Announcement of Tamil Linux Web Site

தமிழ்த் தேசியம்

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
- Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C

TAMILS & THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

This is an unifying effort of all Linux efforts toward localizing to Tamil language. The site is both from the developer and the user point of view. While we provide a platform for the Linux developers to discuss their work, we also make their work available to the common user. Simply put, we aspire to make this a one-stop resource point for all your Tamil Linux needs.

The site contains, as of now, a lot of introduction to Linux, user tips, how-tos, tutorials and other documents. It also has pointers to other Linux resources. We plan to build up on it. Also all Tamil Linux programs and utilities are available for the user from a single page (ftp access is also possible). This is expected to grow further. We plan to add discussions in the near future. All Tamil material are presented in dynamic TSCII fonts (no need to install any fonts).

Simultaneous to this, we are also setting up a Tamil Linux Project at SourceForge http://www.sourceforge.net ), this is a consortium of multinational IT companies such as VA Linux, HP, IBM, etc. This project space will be made use for all developments. Everyone is welcome to join this. The project related discussions are currently at www.egroups.com/tamilinux

Some of you may be aware; the recently released K Desktop Environment (KDE) for Linux and unix operating systems version 2.0 supports Tamil as one of the languages. This for the first time in any indic languages an operating system user interface is available. We are proud that Tamil leads the way here.

Mr. Sivakumar has planned and executed this project, with the support of some volunteers. Thus it is possible to do most of your daily computer tasks -like editing, drawing, web browsing, ftp, dial up connection, file management, in Tamil interface. Linux as you may be knowing is a powerful multi user, multi tasking, operating system - even Linux power operations like user and network management, task scheduling, etc. can now be done in Tamil. KDE also comes with an office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, illustration), siva and others are currently adding Tamil support to this also. An easy guide to setting up a working Tamil computer is presented in the site.

Another elegant and powerful desktop for unix-like systems, GNOME is also now starting to wear Tamil look. Mr. Dinesh Nadarajah is leading the group. Tamillinux.org houses both these projects. Mr. Sivaraj has written a powerful console support to Tamil. A few of us have also written documentation for these. We welcome you to use and enjoy all these.

Mr. Maniam of iDNS.com, Singapore has helped us in getting the domain name registered and ensured initial web support. Mr. P. Asokan of chennaionline (aaraamthinai) has provided additional web and ftp facilities. We are grateful to them. A voluntary initiative like this needs a lot of participation, even non technical volunteers can help in documentation and translation. We look forward to your support. Please convey your suggestions and opinions. Thank you.