From Zero to just as an example!
As a fresher, I was nothing but a person who came from an Intermediate level (12th class ) with a mere knowledge on science and technology, probably I might have not even known about the Internet and its virtues. For me till then, the Internet is about watching movies, listening songs and sharing views through chatting.
One day one of my friends came to us (me and my friends) and said that some of our postgraduate seniors are insisting us to join a session on Implementing single board computers. We were a part of it, as freshers, we need to implement single board computers in conducting paper presentations for the upcoming technical fest. Meanwhile, I often used to listen to a word named “Linux”, upon asking I was said that those computers are of Open source Hardware which also runs on GNU/Linux operating system. That is the first time that I was introduced to command line interface “apt-get install ”. At the beginning, I am a little confused but at the same time, I was fascinated by the way that the application has installed upon issuing a single command, showing step by step process on the terminal from repository pinging to the space that it has utilized after installation. Anyway, it (fest) went on successfully me as one of the elements involved in the process. Meanwhile I learnt about Linux and then Ubuntu is my friend and I was habituated to use it on my computer in a lab, as I don’t have my own, but unfortunately as most of the computers in the laboratory runs on unofficial Microsoft Windows operating systems where the college authorities often failed to buy licensed versions by paying for higher price. So, I hardly find no one to guide me, and the days passed on for one year.
I think it was during February 2015 that we need to build a website for the fest and to host it on our own server, it was an action call given by one of our prominent professor who was also a driving force for us to implement the use of single board computers. We are interested to build but, as we are electronics students we don’t even know a single line of code and the type of software that is used to build. And that was the day that we were suggested to approach “SWECHA” for the help and we were introduced to Drupal, an open source content management system . Swecha is a nonprofit technical organization involved in developing and implementation of Open source software and Open source hardware with the fundamentals of free software philosophy, inspired by Richard Stallman. At the earlier stages we were a bit slow to connect but later we are apart of it and then I also started using Debian.
Yes! It all started in the year 2015. Swecha, as a community we as a part of it has taken responsibility for guiding us. After participating in several webinars, workshops, discussions and even hosting events like “ Firefox app development, Open hardware & Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) “, I was a part of FOSS community and familiarised with the “Creative Commons ”, ”GPL” etc…and their virtues for the community. It has not only improved my professional skills but also personal skills to protect my privacy anonymously and freedom of speech. Till then knowing about censorship is like finding a website in a deep web.
With this support and motivation from Swecha, and we as a part of GLUG got a chance to interact and discuss fruits of Free and Open Source Software with many people in and around our college. And now almost all the computers in our departments run on Linux operating systems and even maintaining our own subdomains for GLUG activities to test and deploy applications such as Drupal, Owncloud, Freedom box, Yate and much more.
As an electronics student always had interest in developing open source hardware where I got an opportunity to do this through Swecha Tech days.This has one way helped me to share, discuss, demonstrate and guide others in developing their idea to a prototype.
“ Sometimes maybe as an individual or a team, we failed to implement something but as an individual, I always have a desire to do”. — Praveen Gorla
By
- Praveen Gorla | Electronics and Communication Engineering| |2013–2017|Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad — College of Engineering Hyderabad
Find more at http://praveengorla.in/praveen/2017/02/23/yesit-all-started-in-the-year-2015/
Originally published at http://thesteppingstones.org/from_zero_to_just_as_an_example.
