Kathmandu, December 22, 2005

The Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) of the Tribhuvan University is reviewing the syllabus of a subject of the proficiency certificate level — Nepal Parichaya — after 22 years so as to make necessary changes in it, even though TU rules and regulations make it mandatory to revise every curriculum in every five years. Professor Dr Kedar Sharma, executive director of the centre, told this daily that the syllabus of Nepal Parichaya would be updated as it has not been revised for at least two decades. The centre had partly reviewed the syllabus of compulsory English and Nepali subjects last year. The delay in the revision of the course was partly due to the government decision to phase the proficient certificate level from the TU. However, the TU has not become able to materialise the decision due to some technical problems. The Education Ministry has formed a seven-member ‘integrated curriculum development committee’ in April 2004 with the intention of developing an integrated curriculum for both the intermediate level (PCL) of the Tribhuvan University and the ‘Plus Two’ level of the higher secondary education. Similarly, the centre is also planning to revise the syllabus of 100-credit compulsory Nepali of the certificate level.

NepaLinux launched, and it’s free

Lalitpur, December 22, 2005

Kamal Mani Dixit, the president of the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, and Sanjeev Rajbhandari, the chief executive officer at the Mercantile Communication Pvt Ltd, today jointly released NepaLinux, an operating system that has been designed in Nepali language. NepaLinux is a free open source software in which the source code is open and the users have the freedom to use, study and modify according to one’s need and NepaLinux could also be redistributed. Unlike propriety softwares, which are expensive to buy, NepaLinux comes free of cost. Speaking at the launching ceremony organised in Lalitpur, Rajbhandari said, the Nepali operating system would gain popularity once the government and private institutions endorsed and public embraced it. The development of NepaLinux was facilitated by a project led by the Open University of UK — Bhasha Sanchar Project — which was supported by the European Commission. Earlier, Sarmad Hussain of Pan Asia Networking (PAN) Localisation said the localisation of information technology is important in Asia so as to make the people living here able to compete in the global market as only 10 per cent or less population in the continent is literate in English. Besides, he said, over half of the world’s population lives in the continent. At present, the PAN Localisation teams are working for the localisation of information technology in ten different languages in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal and Sri Lanka.