Santhosh Thottingal

Santhosh contributes to Dhvani TTS, GNOME Malayalam, Debian Malayalam, Aspell-ml, Swathanthra Malayalam Computing and Silpa project.

Name: Santhosh Thottingal Age: 24 Occupation: Software Engineer IRC Nick: santhosh Email: santhosh dot thottingal at gmail.com Computer / Laptop Configuration and OS (Distro): HP COMPAQ Presario V3029 Turion64X2@1.6GHz/512DDR2/80GB with Debian Lenny, Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9
 * Laptop

History
My friend gave me a book "Free software Free Society" (http://www.gnu.org/doc/book13.html) when I was in Engg college(2003).
 * How did you get into GNU, Linux and FOSS in general?

When I got a computer at home(It was at 2003. My house got electricy connection at 2001 only) I asked my dealer to install 'linux' on that. He tried and failed. So I tried myself and after 3 or 4 attempts, I did it
 * Share your first encounter with FOSS (Installation, setup, etc.)

gnu philosophy + community + friends + my projects / computers complimentary to second question)''' The same dealer started calling me for installation help after one year
 * What lead to a sustained continuity in FOSS after you stepped in?
 * '''A funny instance during your initial days of computing with FOSS

Present FOSSy activity
SMC Projects(L10N of gnome, debian, kde, Swanalekha Input method, Aspell/Hunspell Spell checkers, etc..), Dhvani Indian language text to speech system
 * Which project do you currently contribute to?

Nights(2-3 Hours) + Weekends
 * How much time in a week / day / month do you spend on it?

environment tools?''' gedit, Eclipse It is for for common man
 * '''What are your favourite text editor[s] / IDE[s] / development
 * What do you think is best about your project (that you contribute to)?

Think about the users first, then think about the project
 * What would you like to advise budding contributors/developers?


 * Any favorite programming language?

C

Opinions
goals" or "Just Pragmatism can achieve goals" - Could also be looked as RMS or Linus'''
 * '''"Philosophy plus pragmatism" or "Just Philosophy can achieve

Philosophy or RMS

community that you are a part of?''' SMC - A community that grown very fast to the most active Free software developer community working in Natural Language techonolgy in India
 * '''What's interesting about your local GNU/Linux User Group / other

community according to you?''' FOSS + hackers + involvement + trust + communication + upstream
 * '''Five quick buzzwords (verbs / adjectives) for an "ideal"

many) and why?''' foss.in illiteracy + widening digital divide will tell that story
 * '''Best (or your favorite) FOSS related conference in India (One or
 * '''Why do you think Localisation is important in a country like India?"

Personal
I am working in Infosys Technologies Ltd, chennai as a Programmer Analyst in weekdays and working for my own projects in weekends.
 * About you

പിന്നെത്തരാം ട്ടോ അടിച്ചുവൃത്തിയാക്കീട്ടില്ല. അതുകൊണ്ടു് കാണാന്‍ കൊള്ളില്ല. അതുകഴിഞ്ഞു ഒരുഗ്രന്‍ ഫോടോ അയച്ചുതരാം. Butter milk
 * Screenshot of your desktop
 * Your working room / working environment (photo / description)
 * Favourite beverage:

Banana Bajji
 * Favourite Street Food:

Chennai, Tamilnadu
 * Current Locality (City, State):

Malayalam
 * Mother Tongue

I don't like visiting Cities, Instead I would like travel through God's Own Country. Do you have any more questions?
 * City in India you would like to visit in your free time
 * Also please add any other qustions you would like to answer :-)