Ask the Egyptian Installfest Organizers

The Linux-Egypt group recently held an amazingly successful installfest. This event was a milestone both for Linux installfests in general (was it the largest one ever held?) and for Linux in the Arabic world. Alaa Abd El Fatah, one of the organizers, has offered to answer your questions with help from other Linux-Egypt members. We'll post their answers to 10 or 12 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as we get them back.

Beowulf Look Out

Pyramid Cluster!!!!

Which one is now more common in Egypt...

Linux or pirated copies of Windows?

English or Arabic

Do egyptians install in English or is it possible in Arabic?

Re:English or Arabic

It's possible in Arabic, but you have to format the disk from the outside in.

OT: Swedish English

How is it that your English is so good? I am constantly amazed at how well some people who presumably have never lived in an English-speaking country can speak English. It's just amazing. Very impressive.

I am an English-speaker living in Sweden. I can tell you it's a combination of:

• Swedish and English are very similar
• There aren't many Swedes in the grand scheme of things
• American and British media saturate the place
• 
  
  Of course, you can't discount the fact that they spend their whole education studying it. However, as an English-speaker trying to learn Swedish, I find it intensely annoying that Swedes refuse to speak Swedish to you if they know you speak English.

Motives for switching

What were some of the reasons that people gave for trying/switching to linux? Was it as simple as better language support or saving money? Or were there political motives as well, such as a resistance toward Microsoft because of its nation of origin?

History of Egypt motivation to switching to Linux

Here is some background, based on experience of relatives living in Egypt. I am Egyptian myself, but have not been living there for 15+ years.

In the 90s, Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy. They simply did not care what happens in the Arab world (software wise). They ignored that market. Arabization of products normally followed a delayed schedule, with the latest product being not in Arabic. When Windows 3.x came out, there was a competing Arabization by Al Alamiah, a Kuwaiti company. The lead architect (cant' remember his name, but either Lebanese or Syrian) there was enticed into leaving Al Alamiah and join Microsoft. There was a brief law suit then. In the end Microsoft was dominant in the Arabization area. Product release in Arabic still lagged behind English and other Western languages.

Then, in the mid 90s, Microsoft started to enforce licenses on businesses. In Egypt, a newly formed Shortet El Mosanafat El Faneyya (literally: Artistic Products Police, more like: "Intellectual Property Police") started raiding large, medium and small businesses to check if their software was licensed. They specifically looked for certain products and ignored others (e.g. Microsoft stuff, AutoCAD in Engineering firms, Oracle, but not Novel [if I remember correctly], nor Apple).

Rumor at the time had it that some rich and powerful people (ruling elite) made a cut with Microsoft in all this.

Remember that the US Dollar was around 3.4 Egyptian pound at the time. Making legal software very costly for the small business.

This scared small businesses, and some relatives I know migrated from Microsoft Windows and Fox Pro applications to Linux and SQL-Ledger for example. There was so much resentment for Microsoft at the time for doing this, and the powers who enforced it.

Now, the exchange rate is about 6.5 Egyptian Pounds to 1 US Dollar, so it has gotten even worse (more prohibitive cost of Microsoft software).

However, in the internet land, another development was taking place around the turn of the Millenium. Many developers for the internet knew nothing but Microsoft, so they used its technologies to develop web sites (ASP, MS SQL, NT/2000/XP, ...etc.) More importantly, this led to many web sites showing correctly in Arabic ONLY when used Internet Explorer.

This means that people at home or in offices who do not have Windows and IE will not be able to interact properly with web sites. Al Jazeera web site for example shows only the middle pane in FireFox, and the side menus are only visible under IE.

Arabs are around 300 million, is supposed to be the 5th most widely spoken language in the world. For a company to gain a monopoly on an entire culture is simply wrong and unacceptable, but it did happen.

the bright side is that Linux is making some inroads. But there are obstacles (e.g. Arabic web sites which are IE centric, as above).

Yes, boycott of American products may have played a role since 2000 (with the Palestinian uprising, then the post-Sept 11 events). But more pragmatic factors were there far before any of this came into play, and Microsoft was (and still is) not liked by many (just like the rest of us Open Source advocates in the West do not like thm either).

