From: hancu@crim.ca (Marius Hancu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.romanian
Subject: Free Unix for Romania - help needed [repost]
Summary: Free Unix for Romania - help needed
Date: 22 Nov 92 02:37:52 GMT
Organization: CRIM

================================


Hi:

I guess most of you appreciate and use daily the marvelous Unix system.

Unfortunately, this ubiquitous system which is a given for us here, is
not available at all in Romania. The programming environment of
"choice" is DOS, mainly on 286/386 PC platforms.

Unix workstations are not available, mainly as a result of their high
cost (5,000$ and up, in comparison with the PCs which start around
1,000$ or even lower). Then, there is no money for licenses of the
official Unix variants.

Faced with this situation and convinced of the need for Unix in
Romania, I decided to look for less expensive alternatives. The best
solution I was  able to come up with is sending in Romania free Unix
clones that require only the 386/486 PC, which starts to penetrate.
I hope this will help in the transition period. 

As some of you might know, there are currently two free Unix clones,
which are quite powerful and have been adopted by thousands of PC
users:

- linux, by Linus Torvalds from Finland (read the comp.os.linux for
more info)
- 386bsd, by Bill Jovits of Berkeley (read the comp.unix.bsd
newsgroup)

I decided that, based on my personal experience, I would send linux
initially.

=================================================================== 

RESULTS 

I sent 3 copies of the linux to the Polytechnical Institute
of Bucharest and to the similar institutions in Timisoara and Oradea.
I have myself, as a former faculty member at IPB, still many contacts in
those places. 
I asked the recipients to keep the free character of linux in granting
access to original diskettes and documentation to anyone interested,
starting with the students.

Last week, the first installation of Unix in the form of linux was
successful at IPB.!!!!

====================================================================

COSTS

This effort has cost me:
- many (hundreds) of hours of ftp-ing the code, writing the diskettes
(a set of 30 diskettes of 1.44M were sent to each of the main sites
together with about 30Kg of documentation) and shipping. This does not
include the many hours spent in learning / testing the system.
- around 300$ in shipping and cost of diskettes, telephone calls to
start the distribution in Romania, etc.

====================================================================

FUTURE 

I plan to complete the distribution with more compilers, for:

- Fortran
- prolog
- lisp
- parallel languages

complete X libraries (R5), sets of books (or copies of them) on
Unix/X. I also plan to expand the area of the centres covered in
Romania, if help is forthcoming.

====================================================================

NEED FOR HELP

At this point in time, I am a little overloaded with the various
requirements of the distribution all over Romania. I can use help in
various forms:
- modest financial donations (in the tens of $ range or more if you
can afford), will be appreciated, sent to my home address

Marius Hancu
3355 Queen Mary Road, Apt. 610
Montreal, Quebec, H3V 1A5
Canada

(I can report on the use of the funds to the supporters)

- direct involvement in ftp-ing and sending by yourselves (I warn you,
is lot of work!) to your friends the distribution and books about Unix
etc
- advertising directed to your friends in Romania who have or want to
purchase a PC and learn/use Unix.  

====================================================================

WHERE TO FIND UNIX/LINUX IN ROMANIA

Prof. Mircea Bodea, Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest, Dept. of
Electronics and Telecommunications. Tel: 12-24-52.

Ing. Mircea Hancu (my cousin), in Timisoara. Tel: 15-164. He is in the
process of installing the system on another 386 right now.


====================================================================


KIND REQUESTS

What I do not need is comments/flames. What we have to do is act! If
you are interested in co-operating/helping directly in this, I would like to
learn from you, otherwise I am too busy.

For information on linux and 386bsd for yourselves and your friends,
please enter the appropriate newsgroups: comp.os.linux and
comp.unix.bsd. Do not write to me for information, please. 

====================================================================

INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION ON LINUX

In order to help those of you who might want to get a first grasp of
the features offered by linux, I'm inserting this messages which I
used at my place of work (it's not copyrighted!) for the
amateurs/hobbists.


Hi/Bonjour:

I guess many of you have or intend to have a PC at home.

You  might want to replicate the  Unix/X  environment present at work on
your PC at home.

If so, I strongly suggest you should consider linux - a Unix clone which
is FREE and can be obtained with anonymous ftp from various sites around
the  world (also  from  BBS,   in some areas). I   had  a very  positive
experience with it.


Several salient features:

- it is free (as opposed to Minix, another, older, Unix clone)
- the source code is fully available
- it can peacefully coexist with DOS on the same partitioned hard disk
- 5 Unix shells (bourne, bash, csh, tcsh, zsh)
- full complement of gnu tools (gcc, g++, bison, gplot, groff, gmake,
gdb, gnu shell/file/text utilities, gnu find, gawk)
- sed, awk, fgrep, flex, yacc  
- 6 editors (including full emacs 18.58, vi, elvis, joe, uemacs, xemacs)
- perl, ada, as86 
- Xwindows (X11R5), with twm (the MIT release) and possibly olwm, mwm
- tcp/ip, uucp, kermit, uuxxcode, ka9q
- cdrom interface
- e-mail packages can be obtained easily from the network by ftp and
used with it
- very responsive newsgroup (comp.os.linux) where you can place your
questions
 - an installation which has become quite straighforward (only DOS
required)
  


Requirements:

- it is intended only for 386/486-based PCs (not a major limitation, I
guess, all the major PCs are like that these days)
- 64M on hardisk or less (disk should be bigger, to accomodate all your
DOS stuff too). A minimum of 20 or so is required to make the C and C++
compilers and emacs work.
- 4M of RAM or more 

Recommendations:

- ET4000 SVGA card (90US$), recommended for trouble-free X window
installation and operation
- Ethernet-card should be  WD8013 compatible (recommended for connection
to Suns)
- Logitech or Microsoft mouse


I have it installed it on my PC at home.  I saw it  installed on several
laptop PCs at conferences.  It works  beautifully  and it is  continually
improved by a very dedicated group  working  around  the globe. The only
major thing I haven't tested myself is the communications, but they work
from the report on the net.


For the interested, you might consider:

-   reading  the FAQ  (Frequently  Answered Questions)   articles in the
comp.os.linux  newsgroup,  which present the   features and the  various
solutions for  the installation. 
- contacting me:  I have 30 diskettes of 1.44M full of all the necessary
files. They reflect however the state of linux in July  and from then
improvements  have been made  in kernel and other areas. I also have a
ton of documentation and a lot of ftp-ed stuff.


P.S. This is not the only free Unix available for the PC. You might
also consider 386BSD (read the comp.unix.bsd newsgroup for more info). I
do not have too much info on that one.


===================================================================


Thank you for your time and potential help. Please  also inform your
friends.

Va multumesc pentru atentie.


Best wishes to everyone
Cu bine

Marius Hancu
  



-- 
Marius Hancu, Parallel Architectures Group 
Centre de Recherche Informatique de Montreal (CRIM)
3744, Jean-Brillant, Bureau 500, Montreal, Quebec H3T 1P1, Canada 
phone: (514) 340-5907, fax: 514-340-5777, email: hancu@crim.ca