Story Author: IUPUI Media Relations
Publish Date: March 1, 2005
Source Publication: IUPUI

INDIANAPOLIS , Ind. - The open source movement in software will be the focus of the seventh annual LinuxFest on March 30, 10am-4pm, in the atrium of the Informatics and Communications Technology Complex (ICTC) at IUPUI. Mozilla and TrollTech developer, Scott Collins, will be the keynoter. The Indiana University event is free and open to the public.

This event is sponsored by the Unix Systems Support Group (USSG), a service unit of Indiana University Information Technology Services. The event will include individual consulting provided by USSG staff members; Linux demonstrations running on multiple vendor platforms (Apple, HP, IBM, Sun, Fedora); and local vendors who use and support Linux.
Representatives from the Red-Hat-sponsored Fedora Project
(fedora.redhat.com) will also be on site.

Open source software such as Linux is modified and redistributed by myriad independent programmers, allowing the software to evolve at a much faster rate than that which is developed and modified by a single set of programmers at a software company. The open source movement has gained considerable attention in the higher education community recently with the Sakai Project, a community source software development effort to create a collaborative environment for higher education. Indiana University is a lead partner in the Sakai Project.

For those interested in becoming advanced Unix users, the USSG will offer an Introduction to Unix course in April and again in August. This course is intended for average Unix users with basic knowledge of the operating system, and serves as a stepping stone for the Unix System Administrator EdCert class. The Introduction to Unix course is open to anyone and requires registration.

For more information about the USSG, LinuxFest 2005, or the Introduction to Unix class, see: ussg.iu.edu

For information about keynote speaker Scott Collins, see: scottcollins.net

For more about the Sakai Project, see: www.sakaiproject.org