IndLinuxSaga

The IndLinux Saga

The story of bringing Hindi to Linux

When the talk of using Indian languages on computers arises

Time log

First launched by Prakash Advani (technology writer and founder of FreeOS.com portal ) , Venkatesh Hariharan (freelance journalist -then) in Dec 1999 on egroups.com (now at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/indlinux/)
Prakash Advani was then running this portal on Free operating systems available then & was a Linux evangelist. He later started FreeOS.com as a Linux services company ( June 2000 ).

Venky Hariharan was a freelance journalist involved in writing about technology. He was earlier involved with BharatBhasha , a project started by Harsh Kumar (Hindi and IT expert working in public sector). Harsh Kumar had got developed Shusha fonts - a collection of 5 fonts for Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Bengali. These were the first set of fonts easy to use available in public domain. The central point of Shusha being - no extra software should be needed to type in ones language.

indlinux group list started on 28th Dec 1999 on egroups.
discussions start in Jan 2000 -
With slow discussions on mailing list its decided to hire someone fulltime to work for IndLinux. Prakash Advani while starting his company FreeOS.com decides to support IndLinux through it.
June 2000 - Karunakar joins project as fulltime member, with FreeOS.com supporting the project - financially and resource wise.
With the core team on Apurva Shah (CTO, FreeOS), Prakash Advani, Venky Hariharan, Harsh Kumar (then with HPCL, now Indian Railways), Rahul Palkar (freelancer).
www.indlinux.org set up, hosted my FreeOS.com.
Mailing list set up on indlinux.org
Localized app in Hindi - using Shusha fonts with Hindi translated interface was made.
Project registerd on SourceForge in Sept 2000.
A team at IIT Madras (also called IndLinux) starts working on a ISCII based solution.
R&D in progress to understand how whole i18n/l10n model works (these were days when model in linux was not well documented & many things didnt work in that stage - like unicode, phonetic input, multilingual fonts etc.
with linux kernel supporting Unicode and UTF-8 & also glibc having support for widechars/unicode, XFree86 starts supporting display of Unicode chars.
Xmodmap & XKB Inscript keymaps for indic scripts implemented.
development of Unicode Hindi TTFs begins.

2001

Prakash Advani joins Netcore Solutions. Rajesh Jain CEO of Netcore solutions (also of Indiaworld fame) supports IndLinux, Karunakar hired in Netcore to continue Indlinux activities.
Linux Bangalore/2001, Localization talks at event. Event also marks first meeting point of FOSS enthusiasts working on localization activities - IndLinux, LLI-Bangalore, IIT Madras, Chennai Kavigal, RCIL at Mgmt Studies center, IISc.

2002

Gnome Hindi translations begin
Team in Bhopal starts Gnome Hindi translations.
Indic-Computing is formed.
First Indic-Computing meet in Bangalore Sept 2002 - sponsored by HP ISO
First public Demo of Hindi Gnome at Linux Bangalore 2002.
Cyberscape Multimedia release a set of Indic TTF fonts courtesy lobbying by FSF-India
Linux Bangalore/2002, L10n talks at event & a Indlinux demo stall for first time.

2003

IndLinux Hindi v0.37 (milan) released at Gnunify/2003
Indic Font Workshop at PESIT Bangalore, March 2003 - supported by Sarai, Deeproot
June 2003, First Milan Demo CD released.
Oct 2003 - Milan demo CD v2 released.
Oct 2003 - First Hindi translation review workshop @ Sarai
Dec 2003 - Linux Bangalore/2003, L10n talks + IndLinux stall.
Dec 2003 - Indlinux Hindi v0.73 (pali) released.

2004

2005

2006

2007