Mumbai: IBM India (www.ibm.com) has announced the winners of the Global Linux Scholar Challenge that was held from August through December 2002. Four among the 20 winners of the Global Linux Scholar Challenge 2002 are Indian students.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, was awarded a Linux-enabled 16 node IBM eServer xSeries cluster, as the winner of Global Linux Challenge 2002 for the highest overall average of their student entries. This year the student participation from India was the highest, followed by China and the US, out of the total 2,871 worldwide registrations.

The Global Linux Scholar Challenge, an initiative by IBM is designed to familiarise the educational fraternity with the open source Linux operating system and encourage them to improve their Linux skills and to improve Linux itself.

This effort is one of the many that IBM supports to raise awareness and encourage open source computing. There has been a consistent increase in the level of participation from the student community in India every year, indicating growing awareness and usage of Linux operating system and increased level of activity in development of Linux-based applications.

The four Indian students winners of this Global Linux Scholar Challenge 2002 are Neeraj Kumar, IIT-Delhi; Goldwyn Rodrigues, VJTI-Mumbai; Shashank Khanna, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gujarat; Rajaraman Periasamy, Regional Engineering College, Tirchy.

These students each win IBM ThinkPad notebook computers, preloaded with Linux. As part of the challenge, students submitted projects, which were reviewed by a panel of IBM technologists. Participating students were asked to create a Linux project that enhances usability, develop an application or tools for the Linux environment. The participants were judged based on creativity, thoroughness, clarity, and results of the projects submitted.

Says Frank Luksic, country executive, software and developer relations, IBM India: “IBM is committed to bring value to the educational fraternity in India. Our schools and universities help prepare young people to be participants in a progressive civic society and provide us with the highly skilled workforce that is so critical to remaining successful in a competitive, global marketplace. The open source community thrives on new thinking and enthusiasm. I am delighted that IBM could play a role in encouraging tomorrow’s programmers to build exciting projects on Linux today.”

Adds M Balakrishnan, head, computer science and engineering department, IIT-Delhi: “We are proud of our students achievement in winning this International Linux contest. We have been using Linux as a key platform and it has emerged as the OS of choice. The 16-node cluster, which we will receive as an award, will give further impetus to our Linux activities in the department and at IIT-Delhi.”

IBM Linux cluster consists of a parallel-computing environment, built using IBM eServer xSeries rack mounted servers and Linux operating system, along with suitable networking and software components. Such clusters are now very popular for use in education, research and scientific applications.

IBM is the world’s No 1 IT provider, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM has been supporting its commitment to the educational fraternity worldwide, by providing IT infrastructure along with training and monetary contributions to educational institutions across India and around the world.

IBM helps customers, business partners and developers in a wide range of industries that leverage the power of the Internet for e-business. IBM is now engaged with more than 2,500 Linux customers worldwide, with solutions ranging from web serving to some of the largest supercomputers in the world doing genomic analysis. In addition, the company is running Linux on more than 800 servers inside IBM, including the IBM website.