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The First-Ever Installfest in Egypt

Posted by timothy on from the pent-up-demand dept.

MadFarmAnimalz writes "On the first of May, the Egyptian LUG had the first ever Linux Installfest (check out the photos and for Pete's sake mirror them!) at the Sawy Cultural Center in downtown Cairo. Turnout was absolutely incredible; the hall was maxed out at something between 500 and 1,000 persons for 7 solid hours (not bad considering our geurrilla marketing campaign can't have cost more than 7 or 8 dollars), and we were absolutely swamped!" Read on below for more details.

"The atmosphere was just unbelievable; people who had had linux installed realised the LUGgers were overwhelmed and stayed on helping other people with installs, we couldn't burn CDs fast enough, several thousand educational pamphlets were not enough by a wide margin. We were expecting maybe 150 or 200 people throughout the day, but we had already reached that number by 9:45 a.m. (15 minutes before opening!). To the best of our knowledge, the most successful LUG-driven event in the middle-east, certainly the biggest, and one hell of a day that we'll all remember. Note that we are now looking at the possibility of another Installfest during summer at the Bibliotecha Alexandrina and would welcome any extra resources. (A big thanks to MadFarmAnimalz' family who served the volunteers sandwiches carefully wrapped in copies of the GPL preamble and the deCSS code)"

6 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Since they asked for it by detritus` · · Score: 5, Informative

    Theres a mirror of the site here

    --
    drunk chemists
    1. Re:Since they asked for it by Scarblac · · Score: 5, Informative

      You beat me to it... another mirror. Should be plenty, this story isn't even on the front page, is it?

      --
      I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
  2. Network Install by karmatic · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've held a couple of small-scale linux "Installfests" in the past, and the availability of CDs (and CD-Rom drives, in some cases) can certainly be an issue.

    I found that many computers support Network Booting, which RedHat supports easily. While not every machine supports it, doing net installs on the machines that do frees up CD-ROM drives and CDs for the ones that don't.

  3. mirror to help out by spre3368 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://phreakco.us/egypt/

    --
    my sig sucks, you dont want to see it....
  4. Slashdot People can help - PLEASE MOD UP by MadFarmAnimalz · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Sawy Cultural Center is new and the management there was really supportive. We at the LUG feel we can do a lot of work with their support, and one way to get them enthusiastic about linux and open source is for them to feel the power of the open source community. We showed them that day how many people we could pull in, and I'm getting their admin to look at their server stats today ( ; hit it hard people).

    If you want to help us, e-mail Khaled Mohsen who was our liason there and just tell him that you as a linux user and/or open source proponent would like to thank him for helping out the Egyptian Linux Users' Group, and make sure to extend the thanks to Mr. Mohamed Al Sawy too through Khaled.

    Show me the power of slashdot :)

    --
    Blearf. Blearf, I say.
    1. Re:Slashdot People can help - PLEASE MOD UP by MadFarmAnimalz · · Score: 5, Informative

      My profuse apologies for the bungled links (still groggy). Here they are:

      Khaled Mohsen

      and

      Sawy Cultural Center

      --
      Blearf. Blearf, I say.