LUG stands for Linux Users’ Group. Many colleges have a lug, mostly called glug where ‘g’ stands for gnu. It’s a group of people who help themselves and others especially novice users to get started with Linux. It doesn’t end there! There are lot more about the the lug.
SSNLUG was initiated by one of my seniors Srikanth Lakshmanan. Two of my department Asst. Prof’s are very much interested in getting students involved into something productive. With their help, few workshops were conducted by SSNLUG. It all happened when I was in second year. I was really interested to attend more workshops. It will be mostly handled by tech persons from ILUGC/Chennai Lug or alumni. But it all ended that year. After my senior went out of college, there was no student who would take up his place in showing interest to create some activity. I thought some one from final year is going to do something. But nothing happened.
I am in final year now. I found a junior(Saravanan) who was enthusiastic about having a lug and this made me get serious about things. We spoke together to our HOD, Asst Profs Balasubramanyan and Venakata Vara Prasad. They were also happy about having a lug again and made sure everything went properly :). SSNLUG was reinstated. Initially we had a workshop on Basic Linux Installation and Administration for freshers. It was handled by my seniors Srikanth Lakshmanan and Prem. It was a hands on workshop and we had a huge response. It all went well :) And one more thing: I was announced as the official student Secretary of LUG :)
Well, you can have so much things done in a lug:
- You can always get support and help from Free Software guys to conduct workshops
- Get to know about latest of the technologies
- Getting yourself involved into some really interesting and valuable projects. Building a camera that would take videos and convert them to a open source format was one project which I came across. But I couldn’t do it cos it wasn’t my area
- Know about Free Software
- First Years will having a starting point for their career
- You can initiate projects and have a product developed. You can leave the the projects to your juniors to build on it.
- Ofcourse, it will help a lot in your placements.
- It’s all fun :)
- Get to meet really good hackers
There are many more things about lug that will benefit you. If your college doesn’t have a lug, you are missing something.
