3rd semester classes started today. There was nothing special. In the evening, there were a discussion between Shyam and Mahesh on TASM, MASM and NASM. Though I don’t know anything about the topics, me and Sajjad from S3 CSE-B also stayed with them. I stayed in the college lab till 6.45PM for the Debian installation and reached home by 7.45PM.

I created a GDM theme for GNULabs @ MESCE, with the background picture of a field and hills. I also tried using a picture of college, but it looked very wired.

Today was the registration for 3rd semester. All were in a confusion on what has to be done. We weren’t given any clear instructions on what has to be done. Some how, we(Me, Krishnaraj and Aalok) completed the registration by 12PM. A personality development class was scheduled at 1.30PM. So, we had more than an hour to spare and we went to Bharathapuzha. Water had risen a bit more and so, we stayed on the banks itself.

The personality development class was mainly focused on soft skills and how to face an interview. I think its not the right time for such a class and few of my friends also agreed with me. It ‘ll be better to have one more class on the same topic during the starting of S5/S6.

Today evening, I called Mahesh for what we can do to promote free software in college. Mahesh conveyed the glad news that college authorities agreed to change the old RedHat to Debian and the installation works will be done after the classes. So, from tomorrow onwards, I am also going to be with them.

I was in my father’s house at Mankery for the previous two days. I was informed yesterday that all the 20 systems must be delivered tomorrow. Only four systems were complete at that time. I reached home by about 2PM today noon and the installation of 15 systems were complete by 10.30PM despite the frequent power failures and half an hour power cut.

The most helpful tool during the installation was “Symantec Ghost”, which helped to create copies of the hard disk. Its a DOS based software. But, DOS doesn’t have SATA drivers and the SATA CD drive won’t be detected as a drive, but the system can boot from the SATA disk drive. So, we copied the Ghost software to a drive and executed it from there after booting to DOS mode from the CD drive. Since it didn’t work with the Linux file system, ext3; we had to install Linux in each and every system but the additional burden of installing drivers and softwares in Windows was removed and the windows came up with all the drivers and softwares in just 5 minutes.

With a few ISO files given by Shyam, I am starting a collection of various Linux Distros. I hope that a good collection of older and latest distros will be helpful for those who want to try and settle on Linux. The CD’s and DVD’s will be distributed to all those who want it, with just the cost of the CD/DVD and cover. My contact details can be seen here [this is a link]. Following CD’s and DVD’s are now available with me.

Debian

• Debian Lenny Testing Official snapshot i386 – 1 DVD

• Debian Lenny Testing Official snapshot i386 – 1 CD

• Debian etch 4.0 r3 i386 – 1 CD

• Debian etch 4.0 r0 i386 – 3 DVD’s

• Debian etch 4.0 r0 i386 Live GNOME – 1 CD

• Debian etch 4.0 r0 with SMC Softwares – 1 CD

Ubuntu

• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition – 1 DVD

• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 7.10 for PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 7.10 for 64-bit PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 7.04 for PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 7.04 for 64-bit PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 6.06 LTS for PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 6.06 LTS for 64-bit PC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 6.06 LTS for MAC – 1 CD

• Ubuntu 5.10 for PC – 2 CD’s (Live and Install)

• Ubuntu 5.10 for 64-bit PC – 2 CD’s (Live and Install)

• Ubuntu 5.10 for MAC – 2 CD’s (Live and Install)

• Ubuntu 5.04 for PC – 2 CD’s (Live and Install)

• Ubuntu 5.04 for 64-bit PC – 2 CD’s (Live and Install)

Kubuntu

• Kubuntu 7.10 for PC – 1 CD

• Kubuntu 7.10 for 64-bit PC – 1 CD

• Kubuntu 6.06 LTS for PC – 1 CD

• Kubuntu 6.06 LTS for 64-bit PC – 1 CD

Edubuntu

• Edubuntu 7.10 for PC and Server – 1 CD

• Edubuntu 6.06 LTS – 1 CD

IT @ School GNU/Linux

• IT @ School GNU/Linux 3.01 – 2 CD’s

• School GNU/Linux by KSTA – 1 CD

Fedora

• Fedora 8 Live i686 – 1 CD

• Fedora Core 6 – 5 CD’s

• Fedora Core 3 – 4 CD’s

RedHat

• RedHat Enterprise Linux ES 4 (i386) – 4 CD’s

• RedHat Linux 9 (i386) – 3 CD’s

• RedHat Linux 7 (i386) – 2 CD’s

Mandrake

• Mandrake Linux 10.1 – 4 CD’s (3 installation and 1 support)

MEPIS

• SimplyMEPIS 6.5.02 32Bit – 1 CD

gNewSense

• gNewSense Live Deltah 2.0 – 1 CD

Gentoo

• Gentoo Linux 2007.0 x86 – 1 CD

Knoppix

• Games Knoppix 3.7.0.2 – 1 CD

I’ll be updating the details of the collection in my site; http://www.tvmanukrishnan.uni.cc/ and also at the MESCE GNU Lab wiki.

I also started installing one among the 20 systems and is almost finished. What left is few softwares like SQL server. Installing other systems will be much easier after completing one as all the systems are alike and hence backup softwares like Ghost can be used to make copies of the entire hard disk. Haven’t tried it yet with SATA drives; hope it works.

All the S1S2 university exams are over by todays Basic electrical exam. We have a 10 days vacation and I have much to do. A few projects, installing 20 systems with Windows, Linux and softwares, few web designing works, etc. There were celebrations by S1S2 students outside the college gate. I just escaped through the other gate as I has to go to few other places