Sunday, December 26, 2010

Open Letter to Student Awardees of the Anundoram Borooah Award 2010

On the 24th of December, 2010, the sixth year of the prestigious Anundoram Borooah Awards , given to students who secure 60% and higher marks in the 10th Standard in the State Board Examinations of the Government of Assam, ceremoniously launched by the Chief Minister of Assam. This ward has been instituted in the honour of the great Sanskrit Scholar, the 1st Assaemse, the 4th Indian ICS Officer & the 1st Indian Deputy Commissioner (in India), Anundoram Borooah (1850-1889) who in his short life span composed the Sanskrit-English dictionary. His brief life sketch is presented as a part of the citation to the awardees as a source of inspiration.

The award carries a Desktop computer, a citation and few booklets. So far 72000+ students have received these computers since 2005. This year the award carries a Laptop computer and 19300+ students would be directly benefited from the scheme. The Govt. of Assam has been providing these computing devices with Free and Open Source Software on GNU/Linux platform. The laptops (with Pentium P6100 2.0 GB Processor, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, 250 GB 7200 RPM HDD, DVD RW, 14" TFT (LED Backlight), wi-fi, bluetooth, Webcam... loaded with Ubuntu 10.04.1 OS). The configuration has been finalized by the AMTRON team headed by Mr. Monoj Baruah and okayed by Prof. Gautam Barua, Director, IIT Guwahati. The laptop has been loaded with educational application software, manuals and Spoken Tutorials (provided by IIT Bombay).

Along with the laptop, fe wbooklets also have been provided. The customized user manual of the laptop (featuring three brands Acer, HCL, & Wipro) contains an open letter from ME to the students. This letter is the focus of this BLOG:-

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Dear Student,

Congratulations for winning the prestigious Anundoram Borooah Award. Now you are a proud owner of a world class laptop especially designed for you. To fulfill the promise made by Sri Tarun Gogoi, Hon'ble Chief Minister of Assam, the Education (Secondary) Department and the experts from IIT Guwahati and AMTRON have worked together to ensure the best quality in terms of hardware, software and service while selecting the laptop for you.


Your laptop comes with Ubuntu Operating System (http://www.ubuntu.com) pioneered by Canonical Ltd (http://canonical.com) driven by its founder Mark Richard Shuttleworth, a South African born entrepreneur, to create one of the best Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). According to Mark, “I believe that free software can become the de facto standard way the world builds and experiences all software...”. Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux operating system based on the Debian core, and is considered as the most popular operating system in the FOSS. Initiated in 2004 by Mark, the Ubuntu community releases upgrades of the operating system regularly in April (.04) and October (.10) every year. The Ubuntu loaded in your laptop is Long Term Support (LTS) version 10.04.


Along with Ubuntu, we at AMTRON have bundled a large bouquet of educational, office, graphics, multimedia and programming software, all with freedom and full rights for you to use, redistribute, modify and share with your friends and family members. This is to respect the basic 4 (four) freedoms of Software as defined by Richard Mathew Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org) and the chief architect of the GNU (http://www.gnu.org) project which is at the heart of the GNU/Linux systems. The 4 freedoms are Freedom 0 - Freedom to run the software as you wish, Freedom 1 – Freedom to study and change the source code of the program, Freedom 2- Freedom to redistribute the exact copies of the program to your friends and community and whomever you choose & Freedom 3 – Freedom to distribute copies of the source code that you modified. Whenever you want to use a software, please examine whether it meets the four freedom criteria or not, even if you have purchased a copy of it. If it does not meet the criteria of the 4 freedoms, please do not use that software.

Some of the packages included in your laptop are OpenOffice.Org to meet all your word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics requirements. You can also use its formula editor to write mathematical equations. The GIMP Image editor, Inkscape Vector Graphics editor and Scribus can be used to create and manipulate images, graphics and compose newsletter and magazines. Your laptop comes loaded with a host of programming and scripting languages such as C/C++, mySQL, Perl, Python, pHp, GFortran, Gdb to mention a few. You can start writing your own bits of code by opening the Gedit text editor, or study the source codes of the programs loaded in your laptop to get an understanding as to how it works. You may explore source code in directories such as usr/src in the file system of your laptop.


