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eSwecha OS

Weave your own code

Introduction

e-Swecha (or Eswecha) is a free software project initiated by the Free Software Movement in India and is aimed at developing a free Operating System to, for and by the engineering students. The name is derived from "E(ngineering)- Swecha" [ Swecha is the Telugu word for 'freedom' ]

e-Swecha is a fruit of the tree of freedom sowed by the Free Software Movement.

Crucial inputs from a team of academicians, most of them teaching in various engineering colleges have been a major contribution to the project. Along with that, hundreds of free software communities and developers all around the world have helped in jumping over critical hurdles throughout the development of the project.

The GNU/Linux Operating system gives everyone the freedom to use, study, modify and distribute the software. This allowed the students to re-engineer the existing Operating System to the needs and requirements of the modern engineering student. By collaborating over the Internet and organizing themselves into different teams working on different modules, the Operating System was built with a tremendous show of team-work.

Eswecha is available in both live and installable CD. Beta version can be downloaded free from the Download link from the homepage of website: http://eswecha.swecha.org/?q=node/11

Technical Support is available through online chat and forum.

Eswecha launched

E-Swecha, the first Indian operating system created on free software platform was launched as beta version on Dec 23, 2008. It is being installed on 21,000 computers across Andhra Pradesh.

The operating system software, based on the Debian OS GNU/Linux, was created by the student community in engineering colleges in Hyderabad which is equipped with all the tools needed for engineering education. It is freely available to engineering students and others, in India or abroad.

(Richard Stallman)

He looks like a prophet, with his long grey hair and beard and intelligent eyes. In fact, in tech circles, Richard M Stallman is hailed as one. The `Father of Free Software’ is in Hyderabad to oversee the migration of thousands of computers

from proprietary to free software.

E-Swecha is based on the Debian OS which is a variant of GNU/Linux, the most popular open source OS. Unlike proprietary software like Microsoft Windows, open source software allows the original source code to be modified and distributed.

Thus the `free’ in free software

does not mean free of cost but free to be improved upon and redistributed. E-Swecha was developed by the student community in engineering colleges in Hyderabad. Apart from students, this collaborative effort involved academics and IT professionals and has been in development for a year. The OS has been developed to meet the syllabi needs of engineering students. It has all the tools that engineering students could possibly need on a single platform.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University, Hyderabad which sets the engineering syllabus, has already taken the initiative to promote the usage of free software in colleges and has stood by its word by requesting for migration to e-Swecha OS. Some schools in Karnataka and West Bengal have also switched to FS

Stallman, in an interview acknowledged India’s efforts to switch to free software (FS). ``India is fairly high on FS though much remains to be done yet.’’ Kerala took the initiative by switching computers in its public schools to FS due to the efforts of the Free Software Foundation

of India, a sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation founded by Stallman.

Additional links:

1) e-Swecha free OS software website

http://eswecha.swecha.org/

2) Free OS for engineering students

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/News/Free_OS_for_engineering_students/articleshow/3877876.cms

3) Richard Stallman in Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

4) Debian-The universal operating system

http://www.debian.org/

5) The GNU operating system

http://www.gnu.org/

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