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.

Comments

Beowulf Look Out

[nevek]

Pyramid Cluster!!!!

Re:Beowulf Look Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming soon: Utah McBride in Raiders of the Lost IP.

Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[razmaspaz]

Linux or pirated copies of Windows?

Re:Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently Microsoft has been sending out its dogs to close down businesses and educational facilities that are running unlicensed versions of Windows, in the internet cafes especially. When I was there in 2002 the telecom was state owned and charged per minute for phone lines. Not only that, but phone lines would often drop connections throughout most locations in Cairo. Many computer users prefer to net surf from these cafes due to faster access and more reliable connections. I can imagine many of them chose Linux at home for the consistency; and the fear that M$ might start checking homes might have an influence.

Question: My dad, who still lives in Cairo, was approached by a couple "OSS advocates" who were trying to pan off someone elses work and make a profit. Is this widespread or just an isolated occurence?

Re:Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[AndroidCat]

You might want to expand on what you mean by "pan off someone elses work". Did they claim that it was their software? Or did they offer something like services to install and support Linux, Apache or some other package?

The first is, of course, wrong. The second is the new economic model of how people are supposed to earn a living in the OSS world.

Re:Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[BiggyP]

Isn't that just micro$oft shooting themselves in the foot? they thrive on OEMs and piracy, even if no individuals conciously purchase their software it still manages to dominate the market.

Re:Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[Anonymous Coward]

They claimed the work to be theirs and asked to be paid for it as is. No support either.

Re:Which one is now more common in Egypt...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one is now more common in Egypt... Linux or pirated copies of Windows?

Dont forget Office XP. Im sure that was highly 'fested' in the Installfest, as well.

English or Arabic

[tindur]

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

Re:English or Arabic

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:English or Arabic

[Mateito]

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

Only if you reverse the order of the key-caps.

Re:English or Arabic

[Anonymous Coward]

Counter-Question: Do slashdot readers usually install in English or Arabic? Come on it's an arabic speaking country what are you looking for here? English is not the superior language, why would they choose to install in it vs their own native language?

Re:English or Arabic

[mirko]

I guess the above is a good joke which a moronator thought was intentionally informative ;-)

Anyway I wanted to ask the same as the grandparent, especially concerning the internationalization of X...
I should check the KDE language options to see if Arabic is there, of course, but I want to know if it's ready enough to be used by an actual Arabic writer.

Re:English or Arabic

[mirko]

In 1993, the first time I installed Linux, I had no other choice than English... and I was in France.
Same with NetBSD...
So the keyword is "Readiness" (if such a word may exist without triggerism Slashdot's monolingual dictionazis). ;)

Re:English or Arabic

[jamonterrell]

Readiness is fine. But I'm going to have to say something about "Triggerism" Dubya are you posting on /. again?

Re:English or Arabic

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Ah, thanks for that. I always get that confused with the Chinese install, where the screen scrolls sideways.

Re:English or Arabic

[tiger99]

No, it is a hardware problem, you reverse the leads to the spindle motor. Software can't fix everything.....

Heeeee-Heeeee

Seriously though, I think you will find internationalisation in Linux is far more advanced than in Windoze, and I would point out that a fair proportion of the Egyptian population are Jewish, the Arabs are a different race to the native Egyptians, and there are others, each with their own dialects and preferences, and a lot also speak English, certainly for business use, which may have implications on the language support needed. Was there not a recent problem with M$ support of Hebrew, which caused them to be banned from somewhere?

In any case, Egypt is a country of sufficient resources, together with their neighbours, to be able to find enough people to tackle the internationalisation of bits that might not have been done already.

The point about Open Source is that even for the smallest linguistic populations, it is viable to do the necessary work. There are not too many Icelandic speakers, and I am told that has been done. Closed source tends to be racist, or at best discriminatory, not by intent, but by result, because it can't viably accomodate everyone.

Has anyone done a Klingon implementation yet?