Re:Motives for switching

On the subject of national origin:

There is a widespread perception in the west that the Arab world is backwards in terms of technological knowhow, and in education in general. How do you, as a geek in Egypt, perceive this? Do you feel that the free software movement can help nations like Egypt achieve the sort of tech industry that nations like Israel have by increasing exposure to computers for the average person?

the competition

I am wondering what the competition is for an operating system in the arab world. Is windows as big as it is here? Or do people use other operating systems (BSD, OSX, Solaris, Linux) most of the time?

Also, what is the most widely used distro in that part of the world?

Politics, religion and software

Have the recent military actions taken by Western countries in the Islamic world affected attitudes towards software, bearing in mind the US-centric nature (Microsoft, Intel, Adobe) of commercial, closed-source software?

Popular Culture

How ingrained is technology/computing (including OSS) into popular culture in Egypt? In North America it is everpresent and accepted as part of the culture, as it were, but I seldom see the same side of other societies. Are geek topics common 'water-cooler' discussions?

Obstacles?

What were some of the major obstacles that you expierence while organizing and during installfest?

No question

Just want to congradulate them. A job very well done.

Native language support

Are there any technical restrictions in current Arabic language support in Linux? Also, how big role do language support and translations play in adoption of Linux there? I suppose there are quite many people who don't speak English at all.

International relations

When choosing to use Linux, one makes a conscious decision to join together with other people from around the world in a salute to freedom. Egyptians join with Finns, Americans, Asians, South Americans, and Europeans when they install Linux. It is both very humbling and yet uplifting to know that the software you are using is a result of international cooperation.

However, the history of the world, and especially North Africa/Middle East is full of wars and territorial animosities. Without trying to peg you as one who would necessarily hold these beliefs, but there are many in Egypt who would like nothing more than to have little to do with America and its allies. Do you think Linux has a calming effect on such feelings? Does it provide a means of exposing those who would not normally have exposure to such things a side of America and its allies that is not simply warmongering and anti-Egyptian?

I'm not asking if Linux is going to come with a worldpeace.pl script or anything. I'm just curious as to the ability of Linux to provide a favorable view of Western society to your Egyptian Linux installbase.

Re:International relations

>When choosing to use Linux, one makes a conscious decision to join together with other people from around the world in a salute to freedom

really? i thought they did it because it was cheap

Re:International relations

What a stupid question. What does Linux have to do with America?

Re:Do you like the GPL?

Take a look at a few of the American nouns that make all of this possible:

Linus Torvalds (CA)

Oh yeah, great example of American technology right there...

Hear here folks: the father of Linux is now American and, before you know it, he'll have created Linux when he was a student at Berkeley!

Positive contribution?

Do you feel events such as InstallFest have contributed positively to the growing awareness of computer technology in non-western countries?

Hardware

In terms of compatibility, were there any common stumbling points of getting hardware to play nice?

In other words, how much hardware commonly available on the Egyptian market is unsupported by Linux?

Distro?

What is the most popular distro in Egypt?
-m

More particularly,

I'm interested in: what's the best distro with regards to Arabic support? I've been studying Arabic for a year or two now and I enjoy tinkering around with Arabic on Linux, but sometime's it's so hard to get things to work! (I recently tagged some of my Arabic-language mp3s with Arabic Unicode in the id3 tags, and so far the only player I've found that will display the Arabic tags is the Beep Media Player [sourceforge.net] (gtk2 fork of xmms).

Dlugar

Do you have public libraries...?

and if you do; has anyone tried to make any efforts towards getting GNU/Linux, or even some Open Source Software applications (such as abiword) to be used?

Is Perl the favourite language

of middle eastern *nix users.

The camel book [linux-mag.com]

Net access shop

I've been recently to Egipt and couldn't help noticing the large number of shops that offer net access for a small (European standards) fee. Do these shops usually run Linux or Windows?

I also know the government has it's troubles raising money to put computers in your administrative structure. Is the government setting up Windows (paying the required licences) or Linux?

I would like to congratulate you on your initiative, as it may contribute to reduce the electronic divide.

Re:Net access shop

You must mean the internet cafes.

Yes, they are everywhere, because many people do not have computers at home.

They are almost exclusively Windows (did anyone here about a net cafe using Linux in Egypt?)

The reason is that is what people are used to, and that is what supports Arabic the most.

If they install Linux, then Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger and ICQ will not be able to do voice and video for example.

I would like to hear the answer on what the government is doing too.

How easy was it to implement language support?

I know that Arabic has quite a number of individual characters (>255 ;-), and goes right to left. How easy was it to adapt Linux to use Arabic?

