There was a LKLUG stall hosted by the Department of Computer Sciences, at the anual session of Peradeniya Electrical and Electronic Engineering Society (PEEES), on the 5th of June. The demonstrations covered areas such as Unix/Linux fundamentals, networking, multi platform integration, programming in C, Perl and CGI, typesetting, GUI, office applications, graphics, multimedia and games.

The LKLUG stall was one of the heavily crowded stalls. It was in the Department of Computer Sciences (CS), in the first floor of the Computing Center.

The Objectives

The main objective of the stall was to demonstrate the following topics.

• What is Linux?
• What makes Linux/Unix successful?
• Networking under Linux (TCP/IP), NFS, Samba
• Linux kernel
• Shell
• Process sheduling
• Unix tools
• Tex/Latex, visual design vs. logical structure
• Sinhala and Tamil extensions of Latex
• X-windows
• Why is X-windows better than other GUIs?
• Window managers and desktops
• Graphics under Linux, GIMP and PovRay

The Structure of the Stall

There were 12 computers, ten running Linux, one running Windows 95 and another running Windows 3.11. The main CS server, babbage, (192.248.40.194) was acting as an NFS file server to eight Linux machines, and as an SMB server to the two windows machines. It was also acting as the print server to all the computers in the stall.

The first five computers were grouped as a cyber cafe. All were HP workstations with 100MHz Pentium processors and 16MB RAMs. They were running RedHat Linux 5.2, and were configured to obtain YP services from babbage, and also shared the home partition of babbage .

The next two computers were there to demonstrate graphics and multimedia capabilities of Linux. One of them was an HP workstation similar to the ones used in the cyber cafe, and the other was a Dell with a Pentium II MMX, 350 MHz, and 128 MB RAM. The demonstrations with the HP were also remotely run on the Dell, showing the client-server architecture of X-windows. Different flavours of desktops including Gnome, FVWM, Window Maker, AfterStep and KDE were also demonstrated.

We had selected two graphics programs. One was the Gimp. The demonstrations included the design of the LKLUG logo (old) in the web page, and other filters, tools and plugins. The other program was Povray, the Presistence of Vision Ray Tracer. The front end to povray, called xfpovray, was also used.

The multimedia programs included the numerous CD players, including cdp and xplaycd, and mixers. MTV, a MPEG Video player with a Linux port, and Quake were also demonstrated.

Then there was the server, babbage, which was specially selected to show the multiplatform integration and networking capabilities of Linux. It was configured as an NFS server, YP server as well as an SMB server. This was also an HP workstation with 100 MHz Pentium processor and 48 MB RAM, with 3.2 GB 1.2 GB hard disks. An HP Laserjet 6 was connected to it, and all the computers were using babbage as a print server.

The next four computers were used to introduce Unix/Linux fundamentals, including the kernel, shell, process shedulling. Since the audience was general, it was not intended to go deep into these subjects. However, there were many with sufficient computer awareness to follow them.

Latex was also introcuded and discussions on logical and physical structure of documents were initiated. Sinhala and tamil extensions were also demonstrated.

Out of the last four machines in the stall, two were IBM workstations with equal hardware capabilities (486DX, 66 MHz, 8 MB RAM) and we had installed RedHat 6.0 on one and Windows 95 on the other making it possible to compare the performance.

Open Source Debate

There were hot discussions about the open source freeware movement in the LKLUG stall. Most people were suprised to see the availability of free software that could outperform commercial packages and operating systems.

PEEES had organized a series of Lectures for the day. The last talk was given by Dr. Nimal Ratnayaka, one of the advisors of LKLUG, on the Open Source Movement.