Re:English or Arabic

[bringert]

I'm Swedish. I live in Sweden. I prefer to use all software in English, because:

• It's much harder to google for information about program usage or error messages if they are in Swedish.
• It's difficult to tell others how to use the software, or understand what they are doing if their UI or error messages are in a language that you don't understand.
• The translations are not always great. A lot of times they are contrived translations of english metaphors. This has nothing to do with it being OSS or not.
• I can still create documents in whatever language I want, which is not necessarily Swedish or English.

Re:English or Arabic

[tiger99]

Well, maybe you could have volunteered to do a bit of the translation?

There is one problem, if installing from CD/DVD for example, how do you tell it what language to use before the first text, usually in English, is on the screen? If you are doing a dual boot with Windoze for example, the installer could be made to be sufficiently intelligent to pick up the language settings from the existing Windoze (why the X server, amongst other things, doesn't try to get it's settings that way remains a mystery to me, the Windoze registry and .ini files contain lots of useful things, the video settings are typical of what might be useful, same for networking things, printer etc). But, to get a standalone boot with correct language selection, would really need something in the BIOS.

Most distros of course have a very long pick list by country, but the initial instructions to do something remain in English, usually of the Americanised sort with words like colour spelled wrongly.

How about a world map? Is there any universal symbol that would invite people to click on their country on the map, without any knowledge of any foreign (to them) language?

Re:English or Arabic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Swedish. I live in Sweden.

+5; Shocking

Re:English or Arabic

[Anonymous Coward]

Native language translations tend to suck, especially in open source software. Any Finn who has set his locales to FI in Linux can probably agree with me on this.

Re:English or Arabic

[Bryan Ischo]

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.

Re:English or Arabic

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, maybe you could have volunteered to do a bit of the translation?
.
.
.

why the X server, amongst other things, doesn't try to get it's settings that way remains a mystery to me

Well, maybe you could have volunteered to write that utility?

Re:English or Arabic

[ajs318]

Well, with Debian, you get a series of messages on the first screen such as "choose this to install in English", "selectionnez ici pour installation en Francais", "hier waehlen fuer in Deutsch installerien", "seleccionar aqui por instalar en espan~ol" &c, with "up" and "down" arrows to scroll the list that mean about the same in every language; and I seem to remember Mandrake displaying something similar, but I wasn't taking my time over that one, just getting it installed on a bunch of machines bam bam bam bam bam.

So the solution is: display the same phrase in several different languages, inviting the user to select whichever one makes sense to them. Easy!

Re:English or Arabic

[Anonymous Coward]

a fair proportion of the Egyptian population are Jewish

um, there are about 400 jewish citizens of egypt.

at the peak there were about 60,000, a whopping 0.3% of the total population

Re:English or Arabic

[tiger99]

A very fair comment! I wish I had the programming expertise to do just that, and a few other things too, or lots of money so I could employ a programmer to do these things!

I can just about program in C on Linux, or small embedded systems, or anywhere else that supports a reasonably simple set of system calls or direct hardware access, but comprehending the gigantic mess known as Windoze is well beyond me. One of the difficulties is the lack of documentation......

But, maybe, if I get seriously back into programming again, I will have another look, but don't expect to see anything very soon, if ever. There a few other things I would like to fix also....

I did have a quick look at some Windoze monitor "drivers", which are really only settings, there is no code involved (obviously!) for a monitor, but so far I could not see anything which would help me to compute a modeline, for example. Now I can just about visualise how a foreign OS could search out things like .inf and .ini files in the Windoze partition, in fact that would be quite easy, a shell script could do it, albeit not very efficiently, but good for initial experiments, and perl, in which I am not proficient, might be useful in parsing these files and extracting interesting bits. Maybe the Wine project has code for reading the registry..... But it seems to me to be a fairly major task to put it all together. Still, I am feeling more motivated, I will give it another look asap.

Re:English or Arabic

[tiger99]

Yes, and I seem to remember SuSE and possibly Xandros doing much the same, but the range of languages was fairly limited, which could be quite hard on some people. I would guess that Debian have been more conscientious than anyone else about this, although most distros probably try quite hard. But then you come up against the fact that the printed manuals, which you do need sometimes (well, I do, some clever people may manage very well without...) are only available in a limited range of languages.