In addition to this special booklet about your laptop, you have also been provided with two additional reading materials- “Getting started with Ubuntu” and “Introduction to GeoGebra”. While the first booklet teaches you the basics of the GNOME Desktop and Operating System, the GeoGebra book will help you to sharpen your skills in mathematics and geometry. Additionally, we are also providing you spoken tutorials on SCILAB, a great platform to learn mathematical modeling. The spoken tutorials have been brought to you in association with IIT Bombay. You can also attempt to make your own spoken tutorials on any of the software provided in your laptop, and if they are good, you may even get paid for it.


For any queries, please send an email to arbas2010@amtron.in.

With Best Wishes


(M. K. Yadava IFS)

Managing Director, AEDC Ltd.

Place: Guwahati

Date: 14/12/2010

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ne1 plz tel me bot d featurez of d laptop ..is it true dat hcl ME laptops are given as d award..?wat about d ram n hard dsk n webcam?plz rly soon..

MK Yadava said...

Pentium P6100 2.0 GB Processor, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, 250 GB 7200 RPM HDD, DVD RW, 14" TFT (LED Backlight), wi-fi, bluetooth, OEM Webcam, HD Interface, ABS body, 2.2 kg weight.... HCL ME is one of the brands.

There is also a sleek BACKPACK for the students.

There are a few booklets hardcopy glossy print in 4 color about 250 pages on Ubuntu/ GNU/Linux etc.

Anonymous said...

Resp, sir. When will the students of hslc pass 2011 will get their laptops. Will they get the same laptops as told in this blog.

MK Yadava said...

My dear friend, The laptop distribution for the year 2011 has already started on 24th September, 2011 ceremoniously by the Hon'ble CM of Assam. WE have already distributed for Kamrup (Metro) and Nagaon districts. Due to Puja and Diwali holidays and also 1-10 Oct holidays in China, we have to stop distribution. Major distribution work will start from 24 at Jorhat, and finish in most of the districts by 15th Nov, 2011.

AS regards configuration, the machines of 2011 are a shade better than 2010.The sysmark for 2011 is at 135 (120 for 2010), the processor is next gen, OS is ubuntu 11.04...

Anonymous said...

thank you sir for this update. now m a bit happy to get this news of distribution of laptop. I was out of station, so is it distributed in kamrup rural? i mean mirza and other part.? thak you sir..

Anonymous said...

will i get my cash cheque when others will get the laptop, on the same day? cause i have applied for getting cheque instead of laptop?

Unknown said...

i wish to know which model of hcl and wipro laptop has been given in this schemes.

MK Yadava said...

Lat year it was Lenovo E49. This year the tender process is on. Shall come to know the brand and model only at the end of it. Will take a few months for this.

MK Yadava said...

Tendering process is on. You may come to know in a month.

JyotisMoy said...

Respected sir, cn u inform me the model of the laptops & its specifications which distributed to the 1st div. holder students of prsnt year. And plzz tell me the month when it will b give to us........i'm jyoti n cm frm k/ang.....thnx

Anonymous said...

respected sir, when would the laptop for 2013 would be given in bongaigaon.

Anonymous said...

Why pentium processors are given...core 2 can be given or other latest processors

Unknown said...

Nice post with awesome points! Can’t wait for the next one.

HP - ENVY TouchSmart 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Silver

HP - ENVY TouchSmart 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - 8GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Silver

Unknown said...

Sir, when the tablet pc will distribute in dibrugarh district for 2nd division 50% above marks..... Plz tell the date sir

Akayed ullah said...

sir I need money instead of laptop what can I do please rply me on e mail

Unknown said...

Sir cmsas 2015 second division k kun tu date ot dibo jorhat ot 21 Jan t file kamrup matro t ketiya dibo.

Unknown said...

Sir please tell me when cmsas 2015 was distribut in kamrup (matro)?

Unknown said...

I need Anundoram borooa award 2010 casing of laptop. Plz help me sir.