Fujitsu Says 'Aye' to Using Home Grown BOSS MOOL Platforms

CHENNAI:  Centre for Development for Advanced  Computing (CDAC), Chennai  and Fujitsu signed an Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) for bundling BOSS MOOL operating system along with Fujitsu systems (desktops, servers and laptops) to popularise use of Open source among  student community, recently.

Bharat Open Source Operating System Minimalistic Object Oriented Linux (BOSS MOOL ) includes BOSS which has been developed by CDAC along with the MOOL kernel being  developed by IIT Madras.

Support for Indian languages and localisation packages besides scalability to configurations are set to make this operating system more suitable for students needs, said LR Prakash, Director CDAC. “Currently the BOSS MOOL distributable 5.0 (Kernel Version 3.18) is well over 1.8 GB to download and to save the students the hassle of having to download the OS and install it considering the bandwidth needed to download such a package, the arrangement of preloading software with the computers would give more opportunity for wider use and applications,”  he added.

BOSS MOOL has been in development for the last ten years with a core team of 25 -30 research scholars from IIT Madras and CDAC over the years, working to create the OS. Besides, over 10,000 students helped  fine tune the OS through field trials over the last 2 and a half years, says Professor Janakiraman, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras. “We are currently working on an Android based version of the operating system for mobile devices, this is using a core linux kernel and we are in the process of looking for colleges that are looking to take to this venture,” Janakiraman added.

BOSS MOOL will include 43 NPTEL video lectures and software for completing and submitting one’s college assignments using the free operating system.

“The rollout with BOSS MOOL would be immediate and as and when customers  come with the requirement for this OS,  we will preload it with those systems,” said Andy Stevenson, Executive Director, Fujitsu UK&India.

Also present at the signing was IIT M dean Bhaskar Ramamurthi as well as the development team from CDAC and IIT.