The first experience - Part II

We took a few deep breaths and went inside the building to which we had been looking to for the past few minutes. The white three storied building with a board outside shouting out “IMPULSE – internet cafe”. The geography of the area and the design of the building is such that we enter straight to the second floor of the building. But georgraphy doesn't matter.

I carefully put my right leg inside, saying a small prayer in my mind for everything to go right. I felt uneasy. Looking to my right I saw Aswin. Suddenly I realised the problem. It has been ten or so minutes since Aswin said his last chali. I understood he was under great stress and tension. If some problems or troubles occured during this!! Aswin is the one who was most involved in this project. His hostel is the next building and he was one among those who went to brainwash this cafe owner. Jain too was a bit tensed it looked but I don't vouch on it. I must say I wasn't anyway tensed or so because this thing if failed didn't directly affect me. I wasn't there when they brainwashed the man and I was just coming as a friend of theirs who can, if needed, act as someone who came there to browse and saw others on the way. But I wanted it to be a complete success as this was our first 'MISSION' and didn't want it to be 'MISSION IMPOSSIBLE' nor 'MISSION 90 DAYS' because failure is a word which is not in my dictionary (which is a thick Oxford one I assure) and I didn't have that much time (90 days.. just imagine.. that’s half a semester).

Inside was quite a compact room. 8 computers in which 6 have cabins and the rest two are outside. One of them I presumed would be the server. Next to this room was small classroom with a board which could accommodate 8 students. Tutions for school and college students are also available there. I was happy to see that he had good tables and chairs which was the main reason only 8 students can be accommodated. In any other tution centers, there would have been atleast 20 chairs crammed in there.

There are two new characters this time along with Me, Jain and Aswin. One is Mr. Vipin Johney, our class mate. Then there was Master Shibin (Although he is 18 and can be legally called Mr., I still call his master because he still has got many childish passions which i prefer not to be named). Another first year but from EEE. He shares the room with Jain. The room in which the master plan had originally unfolded.

We entered the place and met the cafe owner. He didn't look much like what I had expected him to be. He certainly didn't look a businessman, there was still some kindness in his face. And at that point I didn't know all the kindness he would be having would have to be spared for us soon. He was quite happy with us coming. He introduced us to the non-GECian computer expert he talked of last day.

We were given seats behind the two computers which were not in cabins. The owner and two other people who looked like staff there crowded around us. I am not sure whether to say we crowded around them or vice-versa. Jain began the proceedings by informing them about the version and OS Ubuntu which we were going to install there. He along with Aswin then went on to give a full length description about how Linux people is brilliant and Windows people fools. I for one didn't seem to be able to open my mouth as there was nothing much I can contribute here. They didn't look like they would ever finish. After some time, the owner pointed to a white and slightly older machine and asks us to install it in that machine marking the end of their solo. There were some from our college browsing in the cafe. One of them from Mechanical dept stopped browsing and came to ask what we were doing. When we told him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, he too joined the crowd behind us. Jain stands up from his seat and goes to one near the white computer. He saw a windows screen and looks aside while the things was being restarted.

“ The internet connection has going again”, a sound came from one of the cabins. The owner, swearing the providers, went to look something and replied “No. Connection is fine. You try again.” I just couldn't believe our luck. We had barely started. Problems were coming even before that. I thought whether to take a note of the number of problems in my rough book as there was a chance it was going to outrun my fingers. But decided against it as there were just 4-5 pages left in the book and I wanted to use it for future necessities. But Let me number it here. That was the beginning of Problem no 1 which was not going to be as long and troubling as its succeders are going to be.

The computer provider's guy came to look what the problem was. He saw it quickly. We had restarted the server. The connections to all other computers came from the server. So it has turned off all the connections. “Oh! Why hadn't I thought about it?”, said me. We restarted the computer and connection became ready again. So we went to the computer next to the white server. That was it. END OF PROBLEM 1.

We turned on that computer. We first decided to give them the Live CD demonstration. I took the CD. It had ubuntu written it by me and my sign too. This is one of the beauties of Free Software I like. You can download an OS and name it Alex's Linux and keep it. And still the credit of OS will go to the ones who made because it will be known in the programmers level that it is not mine but that someone with quite a few things in his brain has made this. And at the same time I can feel secure than no one is going to sue me.

