IBM announces Linux Scholar Challenge 2002

IBM's global Linux scholar challenge for this year is a competition designed to familiarize students with the open source Linux operating system and the working of the open source community, the contest provides students a unique opportunity to work with Linux and IBM. This follows the success of a similar program conducted last year where more than 650 universities in 64 countries had participated. Student participation from India was among the highest, second only to USA. IBM is now accepting registrations online at www.ibm.com/university/linuxchallenge.

Contestants must be enrolled in an accredited two, three or four year college or university and must complete the online registration by October 31, 2002. All papers must be submitted by December 13, 2002. Winners will be announced on January 20,2003.

As part of the Challenge, students will submit projects to be reviewed by a panel of IBM technologists. Participating students will create a Linux project that enhances usability, develops an application, or tools for the Linux environment. They will describe their objectives, methodology, research and results. Judging is based on creativity, thoroughness, clarity, and results of the projects submitted. The best applications developed by students will be selected as winners.

As part of the 2002 Linux Scholar Challenge, the university with the highest average score of student entries will be awarded a Linux-enabled 16-node IBM eServer xSeries cluster. Twenty winners of the Linux Scholar Challenge will receive IBM ThinkPad laptop computers. Three qualified winners will be offered Summer 2003 internships at IBM's Technology Center.

Last year, three Indian students received international recognition for the 2001 Linux Scholar Challenge and were among 25 winners. Their projects were selected from more than 1400 registrations.