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> I am writing to you from Totnes European School in South Devon. TES > arrange unpaid placements within organisations all over the UK for students > from outside of the UK. We have received a request from a young Swiss > student who is looking for an unpaid placement in programming with Linux. > The type of software he would like to develop are multimedia/ > entertainment. No direct information really - dclug is just a mailing list of people using Linux in Devon and Cornwall, ordinary users rather than programmers. These sites may help: http://www.linuxprogramming.com/ http://jobs.internet.com/ www.google.com/jobs/ However, these job sites are NOT confined to Linux and there are very few real job opportunities as the operating system and all the programs are provided free of charge and all the source code is included. i.e. no-one gets paid for the development work they do on Linux. Linux is known as 'open source' which means that programming is open to all and there are few paid placements - work is done in collaboration with other developers. The whole (global) Linux community is able to take part in development. This means that an unpaid placement is also hard to find as the existing developers don't have a company to approach, you must investigate each development team individually according to the type of program you want to work on. It also means that development teams consist of highly motivated, enthusiastic volunteers, some of whom have been writing Linux code since the first kernel was compiled and released in 1991. Teams require a variety of skills and members contribute as much or as little as they are able. Like the internet itself, there is no single point of control for Linux. Each part of the system, is developed by a separate team of developers and membership of these groups is open to anyone. Groups often have no 'physical' or geographical base either. It is just as easy to develop Linux in Switzerland as it is in Devon. Anywhere with an internet connection will suffice. > This operation system is completely new to me and as yet, I have not > located a placement in this area, so I do need some help. I doubt you will find a 'placement' of the kind you expect. Most Linux developers work on the code on their own machines and contribute code and fixes to existing open source projects. Using the operating system comes first, developing code results from having a system in use and finding elements that can be further developed or created fresh. > Maurizio would like to carry a 5 month unpaid work placement and I wonder > if you would be able to suggest any organisations that you feel may be able > to offer a work placement in this sector. There are no organisations involved in Linux programming as such, it's simply a case of joining an existing project. Such projects work via mailing lists in many cases: www.egroups.com www.listbot.com Project websites are sometimes hosted by sourceforge: www.sourceforge.net The projects themselves will have their own websites (details in the Help or About box for each program or in the documentation that came with the original program) where you find details on what needs to be done, what kind of developers are needed (from C++ to artistry), which mailing lists to join, download instructions to get the latest code - more recent than the code that came with the program - and contact details for developers already working on the project. All programs on Linux, indeed the Linux system itself, are available with the complete source code for anyone to read, adapt and compile. That is often the starting point but you need to find the website before investing much time in adapting the code in case someone is already working on that area. Many developers start by simply using Linux and finding that there is a feature that is not implemented yet. So the usual route is: Install and operate Linux yourself - installation is an ideal opportunity to understand the operating system itself. Find a program that is currently doing tasks that you want to get involved in improving or extending. Read the documentation that came with the program, download and install the source code and associated material from the website detailed in the documentation. Understand the existing code and join the mailing list to see what area of the code is currently being developed. Contribute snippets of code that you have added to or adjusted and let the community decide if the benefits are worth further development. All this is usually completely unpaid. Additionally, there is very little point in changing geographical areas to accomplish this. The majority of development occurs on home machines with collaboration via the internet. All the documentation required is available over the internet and via email. (Indeed, printed documentation is usually too far out of date to be of any use at all! Linux has come a long way in just 10 years and game development is one of the areas of fastest development.) One final site for budding developers: www.linuxformat.co.uk The home site of the Linux Format magazine that regularly carries features and tutorials on open source development and development programs like KDevelop and Kylix. There are also forums that can provide help on joining existing development teams. An alternative is the paid employment by distributors of Linux like RedHat, SuSE and Mandrake. These companies bring together a vast range of open-source programs into a set called a distribution. Together with a custom written installation routine and a few customised configuration programs, these distributions are then made available free of charge for internet download or as pre-mastered CD's with or without printed documentation. The CD's can cost as little as £5 or a 'power pack' with full installation and configuration documentation can cost from £30-£80. First-time users need the full pack but once you get used to the system, just the CD's or even just the download are adequate. These companies receive income from the provision of support packages but there is a complete network of Linux User Groups (like dclug) who exist purely to provide support free-of-charge. * Red Hat (www.redhat.co.uk) * Mandrake (www.linux-mandrake.com/en/) * SuSE (www.suse.co.uk) The two main development organisations are: * KDE (www.kde.org) * Gnome (www.gnome.org) But these program the user interface rather than programs like games that run using these interfaces. For specifics on a particular multimedia or entertainment project, visit the website given in the documentation installed with the project. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx neil@xxxxxxxxxxxx -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.