Writing, thoughts, experiences and perspectives of Abhas Abhinav.
Why? Lets assume that you’ve been a GNU+Linux and Free Software user for a very long time. Maybe 15 years. Maybe even more. What is the first thing that occurs to you when you encounter a problem? Or something breaks down? You search, you discuss on mailing lists, you read source code. Basically, you use all the resources you have the liberty to use. What you don’t do is accept the problem or…
“We should all own the content we’re creating, rather than just posting to third-party content silos. Publish on your own domain, and syndicate out to silos. This is the basis of the “Indie Web” movement.” I chanced upon the world of IndieWeb and microformats while trying to search for a system to publish short notes (neuron is something I discovered in this process). Here is a summary of the…
Foremost - I consider myself to be a sysadmin. More than a “job description”, its an attitude and value system. And today, on SysAdmin Day, as a tribute to sysadmins and hackers everywhere, I thought I must share my perspective about why I am a sysadmin. Sysadmin first, Programmer next Why do you program? To solve a problem. Who defines the problem to you? Being a sysadmin is a process of…
Talk Slides The PDF slides that I used for my talk are available for download . Or you can preview them online as well . Or you can also view these as a JPEG slideshow of images . Tutorial Slides I also presented a tutorial and live demo of a how to build an IoT solution without using proprietary software. You can either download the slides or view them in your browser itself. Or, you can view…
In my personal opinion, it is meaningless if we attend an inspiring talk by Dr Richard Stallman today and are not able to reflect on his message and act on it. Here is a small set of things that you can do. There is no timeline. But please see which of them are relevant to you. A few months back, I wrote about how we can personalise and deepen our involvement with free software . Consider those…
Overview Here are some free software projects that students can work on. I expect that multiple students will work on the same project but with different approaches. Some of these project are research and documentation projects (tagged: research ) while others are development and documentation projects (tagged: development ). Modalities These projects are only meaningful if we do them in the right…
I thought, instead of just mentioning about the coverage, if I could offer some more details and clarification and share the experience, maybe that might be of greater value. Open Source For You (OSFY) - January 2019 issue Here is a link to the ToC of the Jan 2019 issue of the OSFY magazine. I will link to the actual article once it is posted on the main website - maybe in a month or so. Please do…
Recently, while having a discussion with a friend on how to handle a major technical issue in their college, I mentioned some collaboration opportunities that would have come up if they had chosen to use free software in the first place. When he said that “no one in the college will listen” , that got me thinking. Do we only talk about something we consider useful if we feel that someone is…
Background Many students participate in over-night programming events dubbed “hackathons”. Such events provide a good opportunity for students to try their hand at solving one problem over a 24 to 36 hour period. However, in a bid to provide a working solution to the problems they have chosen to work on, students often resort to using a rather unfair mix of proprietary software, framework and…
Background It is disheartening to see well-meaning people using the term “open source” for just about everything. In my view, the term “open source” carries no meaning anymore. Not only does it miss the point and essence of why software freedom matters (and is the real concern) but it creates so much ambiguity and confusion that very few people really know what “open source” really means. I wish…
Background Dr Richard Stallman (RMS), founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, would be visiting India in January 2019. How do we make his visit to India more meaningful? How do we take this opportunity to generate activity around concepts of Software Freedom? What can you do as an individual or school or college or company? How could culminate into a deliverable three months…
Background Here is what I have been thinking about a lot recently: There is a huge gap between our thought process when things are going well versus when things are bad. My observation is that we don’t put in enough effort to build skills or acquire tools when things are going well… and when things are bad , we desperately crave for these same tools that we didn’t spend time acquiring. Let me…
Recently, at DeepRoot Linux , we started a newsletter that we send to our past and present customers, ie. a select group of people we have worked with and who have contributed to our business. Listed here are the choices that I made to design and send this newsletter and steps that you can follow to do so yourself. There are many ways of doing this right and of ensuring that an email you send will…
Recently, CloudFare launched a public DNS service that they position as a “privacy-first Consumer DNS service”. And that got me thinking about how much information and data we are leaking through DNS queries and what that does to our privacy. What are DNS resolvers? DNS resolvers are network services that convert domain names into IP addresses. When you visit a website or send an email, all these…
Background I have been using an Android phone for about 6 years now. I have been using GNU/Linux exclusively since 1998. Hence, the desire to have a phone that provided me with the same freedom and flexibility has been very strong. Unfortunately, a few months back I realised how I had accepted a life where I could have complete freedom and privacy on my computer but was content with having almost…