Debian Pure Blends trip to Asia

Contents

  1. Debian Pure Blends trip to Asia
    1. Background
    2. Time table & budget
    3. India
      1. Khammam
      2. Hyderabad
      3. Mangalore
      4. Bangalore
    4. Vietnam
      1. Ho Chi Minh City
      2. Can Tho
    5. Singapore
      1. Singapore
    6. Indonesia
      1. Surabaya
      2. Malang
      3. Yogyakarta
      4. Bogor
      5. Jakarta
      6. Banda Aceh
      7. Lhokseumawe
      8. Takengon
      9. Bireuen
      10. Banda Aceh (revisited)
    7. United Kingdom
      1. Cambridge
    8. Info about me
    9. How and when?
    10. Abstract
      1. Introduction to the topic
      2. About the Speaker
    11. Media
      1. Newspapers
      2. Blogs

Background

Several Debian-related conferences are planned in Asia in the fall, which I believe could benefit from raising awareness on Debian Pure Blends.

I will give talks about Debian Pure Blends at each place, but frankly expect the larger impact to be my engaging with the local communities before/after the events.

I attended FOSSASIA in Vietnam 2010 where I afterwards spent a week helping the organizers establish a small hackerspace in their home town. I expect to revisit and continue that.

At MiniDebConf Taiwan 2009 I met students and teachers from an ICT school in Banda Aceh with a strong interest in developing by the Debian Pure Blend approach. We currently do chat-based sessions on the use of "boxer", and I expect a physical visit there can boost the progress of generally reusable config classes for that tool. Boxer is yet another debootstrap wrapper used in several Debian Blends - initially created for FreedomBox with the sole purpose over other similar tools to discourage derivation off of Debian and instead encourage getting customizations integrated with Debian.

I can devote the time needed for the trip, will use private or cheap accomodation, but cannot afford to pay for the unavoidable expenses of travel costs.

Luckily Debian has approved travel sponsorship for up to a limit of EUR 1000 (~DKK 7445) covering the originally planned visits to Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, and C-DAC has generously covered all costs of extending the trip to India.

Time table & budget

departure ( → arrival)

vehicle(s)

locations

price

booked

-

visa

India

???

10-17 18:05 → 10-18 17:05

flights BA819 IT2 IT812

Copenhagen → Hyderabad

3125

(./)

10-18 23:00 → 10-19 6:00

bus

Hyderabad → Khammam

20

(./)

10-21

train

Khammam → Hyderabad

20

(./)

10-26 21:00 → 10-27 ~13

train

Hyderabad → Goa

180

(./)

10-27 ~15 → 10-27 ~20

train

Goa → Mangalore

??

(./)

11-1 8:40 → 11-1 19:45

train

Mangalore → Bangalore

52

(./)

11-7 17:15 → 11-7 23:40

flight AK1212

Bangalore → Kuala Lumpur

755

(./)

-

visa

Vietnam

142

11-8 9:10 → 11-8 10:05

flight AK880

Kuala Lumpur → Ho Chi Minh City

573

(./)

11-13

bus

Ho Chi Minh City → Can Tho

30

(./)

11-17

bus

Can Tho → Ho Chi Minh City

30

(./)

11-17 13:40 → 11-17 16:30

flight JT157

Ho Chi Minh City → Singapore

400

(./)

-

visa

Indonesia

???

11-19

boat

Singapore → Batam

90

11-19 15:55 → 11-19 18:05

flight Y6-535

Batam → Surabaya

403

(./)

11-23 7:00 [ 11-23 11:56

train

Surabaya → Yogyakarta

42

(./)

11-26 8:55 → 11-26 ~19

trains + car

Yogyakarta → Bogor

153

(./)

12-1 8:00 → 12-1 10:00

car

Bogor → Jakarta

-

12-1 17:00 → 12-1 21:05

flight JT396

Jakarta → Banda Aceh

492

(./)

12-14 10:00 → 12-14 ~18

car

Banda Aceh → Lhokseumawe

-

12-15 ~22 → 12-15 ~03

car

Lhokseumawe → Takengon

-

12-26

car

Takengon → Bireuen

-

12-27

bus

Bireuen → Banda Aceh

50

12-29 14:15 → 12-29 16:45

flight AK9611

Banda Aceh → Kuala Lumpur

281

(./)

