Some of us must have heard about the GNU/ Linux operating system The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete UNIX like operating system. The word GNU ( pronounced guh-noo, like canoe ) is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”. The GNU/Linux Users Groups, as you would have assumed, consists mostly of people using the GNU/Linux operating system. They in turn preserve, protect and promote the freedom of using free software as a whole. '' Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.'' . It is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity.
The GNU/Linux operating system or Linux as a whole is not command line based as was used to be in bygone days. People are still unaware of this fact and as such they are reluctant to use GNU/Linux as the operating systems in their desktops. Times have changed and so has the GNU/Linux operating system. Cute user friendly GUI's have been developed in the recent times to cater the needs of the users.
Now the question arises how do we keep in touch with the recent developments in the field of Linux, share your experiences with it and also how to find solutions to the problems while you are still in the learning phase. Search engines are always there for help but the best way of getting answers to specific questions and discuss them, is through the help of the mailing list wherein you interact with the group members who may have already faced the same problem and so can offer you a detailed solution. A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. It's a place where you can post your queries irrespective of how simple it is. And for a novice user that's quiet handy. The very usefulness of the mailing list is that when the query gets replied all the members of the group are also benefited by the answer. As a result you not only educate yourself but also educate the group. You can share knowledge with the help of the mailing list. That's the power of it.
There exists many mailing list so why create another, to add one to the ever growing mess? Requirement differs from place to place and so are the problems.
The bigger the number of people in the group the better would be the service that would be rendered by it's fellow mates. But the very important of all this is that the group members should be active rather than being passive to the recent activities.
The GNU/Linux Users Group -Assam ( http://assam-glug.org ) first came into being on 13th March 2006. The site has been started with a mission to ultimately expose the people of Assam to free software especially GNU/Linux so that they can reap the benefits of free software.
It is possible that quiet a few people of Assam are using free software but they may not have an opportunity to be in touch with each other. If through this site all this people can come together then we can use this free software more effectively and with our increasing passion the word will spread to our friends and so on. Thus more and more people will get to know about the free software and will be curious to try it out. Hence if a mailing list exists wherein they can get their queries cleared they will be comfortable using it with long term benefits as they will start realizing the power of free software e.g. you can customize your system to work to suite your needs and interest.
User's interested in free software and the GNU/Linux are most welcome to join our group and share their knowledge. To participate in the discussions, to post relevant queries and solutions one needs to be a member of the mailing list. You can easily join the mailing list by going on the following url,
http://mm.assam-glug.org/mailman/listinfo/ assam
To sum up, the purpose of the site being into existence, is to bring all GNU/Linux users of Assam within one group so that we can share our thoughts with each other. This is just a beginning which we hope will take off in making a great impact on the people using GNU/Linux.
By Prasanta Baruah.
(Mr Barua is working at HBCSE, TIFR,
Mumbai. He is working in the field of
knowledge management, developing free
software using Python and Zope.)
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