RutSum

Linux Challenge at Innovision ’08, NSIT

For those who are unaware, Innovision is the mega technical fest of NSIT and is conducted every year, with a whole load of events, such as workshops, competitions and guest lectures.

The list of sponsors and the amazing website for Innovision was impressive enough to grab my attention. Moreover, a lot of money and time has been spent on advertising and publicising the event. I decided to register for the Linux Challenge, that was the only event I thought I could get through.

The description of the event on their website talked only about the rules and regulations of the event, and the timings. There was no indication of the content or ‘syllabus’ for the event, and since Linux is a very diluted and wide term these days, it is really difficult to guess what skills you would require for such a competition. Nevertheless, I decided to go for the event.

The entry was for teams, with a maximum of 2 members. I decided to team up with Sneezy, but he ditched me at the last moment for a dumb ED class at DCE. So I had to go alone along with the Uncool Shitty and Kitallis (who were already a team) for the event to NSIT.

The prelims were written, and consisted of 3 sections of increasing difficulty. The first section was knowledge based, and consisted of general questions based on the common day-to-day applications of Linux and the history of Linux. The second section consisted of a little more advanced command line tools and their usage. The third section consisted mostly of shell scripting and programming, which had little to do with the knowledge of Linux. I could hardy attempt even a single question in the third section. Then it struck me that these question were relating to a predefined ‘Linux’ syllabus that must be taught in engineering colleges at a later stage (probably the 6th or 7th semester). In total, I performed poorly at the test, and I was not surprised, because in my 3 year long journey on Linux, I never really needed to use much of a shell. I’ve done my work in a GUI, and continue to feel it is an easier way to do things.

I did not qualify for the finals, but Uncool and Kitallis, they did. The final round consisted of only shell scripting, and had 4 questions, for which you had to make scripts on an actual Linux system (which was Fedora 9 ?!). Uncool and Kitallis managed to get through 2 questions, but not through shell scripts, but through programs that did the same thing, written in Python. If I were the organiser, I would have disqualified them for being smart asses and defying the rules, but apparently the organisers thought that they did a smart job and gave them a ‘1337|\|355’ bonus and awarded them full points for the 2 questions they attempted. They ended up with the 3rd prize. As for me, I don’t think I would’ve been able to pull off even one of those questions, so it was only fair that I didn’t qualify.

The posters of Innovision ’08 mentioned prizes worth Rs 8 lakh to be given away, but sadly, all Uncool and Kitallis got for the Linux Challenge were paper certificates, with the wrong college name mentioned on it. Great going, NSIT.

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