I guess that the answer is that as much of the localisation work as possible should be done locally, including the printing. In any case, locals always know their own language best, think of how many manuals for Japanese equipment that you see translated very badly into English, for example! I don't think that Egyptians would think much of Windoze manuals (such as they are!) written in best Redmond Arabic either, especially as Sir Bill and some of his senior people seem to have trouble with English. But I digress...

Thinking about this, much of the localisation work could be done by older schoolchildren as a project, after all, a fair number will be learning English and at least some computing skills, and they need worthwhile things to do.

Re:English or Arabic

[jamonterrell]

Or you can download the docs in pretty much any language and print them yourself if you really need them. I don't know how common it is, you sort of imply that you bought or received a package that contained these manuals with the installation source... I've always downloaded my distributions, are a lot of people buying prepackaged linux distros now?

Re:English or Arabic

[tiger99]

I always try to buy a distro, it is far better to have some support and it avoids hundreds of hours of download time. Also, some of the money helps fund development, and you may get a few extra bits which are not free.

I think that very many people do this, and always have, otherwise SuSE, Xandros, etc would not exist. Those who do not buy a boxed set quite possibly borrow one from a friend instead.

But, if and when I get broadband, I will be downloading a lot more, although I still intend to buy SuSE 9.1 when it becomes available, and I have a subscription for FreeBSD CDs.

Convenience is the thing, I don't have lots of surplus cash, but I do think it is worth paying to avoid a lot of hassle. But those who want, or need, to download should still do so.

You could look at it another way perhaps, and consider that when you can walk into any computer shop and buy a Linux distro off the shelf, alongside Windoze, it has really become a credible OS. we are not quite there yet, not every shop stocks it, but my copy of SuSE 9.0 came from Foyles, a large bookshop in London, who don't really sell much software, yet they had 2 or 3 Linux distros, but no Windoze.

As to the manuals, yes, in a good variety of languages, but the thought of printing all that and then binding it like a book (A5 size?) is quite off-putting, and I do have 2 good printers, a Kyocera laser for B&W, and a Minolta laser for colour. But working with a huge A4 size folder is not very nice. It would be better for those in third-world countries, and developing countries like Egypt, where this discussion began, to get a local printer to run off a few hundred or thousand copies, they are often geared up to do that with quantities of textbooks and so on that a western printer would not consider.

Maybe the answer is to simply produce the CD/DVD centrally (for efficiency, a nice bulk run) and package up the distro locally with a boot floppy which will set the local language, or at least ask the question in the local language, and a locally printed manual.

Motives for switching

[XCorvis]

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?

Re:Motives for switching

[Rei]

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?

Re:Motives for switching

[4of12]

There is a widespread perception in the west that the Arab world is backwards in terms of technological knowhow

About 1000 years ago the Arabs and Persians were leading the way intellectually (inventing the concept of zero, etc.) while European Christian nations were mired firmly in the Dark Ages under a supposed theocracy.

Re:Motives for switching

[Anonymous Coward]

About 1000 years ago the Arabs and Persians were leading the way intellectually (inventing the concept of zero, etc.) while European Christian nations were mired firmly in the Dark Ages under a supposed theocracy.

Yeah, that's nice, what have they done since then besides laze around basking in their oil money and repressing the populace?

Re:Motives for switching

[ShErbO]

I didn't attend the installfest, but I'm an old (Egyptian) Linux user and can tell you my opinion.

Most people here just "heard" about linux, either on the net or by reading the installfest advert. Here are the most popular reasons to use/try linux IMHO.

* Linux's reputation as a stable O/S.
* Great security (recent virus attacks on WinXP).
* Just for the sake of trying a new O/S.
* Administering a UNIX/Linux machine which would give them an edge in employment.

I think #1 is the most common reason here. Most people use cheap hardware with stinky setups, add to that the natural crashing of windows, and u got urself an unusable PC.

As for the political part, people don't think that way because Microsoft is all they know. for them, windows is not just an o/s, it's THE o/s.