Mirror Here

http://www.pug.bz:9876/~gupta_p/installfest/

Women.

I didn't look through all the installfest photos, but I didn't see a lot of women there. Okay, so hanging out with a lot of geeks configuring network services isn't most chicks idea of a hot date. But, nevertheless, how many females are involved with the open source crowd, and in the IT industry in general, in Egypt?

Re:Women.

How many women do you see at stateside installfests by comparison?

I'd think you'd find Jimmy Hoffa in a chicken costume before you'd find two women to rub together at such a geekfest.

Re:Women.

how many females are involved with the open source crowd, and in the IT industry in general, in Egypt?

I can answer that paritally at least.

There are as many women as men (if not more) in Egypt in the IT industry.

I know, because when I worked in Egypt back in the 80s, the IT department I was in had more females than males, from data entry to programming to management. About the only place that did not have females was the mainframe operations (requiring late shifts and such).

This was a governmental organization, and they had more perks for women than men (nice vacation on giving birth, right to go back to same or similar position, leave early to nurse the baby, take unpaid leave to care for kids, ...etc.)

Even in the private software development sector, their seem to be more women than men (I know because my wife worked at such a place, and that is again back in the 80s).

In university, you see about a 50/50 gender split in computer science, if not more women.

Yeah, this info is a bit dated, but at least provides some historical data. Don't think it has changed much since.

Friendliness

How friendly are you to those installing linux? How friendly are the installees towards each other and the outside world?

I ask, because most americans think its best to call people 'newbies' and shout 'RTFM' if they ever have a question.

Pre-install questions or misconceptions

What were the most common misunderstandings among new or potential Linux users? Did you provide a place for newbie questions and answers?

LTSP question...

I am from the UK and find that pushing the idea of thin client computing using LTSP difficult to get across. I suspect one reason may be the fact that cost over here may not be a big issue and people still don't mind spending ridiculous money on computers. What is the LTSP climate like in Egypt and are there lots of Internet Cafe's/Community centres that use/or would show interest in using LTSP to set up inexpensive internet access like in Brazil or other countries?

Please, no more Arabic questions

We already have about 10 of them.

my question

where can i get a tshirt with that kickass pyramid logo? [manalaa.net] :)

American nerds want to know...

What do Egyptian nerds wear? Black horn-rimmed kaffiyehs? And do you wear Star Trek robes, or wear the shirts underneath regular robes and stick a little Star Fleet pin on your lapel? Do robes *have* lapels? How do you say "bite my shiny metal ass" in Egyptian? What's the ancient heiroglyph for "FR15T P05T!?" How awesome would it be if you took that cord that holds your kaffiyeh on your head and modded it with EL wire? Do Egyptian nerds survive off of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, or is it more like big mouthfuls of qat and Pyramid Dew? When you're playing Tomb Raider what do you say - "Nice rack!" or "Dude! You can totally see my house in this level!" What kind of beer do Egyptian nerds drink? Do chicks dig Egyptian nerds, or are you all in the same boat as us? Do you guys freak out over Japanese chicks and pocky? How do you keep all the fucking sand out of your case mods? Do you have "Type-R" camels? Do you have low-rider camels with neon on their nuts? Do you guys know the Icy Hot Stuntaz? Do hot Egyptian girls come to LAN parties? Are you as excited about Half-Life 2 as we are?

(And I'm only slightly kidding about these. We'll learn more about each other by talking like nerds than we will by pretending to be politians...)

Re:American nerds want to know...

I know you are joking, but here are some answers anyway.

What do Egyptian nerds wear? Black horn-rimmed kaffiyehs?

Most Egyptians wear western style clothes. Hollywood's stereotype of pyramids, desert, turbans, and camels not withstanding.

What's the ancient heiroglyph for "FR15T P05T!?"

By taking the English geekspeak letters FR15T P05T!? and translating them into the hieroglyph equivalent. We got a French guy called Champollion to help us there.

Seriously, Egypt now speaks Arabic. Hieroglyphs have been out of general use for about 22 centuries or so.

Do Egyptian nerds survive off of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, or is it more like big mouthfuls of qat and Pyramid Dew?

Qat is not consumed in Egypt. It is almost exclusively a Yemeni thing. Confused Geography again?

Is Pyramid Dew a new thing there that I missed?

What kind of beer do Egyptian nerds drink?

Most would not drink beer, because most do not consume alcohol. However, there is Fayrouz and all its flavors (non alcoholic beer like beverage, with many flavors).