12-30 14:50 → 12-30 20:50

flight D714

Kuala Lumpur → London

1137

(./)

12-30

train

London (Gatwick) → Cambridge

238

1-2

train

Cambridge → London (Stanstead)

111

1-2 13:45 → 1-2 16:30

flight EZY3097

London → Copenhagen

489

(./)

Total

DKK 8813

India

Khammam

Staying with Pavithran at his parents' house

  1. 10-20 10:30: Meeting at Sarada Institute of Technology & Science, Khammam

  2. 10-20 21:00: Informal visit at office, Khammam of CPM

    • Open invitation to stay at the place for e.g. 2 months, studying and collaborating on use of FLOSS

Hyderabad

Staying in guest house of IIIT-H

  1. 10-21 14:00: Meeting at Hyderabad Central University (Ground Floor Conference Hall of Humanities Building )
  2. 10-21 ~17: Meeting at Sanskrit Institute, Hyderabad Central University
    • Requested help getting officially into Debian sanskrit parser tools already packaged
    • We will start project samsaadhani at Alioth to coordinate future work (I will participate as will other participants developing with Debian also attending the Humanities meeting earlier same day)

  3. 10-22 Hanging out with Medhamsh and others at IIIT-H

  4. 10-22 ~15: Meeting at the office of the SWECHA distribution

    • Discussion on development style and possible future improved collaboration
      • Live-builder w/ custom package selection added by hand (consider making a meta-package)
      • Localization of menus (and more?) into telugu (upstreamed to GNOME)
      • Interested in moving development to public git and collaborate more specifically on how distro is made/maintained
      • Open to the idea of moving some development/user ressources (mailinglists etc.) to Debian
      • Invitation to join 2-week gathering in May/June
    • Demo of the derived distribution SWECHA.
    • Talk: Why Free Software and why Debian compared to other systems
      • Audience: ~30 Ubuntu users

  5. 10-23 15:00: Meeting with Hyderabad LUG at Lamakaan

    • Audience: ~20 experienced linux users (mostly Ubuntu, some sysadmins)
    • Discussion: Getting more out of the system you use (whatever it is), and how to customize a system (and perhaps make it into a local distro)

    • Tools to help customize: localbackup*, boxer

  6. 10-24 10:00: Meeting with CDAC short course sysadmin and operating systems students

  7. 10-24 ~12:00: Meeting with CDAC about Boss Linux
    • Participants: ~14 CDAC employees - 4 BOSS supporters and via videophone ~10 BOSS developers in Chennai

    • Discussion: BOSS as a Debian derivative and ways to get closer to Debian

  8. 10-24 15:30: Meeting with CDAC short course embedded development students
  9. 10-24 ~17:00: Meeting with CDAC about embedded linux
    • Participants: ~7 CDAC employees - embedded linux developers + teachers
    • Discussion: Working closer with Debian and Emdebian (they currently use Ubuntu today)
  10. 10-24 ~20:00: Hanging out with Medhamsh and others at IIIT-H guest house

  11. 10-25 13:30: Meeting organized by SWECHA at CBIT

Mangalore

Staying at accomodation facilities of Nitte, as part of Mini Debconf India, Mangalore Edition.

  1. 10-28 ~12:10:
  2. 10-29 10:00:
    • Introduction to keysigning
  3. 10-29 11:15:
  4. 10-30:

    • Hands-on work session on FreedomBox

Bangalore

Staying at Centenary Visitors House, Indian Institute of Science.

  1. 11-3 : Talk at PES School of Engineering.

  2. 11-3: Meeting with Kumar Naik, Secretary, Education Department, Government of Karnataka about the need to incorporate Free Software in schooling

  3. 11-4: Free Software introductory talk at the Bangalore University for Post Graduate Computer Science and Computer Applications students at 11 am IST

  4. 11-4 14:00: Meeting at Indian Institute of Science

    • Audience: ~20 technical students pursuing Undergraduate and Post Graduate courses in Computer Sciences.

