.

An interesting fact about LXDE Project is that the founder of the Project, alias PCMan, is actually a medical doctor!

A very prominent member of the LXDE community is Klaus Knopper, also the creator of Knoppix LiveCD. In fact, the recent release of Knoppix has moved from having KDE to LXDE as the default desktop environment.

One of the key messages from Mario is that an Open Source Project need both technical and non-technical members, as well as people with wide diversity in order for an Open Source Project to be successful.

Mario also gave an anecdote of a student in Taiwan who actively contributed to LXDE. This student enjoyed development work and was netted an internship with the Open Source Foundry in Taiwan, due to his involvement and experience with Open Source Development..

Mario also mentioned that he is able to get openSUSE to sponsor usb sticks if anyone is able to produce a light version of openSUSE with LXDE.

To be updated: Details steps on how to contribute to the LXDE project and GSOC LXDE Projects.

Todo: Help LXDE advertise abt GSOC to the Singapore Universities.

Other than some cosmetic touch ups, there is now also a chat applet login located on the sidebar. Extremely useful for those who do not have an irc client, but still wish to drop into #linuxnus.

Do drop into the channel. The place usually comes alive after 11pm.

In addition, our photos are now hosted at Webshots

While most of the photos are from our archives on this site, there are some photos of the previous LUG before linuxNUS was founded. These were dug out from The Wayback Machine. Think those guys were around in Y2K there about.

Well if you recognize any of the people there, do tell them we are still around (FYI, linuxNUS only started off in Jul 2005). Those photos would probably bring back some anecdotes if they care to join the mailing list.

1. T-shirt:
• sourcing for t-shirt deals
• publicise the t-shirt sale (tell everyone you know!)
2. Speakers:
• we always need speakers for the monthly meetup. Do you have any thing to share with everyone? Need not be a formal presentation either, even a informal show and tell will do.
3. FOSS Awareness Talk:
• sourcing for appropriate speaker(s): Do you know anyone who might be willing to be one of the speakers? You can introduce him to us. =)
• logistics and administrative preparation: Well, it’s the run-of-the-mill stuff like equipment (if needed), refreshments, registration of participants, etc
• publicity: Design of posters, pasting them everywhere, and telling everyone you know
4. coreteam:
• Well, a lot of the people in the coreteam are in their final semester, so we will be severely short-handed soon. You can join the coreteam in any capacity (key personnel, publicity managers, logistics managers, or system administrators, etc).
If you are interested in helping out in any of these, or even things that are not mentioned, do email the join@linuxNUS.org. Or you can simply hop over to the room at SOC1-03-19. =) Hope to hear from you soon!

Yummy! (From left, Junhao, Chandra, David, Wee Biao)

Well, it may be due to a lot more people having a key, such as Lufeng, Luqman, Kevin, Zhuoru and me. Or it may be that Luqman the Quartermaster has ensured the tidiness and cleaniness. Whatever the reason, we always welcome more people into the room, “We are Open” after all…

We do have a lot of stuff inside: 4 giant desks, 8 seats, 8 computers, 1 imac (yes, the green apple), lots of books, ethernet connections, and the best deal of all, it’s air-conditioned… All lovingly taken care of by Luqman. =)

Come join us there! Once again, our room is at SOC1-03-19.

– Junhao