Jain put the CD into the system and started it. BIOS was checked to confirm that the first boot device was the CD Rom itself. Then the linux screen came alive asking whether to download/Live run and many others options which I haven't read till now. The moment the Linux screen comes you start to feel the difference. Its like as if the beauty of Linux is in the bones. The background(plane black screen), the logo and the color all complement each other. Why aren’t the Windows people feeling a need for a change? If they had brought in new BG’s atleast it could postpone the inevitable by a few days. The inevitable being the 100% linux and the Free World.



The OS start music came which seemed to be a Fur-Elise for me. My chest swelled with pride seeing that the CD I download was doing all this. Aswin began with the softwares available here.

Then someone from the “crowd” asked about the files they already had in windows. Replies comes soon this times since there are around 5 heads working for answers this time. “You get substitutes for almost all softwares used in windows here. All better than or equivalent to the windows version and at the same time less valued as they are free. And these softwares supports the windows files. That is in Open Office writer you can work perfectly with .doc files of Microsoft Word. But at the same time Word doesn't accept .odt and other extensions used by Open Office. So those shifting to linux from windows needn't have any concerns.”

The live CD came live and the first glimpse of Ubuntu 8.04 caught everyone off balance. I am sure I heard many 'wow's and stuff. We showed them the softwares there was available in Linux. Then the cafe owner asked about whether internet explorer was available here. Aswin retorted, “ Who uses IE nowadays? Even the windows users use Mozilla Firefox only. IE has very comfortably been outdated to give way for Firefox.” He opened Firefox and entered www.google.com in the address bar and pressed enter. A beautiful page which said, “ This page cannot be displayed” came. I don't know why but something told me these kind of problems are not going to stop that easily today. That was the Problem No 2.

Even before we could tell something, Jain had taken out his phone and called Mobin chettan. And as always, “Where people thought twice before doing, here's one who did twice before thinking.” Mobin chettan is our three years senior. His class on Linux was our first introduction to this Free Software World. If he can't help none can. He told something to Jain through phone and Jain did those things. He asked Jain to enter the IP address, DNS server etc. We were lucky that the man from the computer provider was there. He gave these details and in around 5 minutes it was all ready. Google didn't fail us this time. The “less is more” site got opened. And the 2nd problem thus ended, a bit more dramatically than the first.

Now the crowd started asking, “ Is there any equivalent software for Tally, Autocad, etc.” If it had been asked to me I would have been answerless. But we searched in google “Tally software for Linux” and got some pages with softwares which can be used as constituents.

Soon three of four girls came into the cafe. They went into the classroom and two from the crowd went to take classes to them. He said, “Well this OS looks fine. You do one thing. Install this in this machine. I will ask the staff here to get acquainted with this and if it's ok we will install it in all machines after one week. Please don't remove Windows right now. Install Linux in some other partitions. There is Debian installed in this computer. Use that partition. It is currently used by some state syllabus students who come here to study Open Office, Gimp, etc.” All the government schools have their computer labs changed from Windows to Linux. This change is one of the few decisions taken by the present government I liked. We should appreciate our dear VS (Achumamman) for that.

We were quite surprised to see that Debain was installed in this machine. Till now we were talking as though these were people who were seeing Linux for the first time in their life. We didn’t waste more time being surprised. The café owner left us. And we were left there alone with no one to inspect what we were doing. It was Jain at the computer. I told him not to start the installation as I was the lucky one around, its better I do it. But he stay put at his seat and started the installation. (I am leaving the details of installation right now. But I will make sure it will be posted here in detail for all those who shall need it.) The steps were all finished in a few moments and the actual installation procedure with a percentage counter moving began. It was going unexpectedly fast. This made me a little uneasy.

But it didn’t take that much time to realize that being uneasy wasn’t at all needed. No sooner than the % counter reached around half a message came. “ERROR.” It was followed by some text which I don’t remember now. But its meaning was something like, “EITHER THE CD IS CORRUPT OR THE HARD DISK WHERE INSTALLATION IS TAKING PLACE HAS SOME PROBLEMS.” - PROBLEM NO. 3.