Price is not an object too, you can get a pirated copy for home use without anyone knowing about it.
However, there are some new cyber cafe's willing to install linux in order to save the HUGE costs of windows licenses. They're just starting, yet.

These are only my opinions, which I think are very good due to my experience with linux in egypt.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you walk like an Egyption?

the competition

[TeamLive]

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?

Re:the competition

[jamonterrell]

Windows is slightly larger in Egypt than America. This is mostly due to the translation files that need to be included on the disk :-).

Re:the competition

[ndogg]

If that's true, then the arabic computing world is a lot more computer literate than the US/American computing world.

Re:the competition

[tasinet]

I am quite sure that the guy didn't mean disk size, but % use in population.. How widespread Windows is compared to the alternatives.

Re:the competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame I don't have mod point, as I have a new policy of using them to go after people who explain jokes, whether the original joke was funny or not.

We all understand that he is using a different meaning of "big". That's supposed to be the source of the humor. I don't think it's that funny, but regardless, we didn't need an explanation.

Hints for the future:
1) When someone makes a play on words, it's usually a joke.
2) When someone ends a post with ":-)" it's usually a joke.

Re:the competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame I don't have a mod point, as I have a new policy of using them to go after people who rag on people for explaining jokes, whether the original joke was funny or not.

We all understand that he is using a different meaning of misusing moderation points. That's supposed to be the source of idiocity. I don't think it's that great that he explained the joke, but we didn't need someone to rag on him for it.

Hints for the future:
1) When someone posts something stupid, ignore it. 2) When you think about posting something stupid, don't.

And of course, to be true to form: The joke here is that I used your same ideas to make fun of your own post. err and uhm, ":-)" (yes it's supposed to be funny.)

Re:the competition

[kbahey]

Use of Windows as a percentage is higher than you would expect.

For the reasons why this is so, check my earlier post here.

Re:the competition

[thetaikung]

Funny, that.

Re:the competition

[ShErbO]

Unfortunately, I can say it's a windows market. I think it's actually BIGGER than what you see in your place. Reason is the low know-how of technical stuff and carelessnes about PC details. However -thanks to the linux-egypt community- Linux is getting more buzz & people are starting to migrate. It's definitely Mandrake or Fedora/RH. I can't say which one is more popular (no statistics I can depend on) but I think they're quite close. Other distros do exist (Gentoo, slackware, SuSe) but -as in most parts of the world- they have a smaller share than the 2 giants.

Re:the competition

[Cromac]

If that's true, then the arabic computing world is a lot more computer literate than the US/American computing world.

Since the article said only 10% of households even have a computer I doubt that's the case. Estimates say 50% of US households have a computer. Owning a computer certainly doesn't automatically conferr literacy, but with 5x as many (percentage wise) owning computers it would be safe to assume that the average American is more computer literate than the average Arab.

Re:the competition

[StrongAxe]

Since the article said only 10% of households even have a computer I doubt that's the case. Estimates say 50% of US households have a computer. Owning a computer certainly doesn't automatically conferr literacy, but with 5x as many (percentage wise) owning computers it would be safe to assume that the average American is more computer literate than the average Arab.

Not necessarily. In countries where technology is expensive, hard to get, or hard to support, it is likely that those who have it know how to use it. In contrast, technology in America is so cheap and available that many people own computers and yet don't know how to make their VCRs stop flashing 12:00.

Re:the competition

[nes11]

I completely disagree with your logic.

think about 20 years ago when fewer americans had computers. on average, those that did were much more computer literate than the average today. mostly because they've become so cheap that anyone can have one.

If the percentage is still that low in egypt, chances are the few that do have them are the geeks that really know how to use them.

Re:the competition

[ndogg]

Umm, I was being specific to only those who have computers. Generally, yes, you would be correct, but I wasn't being general.

Politics, religion and software

[CdBee]

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?

Re:Politics, religion and software

[Anonymous Coward]

bearing in mind the US-centric nature of software

fix0red

Re:Politics, religion and software

[iCat]

Is it possible that OSS will help bridges between East & West - could the sharing/helping ethos behind OSS set a good example despite the mistrust (from some) on each 'side'?

