Southern Linux User Group (www.southernlug.org) is happy to announce that we have successfully conducted the first event for SFD 2010 in Sri Lanka. This event, in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna was held at Hapugala, Galle at the Faculty premises. The target audience was the students and IT teachers of the Udugama Educational Zone and around hundred were there. The whole event was with practicals and the participants were given an exposure to operating systems, FOSS, Open Source Initiative, OpenOffice Suite and finally a demo of Hanthana Linux (www.hanthana.org) installation. This event is marked as the forth consecutive event that Souther Linux User Group has conducted for SFDs.

Special thanks goes to Dr. Chandana Perera of Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna and the staff for providing us with the computer laboratory and other help to make this event a success.

Here goes the photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/danishkanavin/sets/72157624972971830/

We hope to conduct another event for SFD 2010 on 26th at Richmond College, Galle targeting a large number of school children.

Happy Software Freedom Day 2010 to all.

The ICTA Training Voucher Scheme provides a subsidy for applicants who successfully complete an applicable certification.

Linux professional certifications, RHCT and RHCE, are now included in the applicable list of certifications.

Software Freedom Day (http://softwarefreedomday.org/) is an annual event celebrated around the world to celebrate the freedom in the software world, usually in the 3rd week's Saturday of September. This year its on the 19th September 2009.

Another two day event of a successful series of Free and Open Source Software awareness campaign "FOSSed on Wheels" will be held on 14th and 15th September in Trincomalee. The targeted crowd for this event is mainly government officers from the Northern Provincial Council. This event is organise by the free software community of Sri Lanka and mainly sponsored by ICTA, LSF, WSO2, Virtusa. many geeks will be participated in this event to make this success.

LK-LUG together with FOSS Community in Sri Lanka celebrated the 5^th World's "Software Freedom Day" on the 20^th September 2008. Volunteers from many organizations and enthusiastic individuals organized several events in Colombo and Galle Districts. Events were carried out from 17^th September 2008 to 21^st September 2008.

Places where events were held.

• University of Colombo-School of Computing (UCSC), Colombo.
• Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. (SLIIT), Malambe.
• National Institute of Business Management (NIBM), Colombo 7.
• Institute of Informatics, Colombo.
• University of Ruhuna, Matara.
• Olcott College, Galle.



Photos

• Deependra's Photos
• Bud's Photos

A big thank goes to the Sponsors and organizers for making the fifth Software Freedom Day A Success!.

The Lanka Linux User Group has had a long relationship with the various government organisations, for the longest time. They have worked closely with the ICTA, MoE, on the administrative level, as well as with schools, universities and other organisations on the grass-roots level.

With interest in GNU/Linux and FOSS growing steadily in Sri Lanka, the co-operation between LUG.lk and the various agencies has also increased. With the latest event being the training of Hardware Teams all over the island in installation and basics of GNU/Linux

An awareness seminar on GNU/Linux and FOSS organized by the Maldivian Students' Association in Sri Lanka will be held on the 11th Sunday 2008 at 14.00 onwards at the Sosun Vila, Pamankada (Old Maldivian Embassy). Geeks of LUG.LK will participate at the event.

LUG.lk participated in a GNU/Linux training event at AG School, Negombo on 29th and 30th of March. It was a very successful two day event. Around fifty students and a few teachers took part in it. We started the sessions with an introduction to FOSS and GNU/Linux philosophy. Then we demonstrated an installation and a few application software used in GNU/Linux. On the second day they learnt some more FOSS applications and features of their new operating system.

We successfully completed a two day hands on workshop in Unix shell and shell scripting on the 15^th & 16^th of March 2008. We used GNU/Linux as our platform and we covered several important areas in the Unix shell. The location was LSF - Sahana Lab at the University of Colombo School of Computing.

Richard Matthew Stallman (aka rms), father of the GNU Project, founder of the Free Software Foundation, happy hacker, flute/recorder player, and uber-geek, visited Sri Lanka from the 14th to the 19th of January, 2008.