About

I am Sarath Lakshman, a 21 year old guy bitten by the Linux bug during the early days of teenage, Passionate about Free and Open Source Software and GNU/Linux. I’m a developer, contributor, author and a student.

I enjoy dreaming, writing, coding, traveling, hangout with friends, photography and philosophy.

My interested areas of work include the buzzwords KDE, Django, Google Appengine, PiTiVi, Gstreamer, Python, Shell Scripting, Live CDs, Tweaking, Upstart, Grub, D-bus, Web application development, Documentation, Operating System, Pardus, XMPP and more.

I am known for the following things:

1. Developed a user friendly GNU/Linux distro called SLYNUX (2004)
   • A more M$ Windows alike Interface with many tweaked applications
   • Live CD with installation support
   • Distrowatch.com ranked as 14th best distro in a week of release
   • Received good popularity and response online and offline
2. Contribution to Open Source Projects.
   • Contributed to projects Pardus Project, PiTiVi, Istanbul, Swathantra Malayalam Computing, Ubuntu
3. Authored book, Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook, PACKT Publishers
   • A cookbook consisting of 119 recipes on Shell Scripting
   • Published by PACKT Publishers, UK in January 2011
   • Reference as well as a learning aid for scripting real world problems
4. Authored many articles on technology in Linux For You magazine
   • Since October 2009, authored many articles in Linux For You Magazine published across four countries
   • Appeared in the columns Opengurus, For You and Me, Developers
5. Participated and successfully completed Google Summer of Code programs in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
   • Participated with Fedora Project as mentor organization in 2008 – Worked to improve PiTiVi
   • Participated with Pardus Project as mentor organization in 2009 – Worked to develop web based custom distro creator
   • Participated with Pardus Project as mentor organization in 2010 – Worked to develop Live CD installer for Pardus
6. Conducted workshops and talks at various engineering colleges across India during technology meetups.
   • Handled sessions on Django development, Linux Live CD remastering, Introduction to FOSS development, Kickstart with GNU/Linux

A bit about my past..
My enthusiasm for technology started off in childhood by unscrewing a scientific calculator. I was attracted by the green lines in the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) that connects the small beautiful and colourful components that are fixed with solder. Love towards resistors and capacitors turned me to an electronic hobbyist. I still remember the day when I was in my seventh grade, I assembled a tape-recorder from scratch in a night without sleep and my tape drive sung before the sun rose. During my eighth grade I had my first hands on with computers. Sooner, my passions drove to tweaking and editing the classic Windows 98. In the meantime, I had started with Visual Basic programming and was writing small computer programs that I wished to use. The first ever virus I wrote in VB and ran over the machines in the school lab was a memorable experience. During my tenth grade, I was lucky to have the opportunity to install Redhat Linux 7.2 on my Intel Celeron 1Ghz, 128 MB Ram. The taste of GNU/Linux was unexplainable. The feel of freshness and the scrolling geekish boot messages inspired me to play and live with it. Moreover I was fed up with viruses and worms on Microsoft Windows platform. The uneasiness that caused by GNU/Linux to me was not really difficulty, but the feel of another dimension of Operating System cult. The UNIX operating system cult. Even though I felt it harder to use GNU/Linux with bunch of unsupported hardware without proper drivers, I started loving the platform. The next mission was to fixup the drivers to support all my hardware stuff. Sooner, the thought of a user friendly GNU/Linux operating system for newbies came to my mind and started disturbing me day and night. I met the Live CD Linux called Knoppix. It gave me the right technology to use for building a user friendly GNU/Linux for newbies. After six months of wonderful nights that made me explore the unrestricted knowledge pool of Free and Open Source Software, I came up with a user friendly GNU/Linux distribution called SLYNUX aka Sarath Lakshman’s Linux. This was the beginning of everything about FOSS…

Happy Hacking!

My Resume in pdf format can be downloaded here, CV.pdf.