    • Talk: Debian Pure Blends

  5. 11-4 ~15:15: Interview with reporter from The Hindu

  6. 11-4 ~16:30: Casual discussion in garden of IISc
    • Participants: ~8 technical students

  7. 11-5: Meeting at BMS Institute of technology

    • Venue: Technical College
    • Audience: ~150 students pursuing Engineering Undergraduate courses in Electronics, Communication and Computer Science, acquainted with Free Software on the technical lines, but not entirely oriented on the philosophy of Free Software

    • Talk: FreedomBox - a Debian Pure Blend

  8. 11-5: Casual discussion with the GNU/Linux users group
    • Attendees: ~20 students engaged in various tools and skills
    • Topics: sharing interests, pairing interests with existing FLOSS tools and with each other, music programming and music math, ...

  9. 11-6: Meeting at office space of Free Software Movement Karnataka

    • Venue: The closest to a Hacklab FSMK has got.
    • Attendees: ~25 Students - enthusiasts practicing ethical hacking, coding and Debian-based distribution users.
    • Talk: Debian Pure Blends
    • Interview with reporter from BMSIT

    • Workshop: UX design for FreedomBox

    • Attempted workshop: Using boxer tool for Debian blending (e.g. FreedomBox)

  10. 11-6: Meeting at AC3

    • Venue: The so called 'Slum'
    • A visit to the Community Computing Center and interaction with the kids in the center.
    • Showcase of pictures from a GIMP artist from the center, along with light cultural performances.

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Staying at Happy Inn Hotel Tue 11-8 - Thu 11-10.

Staying at unknown hotel (losely related to Hung Thinh Hotel) Thu 11-10 - Sun 11-13.

  1. 11-10 20:00: Attend FOSSASIA Pre-Event at Spotted Cow

  2. 11-11: FOSSASIA Info Day
    • 10:10 - 10:30 Talk: Debian Blends: Make your own "blended" distribution
      • Being one of the oldest and biggest distributions of FLOSS, Debian plays a central role in the larger world of FLOSS.
      • Jonas, a passionate Debian user and Debian Developer since 2001, gives a view on the relationship between users, distributors and developers of Free code, and provide some simple general ideas on how we can improve these relationships.
      • Audience: ~200 students
  3. 11-12: FOSSASIA Community Day
    • 13:00 - 16:00 Workshop: Shape Debian for your custom needs
      • Debian is big and flexible, and therefore ideal as basis for a special-purpose customization.
      • But maintaining a customizing is a big burden, so better long-term for all that customizations gets back into Debian.
      • We will look at ways to ease customizing, and a tool to ease the more complex task of reintegrating customizations with Debian.
      • Bring a USB stick to create your own small custom Debian - and to keep the building blocks so that you can refine further when you get home...
      • Attendees: ~15 mostly Windows users

Can Tho

Staying at MBM office/home

  1. 11-13 - 11-17: Visit small hackerspace in Can Tho

Singapore

Singapore

Staying at hackerspace in Singapore.

  1. 11-17 19:00 - 21:00: Attend Entrepreneurship meeting about Mozilla WebFWD hosted by TiE

    • Participate in panel debate

  2. 11-18: Hang out at HackerspaceSG

    • 19:50 - 01:00: Very(!) casual discussions

Indonesia

Surabaya

  1. Hang out with BlankOn developers, working on best use of Debian

  2. 11-20 09:00 Talk on Cangkru'an KLAS Universitas Narotama

  3. 11-21 09:00 Talk on Brawijaya University Malang
  4. 11-22 09:00 Talk On Trunojoyo University Madura
  5. 11-23 07:00 Go to Yogyakarta by train

Malang

Yogyakarta

  1. Visit Aji Kisworo Mukti

  2. 11-24 15:00: Malioboro (Gathering Linux Users of Yogyakarta) at Sanata Dharma University

  3. 11-25 LinuxHackerSpace at Infest Yogyakarta

  4. 11-26 a weekend excursion in Yogyakarta :D

Bogor

  1. Visit Ahmad Haris

  2. 11-28 10:00: Institut Pertanian Bogor (Giving Lecture about FLOSS)

  3. Hang out with BlankOn developers, working on best use of Debian

Jakarta

  1. 12-1 10:00: Universitas Bakrie

Banda Aceh

Staying at Madinah Hotel.

