[PLUG] [Event Report] GNUnify, February 10-11, 2012, Pune, India

[Shakthi Kannan]

Hi,

I attended GNUnify 2012 [1] on February 10-11, 2012 at Symbiosis
Institute of Computer Studies and Research [2], Pune, India.

Day I

The first day first session that I attended was on "Build your own
cloud computing infrastructure" [3] by Arun Khan [4]. He addressed the
different concepts and tools available for setting up a private
computing infrastructure. After the first session, I moved to listen
to Saleem Ansari's [5] talk on "Torque Box - Ruby App Server" [6].
TorqueBox is small adaptation layer on top of JBoss's Java application
server. I then attended Srikant Patnaik's [7] talk on "Web based
embedded project design" [8]. He demonstrated a simple example of
using an LED with Arduino and controlling it with a Python CGI
webserver. He also demonstrated the use of Fritzing to build the
demoed circuit. All the tools are available on Fedora:

  $ sudo yum install fritzing arduino

After lunch, I attended the talk on "Btrfs - The next Generation
Filesystem on Linux" by Neependra Khare [9]. He addressed the
different problems in the current filesystems, and how Btrfs tries to
solve them. For the last talk of the day I attended Dr. Abhijat
Vichare (from Computational Research Laboratories, Pune [10]) session
on "Portability concepts in GCC". It was a detailed session on the
internals of GCC [11].

Day II

I attended Suchakra Sharma's [12] session on "Developing QT Apps on
Android" [13]. I then went to assist with the system programming
contest organized by Neependra Khare. The participants were given a
written test on the first day, and based on the results few were
selected to compete in the programming contest (sponsored by STEC
[14]). For the contest, few programming problems were given to the
participants to be solved in C within couple of hours time. The first,
second and third prices were worth INR 5000, 3000 and 2000
respectively. Kiran Divekar (Marvell [15]) joined us, and we reviewed
the code and chose the winners. After lunch, we announced the winners
and the organizers and PLUG [16] members helped with the prize
distribution.

I then went to attend Arun Khans' session on "Convert your old laptop
to an useful network device" [17]. He had illustrated with numerous
examples on how he had used old hardware into functional, useful
network devices. It is extremely useful for beginners who are
interested in getting started in working with inexpensive hardware. I
then had a chance to meet and talk with Gen Kanai [18] and Rakesh
"Arky" Ambati [19] from Mozilla. It was also good to catch up with lot
of Wikimedia folks, with whom I went for dinner at the Vaishali
restaurant [20]. Few pictures taken during the event are available in
my /gallery:

  http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album75

SK

[1] GNUnify 2012. http://gnunify.in/

[2] SICSR, Pune, India.http://sicsr.ac.in/

[3] Build your own cloud computing infrastructure.
http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/ArunKhan#talk1

[4] Arun Khan. http://www.gnunify.in/2012/KYS/ArunKhan

[5] Saleem Ansari. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tuxdna

[6] Torque Box - Ruby App Server. http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/SaleemAnsari#talk1

[7] Srikant Patnaik. http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/SrikantPatnaik

[8] Web based embedded project design.
http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/SrikantPatnaik#talk1

[9] Neependra Khare. http://wiki.embeddednirvana.org/User:Neependra

[10] Computational Research Laboratories, Pune. http://www.crlindia.com/

[11] GCC. http://gcc.gnu.org/

[12] Suchakra Sharma. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Suchakra

[13] Developing QT Apps on Android.
http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/SuchakrapaniDattSharma#talk1

[14] STEC. http://stec-inc.com/

[15] Marvell. http://www.marvell.com/

[16] PLUG. http://plug.org.in

[17] Convert your old laptop to an useful network device.
http://gnunify.in/2012/KYS/arunkhan#talk2

[18] Gen Kanai. http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/

[19] Rakesh "Arky" Ambati. http://playingwithsid.blogspot.in/

[20] Vaishali restaurant, Pune. http://www.vaishalihotel.in/main.html

-- 
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com