How do you keep all the fucking sand out of your case mods?

By not living in the desert to begin with. That is why we have cities!

Do you have "Type-R" camels? Do you have low-rider camels with neon on their nuts?

Repeat after me: Camels are there only for retired American tourists who visit the Pyramids. Oh, and they are made into shish kebab as well!Not very common, but those who tried it say it is good.

Linux installations on laptops, notebooks and PDAs

How many installations were done on laptops, notebooks and PDAs? Are there Linux installation reports available for laptops, notebooks and PDAs in Arabic? Actually I would like to link to them from the TuxMobil - Linux on Mobile Computers [tuxmobil.org] database.

What kind of computers?

As often as I see people go through upgrade cycles, and especially in the wake of the news saying that Microsoft was suggesting using machine with 2 gigabytes of RAM, 1 terabyte of disk space, 6 ghz in speed, 3x faster video cards, etc., I have to wonder how Egypt is coping? What kind of computers were you installing linux on? And believe me, I've installed linux on things that should never of had linux on them! =)

What is the killer app in Egypt?

Or more to the point, what is the first thing users want to do after the system is installed and running?

Do you watch Stargate SG-1?

Eager minds want to know...

Computers in Egypt?

Can you give us some idea of the state of computing in your country? For example, are computers common in general home use, are middle-class types able to afford them, and so forth. I'm also curious about how the heat and sand are handled - are they problems?

Linux is free. What about the hardware?

How much of an egyptian income takes buying a computer? What is the computer/population ratio? How is the average hardware? PIII? PIV?

Any chance of a local distro?

Conectiva [conectiva.com.br] is the biggest linux player in Brazil and it also has some recognition around the world - you probably remember Marcelo Tosatti worked there, right?

Well, being a Brazilian company and having a heavily localized distro has helped them get a strong hold in the market here, but it works twofold, as it also helped spread linux among people and business that would not try a non-localized distro.

Any company in Egypt pursuing this marked opportunity currently? Or you think it would not work there (and if so, why?)

Thanks!

Distros

Being from an underdeveloped country myself, I find that due to the paucity of information, the first distro to get a foot in the door (Redhat) quickly acquires a monopoly. Have you observed the same thing?

Complexity of RTL and Hebrew / Arabic Development.

A lot of work with Arabic in OSS relates to the complex RTL (Right to Left) layout of the language. Most development in this area was by Arab and Israely developers. Do you find yourself working together with Israely developers to reach the common goal of proper RTL support in Linux and OSS in general? Are there political problems working with Israeli developers?

Thanks

Distros

I'd be interested to find out the numbers of installs they did per flavor of *nix. Did one distro dominate?

Newbie users, expectations and frustration...

Although I like the idea of installfests, I usually get a shiver down my spine when I hear about them.

Pictures of naive users who brings their Windows PCs in to have everything on their harddrives wiped out and replaced with a system that will solve all their problems leaps to my mind.

Without some basic training on how to use a Linux system, pointers to good documentation and reasonable expectations, they will likely just get a frustrating experience and get disgruntled, telling everybody else what a terrible system Linux is and have somebody reinstall Windows.

What measures did you take to avoid this situation on your installfests and do you have any plans on how to follow up on the installfest with some more events that can help these newbie users on their way? Also, do you have any recommendations for other LUGs arranging installfests?

Installfest, but on to what?

IIRC, the goal of the installfest is to load Linux on to as many computers as possible, right?

So...what was Linux installed on to, for the most part?

Let's hear about the hardware. What was an average machine at the installfest? Anything really stand out? Also, what was on the HD that you installed to? Blank HD, or other OS? What was most common?

Weaselmancer

Heat issues

Any problems encountered with so many boxes & people in one hall in a climate I guess will be kind of toasty?

I had enough problems last summer with 2 pc's in a room!

Install and Donate....

They spend about 45 minutes per install of the operating system, then spend another 25 minutes preparing and lining the inner side of the re-inforced casing with tnt and wiring it to the bios timer for a synchronous timed detonation. They then donate the machines to elementary schools around Israel and schedule a Bar-B-Que for zero hour and throw candy to children when they hear the body count.

I've always wondered...

Is killing a cat process punishable by death?

Question

Being from a third world country (aka Argentina) I'm interested in the cost of the technology in the world.
Trying to compare it to my own country.