Lhokseumawe

Takengon

Engage with AR-ROS:

  1. Real-world use of computer
    • Use Arduino to monitor forest fires
    • Use cellphones to aid coffee farmers improve quality of crops
  2. Help design long-term sustainable custom system for Gayo culture
    • Localization into Gayonese
    • Customized default install emphasizing locally relevant tools?
    • Customized visual identity of install process and on default desktop?
    • Community building?

Bireuen

Banda Aceh (revisited)

United Kingdom

Cambridge

  1. 12-30 - 1-2: Meeting (and party!) with Hector Oron.

Info about me

I am a Debian developer, with special interests in...

Regarding a) I strongly believe in learning by exploring. I encourage both users and developers to try out and reason themselves, not try follow a predefined path. Quite inspiring to me is the constructionism principles, also a driving factor for the Sugar project (originating as the graphical user interface for One Laptop Per Child). I should probably emphasize, though, that I am not a conventional, trained teacher.

With b) I mean that computers in itself is boring to me. Playing games never really interested me - I want computers to be tools for something real. And I want those tools to be intuitive to use - user-friendly.

I make a living as a systems architect and systems administrator at a few places including the Kaospilot University. Here I strive to provide services that are both user-friendly and self-sustained - i.e. independent from Google and other outsourcing providers. I try to design systems that are not even dependent on me! I call it Redpill.

The main "theme" of my trip will be Debian Pure Blends. That is c) above: a subproject of Debian to improve its use for custom needs, without "branching off" and creating a derived distribution.

I am happy that projects like BlankOn and EzGo! and Skolelinux exist, but find it frustrating how they are done technically. When a new system is created by "hacking on top" of another one, then it does not naturally live, but need more work to keep that new system alive. A more sustainable approach is to collaborate closely with the "mother system" to adopt the technical pieces needed - and then only maintain customized branding parts as a separate project.

Example: Ubuntu is not sustainable without Canonical as "pacemaker". EzGo! and BlankOn are probably also not sustainable themselves without extensive maintainance work. Such work might be fun and it might make for good learning experiences, but maintainance is fundamentally not creative - other tasks could no doubt be fun and fruitful too while contributing more to the larger Free Software eco system.

More difficult to begin with, but more rewarding long-term to create something that does not need a "pacemaker" :-)

How and when?

I would be happy to offer my time and share my passions with you and the projects you are involved in. Is that interesting and useful to you?

I do not want my visit to be as a tourist. I want to engage, want to be involved and to be used. So it is important to me that you think of me not only as a friend but also as an asset for your projects - or that you are honest and tell me if you cannot imagine me being helpful for your projects. :-)

Abstract

Below are intro texts kindly authored by Raghavendra S for my talk at BMSIT in Bangalore, India.

/!\ Please note that I do not hold a any degree. The title in my company name is just a reference to the fictional history professor Indiana Jones.

Introduction to the topic

Propagating and sustaining Free Software (Free as in freedom) and the importance of its applicability in learning, development and teaching are important issues that the Free Software Movement -Karnataka (FSMK) has been engaged in with regular collaborations with various other Free Software communities.

While community collaboration is the crucial aspect of this global attempt, today, the Debian Community stands out as the most important of these communities in the Free Software world. Delivering to the world, the Universal Operating System -Debian, dubbed the mother operating system and thousands of packages with diverse applications Debian community is leading the effort of setting software free from its shackles.

About the Speaker

Jonas Smedegaard - A representative from the Debian Community, a Debian Developer himself

Jonas apart from being a Debian Developer is a freelance system administrator and networks developer, currently based in Denmark. Jonas has been associated with some of the important Free Software related projects of recent times:

Jonas will be talking about the need for Debian Pure Blends and an insight into what FreedomBox could deliver and what its limitations could be.

Media

Newspapers

Blogs

CategoryHomepage

Jones: DebianAsia2011 (last edited 2011-12-26 18:26:21 by JonasSmedegaard)