CMDA IT Expo Pune is a yearly event which has been happening for almost 10 years now. The event is organized by CMDA (Computer Media Dealers Association Pune).
The event showcases latest software and hardware and other computers stuff. Many a times you get a good bargain on these devices.
A nice expo which runs for 4 days.
What does PLUG do in the expo?
PLUG has been participating in the expo for almost 8 years now. Through this expo we try to create more awareness about FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) among the ‘Aam Janta’. For last few years due to increased awareness amongst people we have been providing CD’s/DVD’s of Latest Linux Distros on the stall for nominal charges.
The expos is visited by thousands of people over the 4 days, which includes students, professionals, home makers etc.
We face have face very very interesting questions, remarks, confusions etc during the expos…
here are few of the overheard remarks, direct comments etc.
Some of them are here!!
(Q = Question, R = Remark, C = Comment, O = Overheard)
Q. What is Linux ?
Q. It is free, right, then why are you selling it?
Q. What is PLUG?
Q/R. Are you people crazy?/!
O. Lets go.. we will download in the college. (some college students)
O. Chal chal mere pass sab hai.. copy kar ke deta hoo!! (I have all of the distros i will copy it for you)
R/C. Hey PLUG stall, nice to see you people, great work, keep it up.
O. Windows is better. (lol)
R/C. I have used all of them (distros) none of those worked.
R/C. Wow you have DVD.. give me… only Rs.100/- nice whose gonna download.
Q. Where can I meet you people later.
Over all there has been a huge change in attitude of people looking toward FOSS over last few years.
I remember managing the PLUG stall for the first time somewhere in 2002, it was me, Manas, Sudhanwa, Vijay Deval, Zoyd..
We had absolutely no idea what to do with the stall and we had put up three computers, one was from Manas i think a PII, one from Sudhanwa with a 21 inch philips monitor and one was a 386/486 from Vijay.
People were really confused when they visited our stall, question we faced were.
Q.What are you selling here?
A. Nothing (think of a confused look on the persons face)Q. Then?
A. Promoting Linux.
And went the series of generic questions.
since we were not providing CD at that time and many people wanted CD, the person next to our stall was selling Chip magazine which contained the 2 CD of mandriva/mandrake, we redirected people to his stall, and when he came to know that the first CD was in the previous issues he got all the old stock and sold it.
One very interesting question was about Sudhanwa’s 21 inch monitor. even the stall next to us was a philips stall and the max size of monitor they had was a 15inch.
Q.What is the price of this monitor
A.We are not selling monitor. (Again huge question mark)
Over the last so many years we have seen nice change and comments from people and increased awareness about FOSS and Linux.
from the first expo participation to this one here is the series of changes in attitude and comments that has taken place
Q. What are you selling (noting)?????????????
Q. What is PLUG/Linux?
Changes in comments over next few years?
Hmmm Linux…
Oh PLUG
I want CD/DVD
And recent years…
Wow PLUG people… I am a member online
Do you have xyz distro i need it now.
when is you next meeting…
Over all a nice fun experience.
Friends please add your experience which have missed in the comments.
It look like of what company
Yesterday Sudhanwa showed this interesting mouse to me.. Do not be misguided by the color and design.
look carefully … no it not by the company you are assuming … 
Red Hat Logo visible on the packing
Any ways so whats interesting with this mouse… look closely it has a official Red Hat logo saying compatible with Red Hat..
A even careful observation tell me that it works with Red Hat Linux 9.
Great… for once after a long time I have seen a logo on some computer hardware saying compatible with Red Hat if not just Linux.
Mouse pack with thunder cats logo
We’ll after opening the pack I noticed even more interesting stuff… they are using something which looks almost exactly like the Thunder Cats logo, for the mouse.. now where does that takes us to.
Nice Imitation
Well the final question is that does the mouse works with Red Hat.. well I do not know that for now as I am not using RH9 for the time being.. but yes i did test it on Mandrake 10!!!…
Yes I have that distro running on a old laptop and it rocks…
And of course the mouse work out of the box.. including the scroll wheel..
now aint that interesting….
Could not exactly locate a company name.. but some where it says “Chinalink Fear East Ltd”. I am assuming it is the company made the above.
Recently I installed Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Edition Free Download (32bit) version on my Compaq Presario 3225AU.
Configuration of this Laptop is:
I had tried different distros on this laptop in last 2 years but the only one worked well was OpenSuse 10.2, till date I have had no problems with that, and have been using that one.
So here is what I did.
Booted with the Mandriva DVD, selected almost 4GB of packages to be installed.
Flawless installation. Took around 35 to 40 minutes, includes the time i spent on selecting packages, partitioning, setups etc. the packages got installed in around 30 Minutes.
By default the X was working with the default nvidia drivers, the graphics looked good. Installed glxgears separately to check the FPS, was getting around 400 to 500.
Sound card was also working, even the head-phones jack was working.. cool.. could never make it work on OpenSuse 10.2. Sound support was enabled for mp3, ogg is available by default.
Next thing was video, but before this I wanted to get the actual nvidia driver from nvidia site, downloaded the Nvidia binary package, tried running, It complained the some stuff was missing etc. So dumped the idea of doing the same.
I decided to install the propitiatory driver through the XFdrake, it can fetch the drives from the non free reposotories and install them for you. So when I selected my card as — vendor – nvidia 6100 series or above — it asked me if you would like to download the same from the net.
On saying yes to it, download started, for around 30 minutes it kept download some stuff asked me for the original dvd, and suddenly… kaput… installation failed.
Tried it twice.. failed twice.. so decided to get the rpms manually and get them installed manually. from the following discussion at mandriva forum — got and idea what RPM to download. I downloaded the follwing RPM from rpmfind.net
Manually installing these using just rpm does not works because there are some rpms that are to be installed from the main DVD.
as root gave the following command:
# urpmi (followed by names of all the above packages)
The installer told that some more packages will also be installed from the main DVD, so inserted the main DVD.
Got loads of messagges about preparing and installing those packages, got some messages saying some new kernel was install etc.
Finally the system tell you to boot into new kernel. Rebooted the system and had a new entry for Mandriva.
Booted into that, and the new nvidia-driver was up and running.
running glxgears now gave a FPS of around 2200.
Over all the stuff looks cool enough.
Sound is working fine, even the special key’s are working fine. DivX format worked fine, had to install xine, which is available on the DVD.
Over all looks like a cool Distro. What i am missing in this is Quanta Plus 
Gaurav's Blog
