Hi all,

I don't know whether this is the right place to post such a thread. If it's not I'd be more than willing to stop this thread.

I'm a final year student doing my B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from NIT Jalandhar, India.
I am Linux addict and have been using Linux from the past 2.5 years now. I'm thinking to do my major project related to C/C++/Linux. But I don't have someone who can guide me in doing this. So I'm looking for some mentor who can provide me some guidance.
Also, I'm very concerned about the future. Most of the organizations that have approached our college do work on the Windows platform. I'm looking for someplace where I can work on the Linux Platform.

I'm really confused about what future course of action to take. I'm also thinking of doing some kind of internship this winter.
Could anyone please suggest/guide me as to what to do. I'll be more than willing to provide any additional information.

I know that this appears to be a very vague post, but at this point of time I am very uncertain about the future and in need of some suggestions/guidance/help.
I'll be highly obliged to anyone who could provide me with any pointers.

Finally, again if this thread might not seem appropriate, I'd be happy to edit this post and delete its content.

Thanks in anticipation.

Think about the things you're interested in: graphics, networking, databases, kernel etc. Maybe you can mix a number of the things in an interesting way?

When it comes to companies using Linux... You need to search. In some areas it's easier than in others (for example, Linux is very popular in networking world).

To be honest with you, it's something you have to find out for yourself. I never got any motivation or support from anybody around me (some because they didn't want to, others because they don't know anything about PC's or Linux) so you learn fast that you need to do it yourself. They only hang around if they can harvest the fruit of your work, not mentor you when you need them the most.


At least, that's how it turned out for me. I hope you have better luck.

Thanks for all the replies. As far as my interests are concerned, I'm very much interested in kernel programming, last semester I even bought a few books and started reading them, then I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel and was doing little experiments. I also started to learn about cluster computing.

So far LinuxQuestions.org has been my only mentor. I've learned a lot from people outta here, except that I could find noone who could help me. As far as my major project is concerned, I was thinking of doing something, on RTLinux/real time operating systems. I know that I can put in a lot of hardwork, and have the sufficient amount of intelligence, but there's no-one to guide me. The teachers in my college do not know anything about these fields and ,moreover, they just don't care. I was ,therefore, looking for some professors who could maybe through the internet sort of mentor me. I've approached a couple of universities but so far did not receive any positive reply.

I feel that if I start such a big project on my own without any guidance I may end up frustrated and just wasting my time and screwing up my major project.

Thanks a lot for all the help, I'd be greatly obliged if anyone could provide me with some more pointers.
These forums have been of great help to students like me, and I again express my gratitude to all the people involved.

Thanks again.

If you'd like to get into RTOS, think carefully about what you want to do with it. If you think about writing your own, it's not a good idea. Master's thesis time is too short for doing it correctly. In that time you can only write things which were arleady written >100 times. Oh, and I know what I'm writing, I've got quite good experience with RTOSes

I don't have all the papers needed to mentor master's thesis now (it's only a matter of time, but still), but I like you attitude very much. It's quite rare to find someone who really wants to do something interesting. And is not afraid of hard work. Keep searching, but first think carefully about your proposal. Or, find a person first (but... look for age, younger is better, just IMHO), then browse his/her list of publications and look for interesting subject. Such approach gives good results.

Thanks a lot for the help. Yeah I'm not planning to write a complete RTOS on my own, but maybe strip down RTLinux and custom develop it for a dialer software for a call-center or for multimedia processing, or something like that. I've got some ideas, and I'm thinking about them. Thing is I've not found anyone as of yet who could guide me in this. I'll take your advice, and search for some young academic with these fields of interest. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll find one.

Thanks again for all the help.

embbeding?

Yea, I'm open to that also.

no actually wat kalleanka meant is that the work u are referrin to is an embedding assignment..aint it

As a Young person, there must be something you really love. Whatever that is, if you don't chase it, you will have regrets. Disregard nay-sayers and sponges, help when you can.

If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space.

Linux is our future.
Peace

Programming skills translate over from platform to platform fairly well. A strong background in development will be valuable regardless of which platform you start on.

I'm not saying there won't be things to learn when writing code for Windows. There will be. But you'll have already learned the hard part - how to learn.