Mongolian Karmic testers

With release of Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 5 version some community members switched to it. Some of them just did fresh install, and others upgraded from Jaunty. All of them really like how it's fresh and looks good. But they encounter problem, discuss about them in mailing lists. For me, it's just nice too see how they are developing. learning how to test software, report bugs and collaborate on a problem.

Software Freedom Day 2009

Yesterday, we've celebrated SFD 2009 and Linux InstallFest 2009 event with help of 2 professor's team from School of Computer Science and Management. For short, it was real success with more than 400 attendees.

During the event we gave 5 talks about Linux and it's history, migration from windows, open source development, localization and our Linux user community. After localization talk people were asking about how to participate in it, how they can help and so on. Soon we're going to restart localization effort and doing preparation work. In the end, we gave away Ubuntu CD's to every attendee and showed how to install it on their computer.

Thank you FSF, thank you Linus, thank you GNOME project, thank you KDE, thank you Ubuntu. Without you all, there wouldn't be such event.

Moving Ubuntu mirror server

Most of GNU/Linux users of Mongolia use Ubuntu. Because it's easy to install, use, and because we have our local mirror server here, which makes package installation and updating process more than ten time faster. It's up and running since 2006, and hosted by Adsolux Mongolia LLC. Up until now it was running on HP server, but now it's running on more powerful Dell server. This upgrade made it possible to serve more Ubuntu users, and support FOSS community here.

Why do you use linux?

A member of our local community today asked me 'why do you use Linux?'. I was thinking about it to find some useful answer for him, but no luck. I use it everyday, every hour and every minute. It's just became part of my life. It was very strange, but very thoughtful question for me.

First ever community newsletter

Following traditions from global open source community, people from our local Linux user group prepared and published first ever newsletter. This monthly newsletter will feature group's internal events, blogposts from the planet, discussions from Google groups, and also news on Linux and open source software.

Helping to prepare this document I've found some interesting numbers. Created back in late December, our members on Google groups count for 129, topics we've discussed count for 159 and during these discussion we've exchanged 1752 messages. We opened our wiki site in Feb, now it contains about 60 wiki pages. It's great.

You can read it here http://wiki.limnux.org/wiki/Newsletter/Issue1, but it's in mongolian. So I'll try to summarise it. Up until now, we had no structure, just crowd. It was ok. But when the number of members grow it became difficult to maintain infrastructures in working state, keep information organized. To solve this problem we decided to create Moderators Team. Some of our community members were talking about need for localization and doing it 'right'. So we created Localization Team. Now, team are not so formalized yet like GNOME or some other long living FOSS community. But we're working on it.

Do we need l10n?

In my mongolian blog, I've posted my thoughts on l10n, and asked whether we need l10n or not. In it I've tried to summarise reasons why we need l10n, what problems we faced during these years, and how we can solve it. Most people expressed that they need it and it's essential to our IT development. It will expand our computer users base, make them more active users. But some people were concerned that localization will slow down english learning, thus we'll have big gap between developed countries when we're trying to closely follow them. In the end, most people endorsed the idea and we decided to form localization team within our Linux user group. From now on we won't talk about whether we need it or not, but how to do it right.

I think that I need one more post on this topic and prove that l10n is essential in our IT development and encourage people to participate in it. Then I need some info on what was changed and what was achievement when you had localized open source software stack, GNOME for example. Thank you in advance. Stay tuned...

Mongolian new year

Today is last day of this mongolian year. Tomorrow, new year will begin. It's named as bull. During this coming year our local community is planning to re-initiate localization efford and to have almost complete localized GNOME by the end of the year. Also Linux InstallFest in May, most successful, and biggest Software Freedom Day in our history in September. And much more.

I wish that this year would be just beginning of active and successful years of FOSS in Mongolia.

Hello world, again

Hello world and Planet GNOME.

I started this blog back in 2007, and stopped posting after 3 posts. Most of my english blog readers come from Planet GNOME thanks to Jeff. From now on I think I should post news about Mongolian FOSS community to make world know how are we active.

Mongolian FOSS community is active since 2003. We started with GNOME localization in 2003. In 2005 we formed Unix User Group, and then LiMNux or linux user group in 2007. From 2007 some of local universities and tech schools use FOSS tools to teach programming, and computer usage. In 2008 part of our community, OpenMN team, completed localization of OpenOffice.org. And in 2009 everyone, even our government, is talking about FOSS adoption.

To be continued...