BURKS (the Brighton University Resource Kit for Students) was a non-profit collection of useful resources for students of Computing who did not have (or could not afford) an Internet connection. The resources include compilers, tutorials and reference manuals for dozens of different programming languages, a dictionary of computing with over 13,000 entries, a copy of the Mandrake 8.0 Linux distribution, a vast amount of useful software, information about the Internet itself, and much more. The entire collection was also available online.
The BURKS project ran from 1997 to 2001 and the collection grew from about 450M in the 1997 edition to about 2.5G in the 2001 edition. New editions were prepared every August in readiness for the start of the UK academic year. Eventually sales dropped as broadband Internet access and cheap CD and DVD writers became more common, and the project was closed down as a result.
In its heyday, the website registered an average of about 600,000 hits per week from 185 countries, and about 50,000 copies were sold worldwide. Now you can download an ISO image of the 6th edition (2001).
The Internet is a rapidly changing place. You may find that some documents have links to sites or documents that no longer exist. The collection is now nine years out of date. Some of the software may no longer work with more modern versions of Windows. The author accepts no responsibility for any problems that arise from the use of this edition of BURKS.
Note also that documents and software provided on this CD are all subject to copyright by their respective authors. The DVD includes a licensing information page which provides more details. If you want to redistribute anything from this CD elsewhere, make sure that you check the copyright notice first. If in doubt, or if there is no explicit copyright notice, contact the document's author to ask permission. Note that it is extremely unlikely that you will be permitted to redistribute anything for profit.
Abraham Agay, Roger Boyle, Janet Carter, Fintan Culwin, Benedict Faria, Mike Feldman, Sally Fincher, Jon Dron, Jackie Harbor, Tony Jenkins, Peter Knaggs, K.V.Melvin, Cuno Pfister, Frances van Scoy, Mike Smith, John Taylor, Pat Terry and Ian Utting.
Anthony Aaby, Colin Allen, Brad Appleton, R.E. den Braasem, Frank Brokken, Thomas Boutell, Paul Brna, Chris Burke, Tom Christiansen, Marshall Cline, Fintan Culwin, Andrew Cumming, Rowan Davies, Steve Dekorte, Gordon Dodrill, Mark-Jason Dominus, Bruce Eckel, Mark Emmer, Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet, Gavin Estey, Gordon Fecyk, Eric Foster-Johnson, Jim Frost, Jean-loup Gailly, Adele Goldberg, John Grieggs, Ralph Griswold, David Hanson, David Harley, Bob Hathaway, Jan Haugland, Jeffrey Hobbs, Denis Howe, Graham Hutton, Randall Hyde, John Hynd, Mark Kantrowitz, Ted Jensen, Ian Joyner, Magnus Kempe, Mumit Khan, Jak Kirman, Thomas Kistler, Peter Knaggs, Stefan Koch, Peter van der Linden, Corey Liss, Arnim Littek, Ken Lunn, Robin Mabry, Vikas Malik, John McCarthy, Rod van Meter, Bertrand Meyer, Peter Millard, Mark Moraes, Michel Olagnon, John Ousterhout, Jocelyn Paine, John Peterson, Cuno Pfister, Ken Polsson, Dave Raggett, Ross Richardson, Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Perry Rovers, Guido van Rossum, Lakshmi Sastry, John Savill, Pieter Schoenmakers, Peter Sestoft, Andrew Shalit, Nik Silver, Dorai Sitaram, Paul Spandler, Steve Summit, Rick Sutcliffe, Conrad Taylor, Brad Templeton, Pat Terry, Larry Virden, Juan Manuel Vuletich, Larry Wall, Brent Welch, George Wenzel, David Wheeler, Niklaus Wirth and Tatu Ylonen.(and if I've forgotten anyone, my profound apologies).
John English
University of Brighton
2010