We had planned a two day GNU/Linux teaching camp at the Ruwanpura National Teachers' Training College on 6th and 7th of October 2007. Bhikkhu Mettavihari and a few guys install Ubuntu and Edubuntu GNU/Linux onto 45 computers. Thanks to the organizers, a cosy place to stay overnight was found!
The event was a success. Nearly 150 trainee teachers took part in it. We spent the whole day teaching them all about GNU/Linux. The day ended nicely with a few discussions, and the second day was great success, too!
Every year, on the third Saturday in September, geeks all around the world gather to celebrate Software Freedom Day. Sri Lanka is no exception, with lug.lk - the Lanka Linux User Group - having celebrated SFDay
since its' inception in 2004. This year, lug.lk celebrated SFDay by holding Free Software promotion events in six locations covering four different parts of the country.
The Sahana project is a finalist in the Community Choice Awards of SourceForge 2007.
By now we are sure most of you have heard that Prof V K Samaranayake has passed away and are very much saddened by his death. He has been very supportive and instrumental to us in promoting GNU/Linux and Free & Open Source Software. He is an irreplaceable loss and will be missed dearly.
Sinhala packages for Ubuntu 7.04 (feisty) and installation instructions
are available on sinhala.sourceforge.net.
On the 24th of March 2007, Sahana received its biggest award so far, the Free Software Foundation's award for Social Benefit. 4 members of the Sahana team, namely Pradeeper, Chamindra, Ravindra and Mifan, attended the awards ceremony at the annual FSF meeting, held at MIT in U.S.A, where they received the award from the founder of the FSF, Richard Stallman. The award, which is only one of two awards given by the FSF each year, was inspired by Sahana a year ago. The recipient of last year's award was Wikipedia, and Sahana follows in its footsteps this year.
It is a great honor to receive the award, and it shows the momentum and visibility the project has gained in the past few years. We would like to thank the Sahana community and everyone involved in making the Sahana project a success, that helped us achieve this honor.
FSF Press Release
http://www.fsf.org/social-benefit-award-2006
LKLUG participated in FOSSed on wheels Kandy event held at Arts and Crafts Gallery Conference hall Kandy on 3rd March 2007. Members of LKLUG delivered speeches and hands on sessions in various applications and tips and tricks in GNU/Linux. The audience was students from Schools and Universities and general public.
What is available?
- LKLUG Unicode Sinhala font
- libicu (renderer used by Open Office) with partial Sinhala support
- SCIM transliterated input method
- Automatically set the required environment variables in
/etc/environment
How to install
-
Add to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://sinhala.sourceforge.net/ubuntu/i386/edgy/ ./
- Update repository metadata:
apt-get update
- Install Sinhala packages:
apt-get install sinhala-gnu-linux
- Upgrade libicu package:
apt-get upgrade
- Logout and login again. Environment variables need to be
set/updated (NO NEED TO REBOOT)
How to test
- Visit http://si.wikipedia.org/ and see if the Sinhala letters render correctly.
- Copy and paste some of the content from Sinhala wikipedia to Open Office Writer. Then highlight the Sinhala text and choose the LKLUG font to display them.
- To test SCIM, press Control-space whilst you are running a Gnome application. Then select one of the Sinhala input methods.
NOTE:
Repositories are only provided for the most recent version of Ubuntu because we need to encourage users to test the most recent version. If you have any problems, questions or suggestions, please send an email to the appropriate mailing list.
