Enable Malayalam in your Computer

Enable Malayalam on your GNU/Linux Distribtution

Malayalam Support in Ubuntu 8.04

• Download the necessary packages from here install them using the dpkg command.
• Uncompress the downloaded file
• Open a terminal and cd to the directory and issue the command:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Install malayalam support for Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 and Ubuntu 7.10 from CDROM

1. Download the Malayalam CD Image for Debian 4.0/IT@School 3.0 or that for Ubuntu 7.10u
2. Burn the ISO to CD (choose the option burn from image in your cd burning application; on GNU/Linux systems, right click on the ISO file and choose 'write to disk' option)
3. Open synaptic package manager (Desktop -> Administration -> Synaptic package manager)
4. In synaptic edit menu, choose add cdrom
5. Search for the package "ml-debian-patch" (for debian) or for "ml-ubuntu-patch" (for ubuntu) as the case may be
6. Mark for installation
7. Apply to start installing the application

• If you prefer to use a terminal then

1. Log in as root and give the following two commands
2. apt-cdrom add
3. apt-get install ml-debian-patch (for debian 4.0/ it@school gnu/linux 3.0 ) or apt-get install ml-ubuntu-patch (for ubuntu 7.10)

This will install few patches that fix the rendering issues in GNOME and OpenOffice and install the fonts Rachana, Meera and Suruma.

The CDROM also contain packages for phonetic input (Swanalekha and Mozhi). The package ml-phonetic will install SCIM and the phonetic malayalam input methods.

Download and watch the installation video here.

Enable Malayalam in Windows XP

• Goto Conrol Panel
• Open "Regional and Language Options"
• Goto "Language" Tab
• Tick "Install files for Complex Scripts"

• Insert Windows XP CD when asks.
• After copying the language files, reboot the system.
• After reboot, goto control panel
• Goto "Language" Tab
• Click "Details" Button

• Select "Malayalam" from Input Language List.

• Now you can see Language Bar at Taskbar.
• Press Alt+Shift for switching languages.

Download and Install a font

• Copy a Unicode font from your computer. Eg: Meera ( Download Malayalam unicode fonts)
• Then Goto Control Panel, and Select Fonts Directory
• Paste the font there
• Done..!

Transliteration Method(Mozhi-Keyman) 

• To get phonetic keyboard in windows download and install mozi keyman

Enable Malayalam in Apple Mac

The website http://sites.google.com/site/macmalayalam/ contain resources for enabling malayalam in Mac.

This page contain information on how to enable malayalam on the latest version of IT@School GNU/Linux, Ubuntu (7.10), Debian GNU/Linux (Etch).   and Windows XP
The suruma patches for pango and openoffice, the malayalam unicode fonts and many software available in this site are from Swathantra Malayalam Computing Project