Can you tell us what is the access cost to the technology??
I mean:
How much do you pay for a computer?
How much do you pay for home internet access? (And what kinds of access can you get)
What is the cost of an hour in an Internet Coffe Bar?
What is the average salary of a normal guy in a normal job? (doesn't have to be IT related)

Thanks! And keep up with the great job you are doing for the community!

Which distributions support Arabic the most?

Is anyone in Egypt using Linux mainly for Arbaic stuff? Which distro do they use.

I mean, programmers and techies will be fiddling with English apps most of the time, and only use arabic for the odd letter, or web site. What I mean is someone who does most of his work in Arabic (document editing, browsing, spreadsheets, ...etc.)

I have tried Red Hat some time back (I think 7.2?) and Konquerer would work well displaying Arabic web pages correctly, but no other apps would work well.

My current Mandrake 9.1 is a pain to setup Arabic to work (in KDE control panel), and even then, it does not work in all apps.

Knoppix from Sept 2003 is far far better. You can switch to arabic by clicking the little flag icon on the bottom right of the screen, and many apps (cant remember which, probably Open Office?) can accept Arabic letters.

Any one used Mandrake 10 CE or Final with Arabic? How is it?

Can the non-CD distros emulate Knoppix in this regard?

MOD THIS DOWN!

This isn't a question for the Egyptian install fest people. I don't know what they were trying to do, but I'm proud of them for doing it. KUDOS!

My question is for Slashdot:

WHO FUCKING CARES?

If you could get back to me on that one, it would be appreciated.

Ooooh! I've got an idea for the next Slashdot interview. There's this guy I know who got 1000 people to turn on their computers. I mean holy shit. What a sight!

Or you could interview my mom, who, for the first time ever, checked her email WITHOUT SUPERVISION! How did she do this? SLASHDOT READERS WANT TO KNOW!

SW

The distro question ...

No, not what distro to use but how should you choose a distro? Is it on the UI, install time, ease of maintaince, etc? Do you try to give the user a complete backup disk or a single CD and setup a net install program like apt-get or emerge?

Internationally speaking, what about distros that contain software that's illegal to have like encryption in China or deCSS in the US? Do you suggest rolling your own distro from say debian or gentoo?

Fundamental Islamic groups vs. open communication

Do you see the expansion of groups like this more as a positive influence in the region, or a threat to Islamic fundamentalism?

I am assuming that people in closed societies would find the idea of open and frank communication with other cultures (implied by the use of an internet ready device) danagerous for their agenda. Is this the case, or are my assumptions faulty?

What are the internal politics like?

I saw the original posting on the Cairo installfest, and as a longtime user of BSD-style UNIX (1978 or so), I was delighted. I had the pleasure of seeing Cairo a couple of years ago, and met a Linux devotee who was the son of an Egyptian family with whom I had dinner.

So, I followed the links to the website, and read a large number of the postings in the forum there. I don't suppose I should have been surprised at the infighting that seemed to be going on there - the noisy minorities usually dominate the forums, worldwide - but I was. What is the political climate inside the Egyptian open source world? Is it very highly factionalized?

Freedom of Speech, Web Access?

As Americans, we hear a lot about Iran and China's internet firewalls and censorship. What is the situation in Egypt with respect to:

• Internet censorship?
• legality of certain types of software (deCSS, encryption tools, anything else you can think of)?
• passage of email in/out of country to/from other nations - i.e., is email filtered or read? Is it illegal, or "suspicious" to send mail to certain countries, or recieve it from those places?

I'm sure you can think of other stuff that we might want to know about w.r.t. Egyptian law.

Re:N/S

Parent has a very good question actually, even if they don't directly ask it. Hoes does the religion make-up of the install-fest compare to the religion make-up of Egypt? Are there fewer or more of any specific religion that attend? Was religion even present? What about nationalities? Did you find that natives or non-natives to Egypt were more likely to attend in comparison to the # of natives/vs non-natives in the general population?

huh?

troll?? All I wanted to know is if they had heard a generic over-all reason for all the (new and unexpected)interest, and what perhaps it might have been. It's an "ask these guys" question, that was my question. From what I remember when I read that before, they were expecting a few hundred, got like 6 thousand or something, so obviously there was some big reason for that happening. I threw out just a few obvious things, but it don't have to be one of them, but that is sort of what I was looking for, like "we wanted to install linux because of xxx"whatever it was. Could be anything, I sure wasn't there to hear it. Anywho.... someone read me wa-y-y-y wrong I guess...