BANGALORE: With surprisingly little fanfare and disarmingly pleasant simplicity, Linux Bangalore 2003, the three day event held to look into the various facets of Linux and open source was flagged off here on Tuesday.

"This is the third such Linux Bangalore event being organized in the city. This is probably the largest collection of the open source community collected together at any point in time in India and even Asia. And over the last two years, we have found support in the form of community, audience and sponsors growing for this event," said N Karthik of the Bangalore Linux Users Group, during the inauguration.

Facilitated by the Bangalore Linux Users Group, the applied technology conference brings together enthusiasts from all around the country. The event will feature talks and demos by national and international speakers that cover a diverse spectrum of Linux related technologies ranging from Kernel-hacking and Embedded systems to Desktop Environments and Localization to Databases and Web Applications to Gaming and Multimedia.

Speaking during the event, Karthik said, "Linux is the poster child of the open source revolution. Globally its adoption is growing at a rapid pace, and its probably the fastest growing server OS. This is so, because people are fast realizing that open source is stable, works pretty well and that there is increasing support from the community."

Karthik added that the conference traditionally did not have a chief guest to drive home the idea that Linux is a community effort and that such events are driven by the community and not by one single figure. True to that statement, the lamp lighting ceremony was accomplished by representatives of various Linux user groups across the country.

The conference, which will have more than 80 deliveries by different speakers during the three days, is expected to bring in more than 3000 delegates by way of audience. The event has been sponsored by the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technolgy (MCIT) along with corporates such as HP, Novell and Exocore.