Re:Politics, religion and software

[mr100percent]

I have my doubts, American cars are still popular over there, I think.

Re:Politics, religion and software

[Anonymous Coward]

Attitudes?!? Shit! Wait until they get a load of the OS discussions on Slashdot.

Re:Politics, religion and software

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you also mr100percent on k5?

Re:Politics, religion and software

[uujjj]

the bulk of linux developers are american based too

immigrants? yes, but so are a lot of microsofties

Re:Politics, religion and software

[superyooser]

To push a little further...

In the Arab world, is there a sense of obligation to patronize American software companies since the U.S. military has sacrificed hundreds of troops' lives and the government has spent billions of dollars in liberating tens of millions of Muslims enabling two Islamic nations (Afghanistan and Iraq) to progress toward peaceful and productive societies and eventually sprouting software industries of their own?

A little off-topic, but, as Muslims who are no doubt grateful for the potential of a modernized, high-tech Arab world (the elite class in capital cities doesn't qualify IMHO) because of the downfall of backwards-thinking, totalitarian, Medieval-type regimes thanks to the actions of the U.S.-led military coalition, how much money will Linux-Egypt be donating to George W. Bush's presidential campaign?

Re:Politics, religion and software

[killjoe]

I don't think the Arabs see the US actions in the same light that you do. It's one thing to watch fox news and another to watch al jazeera.

Right now the prevailing perception in the arab world is that we are occupiers. In other words the US is to Iraq what israel is to palestine.

Re:Politics, religion and software

[superyooser]

I understand that very well, killjoe. My post was tongue-in-cheek. Notice how I started by saying, "To push a little further," yet my questions went in a completely different direction from the predictable anti-American response that the parent comment was begging for.

Informed logic should lead Arabs to have profound gratitude for the Western military actions in the Middle East. Instead, they're foaming at the mouth more than ever. The causes of their insanity run deep (linked JE and article may not apply to Egypt specifically, but they're still brainwashed).

In other words the US is to Iraq what israel is to palestine.

Iraq doesn't exist?? ;-)

Re:Politics, religion and software

[killjoe]

"Iraq doesn't exist?? ;-)"

In a real sense yes. They are an occupied population under the command and control of the US forces. There is a marginal puppet regime installed by the US which pretends to be some sort of an iraqi authority. This so called governing council has no real power because Paul Brenner (de-facto king of Iraq) has final say on all their decisions.

On top of that the US kills iraqis daily. Sometimes a dozen at a time and other times by the hundreds. To us every person we kill is an "insurgent" to them we are killing random people by dropping bombs on their cities.

As for insanity All I have to say is that desparate people do desparate things. Not everybody has the luxury of killing people they hate with missiles and airplanes. We are very fortunate that we can kill tens of thousands of people from the air without suffering much casualty ourselves. It's a byproduct of spending more on the military then the rest of the world combined. Killing is fun and entertaining for us. We sing songs about it, we make movies about it, we have tv shows about it.

Re:Politics, religion and software

[Anonymous Coward]

They killed thousands of people from the air and only suffered 9 casualties. I wonder how that ratio compares.

And this week they killed a man in Baghdad just to watch him die. And they made a movie of it.

-Jacob

Popular Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[I_am_Rambi]

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

Re:Obstacles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally had more problems with the tire run than expected. The crawl-under-the-barbed wire excercise was also difficult.

Re:Obstacles?

[kevlar]

Finding people who have enough money to afford food, their bi-weekly payments to the PLO and a cablemodem connection.

No question

[ResQuad]

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

Native language support

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[ObviousGuy]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

>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

[p3d0]

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

Re:International relations

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, er, uh... -1, Unpatriotic!

Re:International relations

[pubjames]

Your question is full of assumptions that are incorrect.

1) I don't think many people do make a "concious decision" to blah blah blah.
2) Finns are Europeans.
3) South Americans are Americans.

Re:International relations

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Well, the Egyptians could refuse the 2 billion dollars in economic assistance the US government gives them every year. That would show their displeasure with the US.

To get Egypt onside after Sept. 11th, the US increased its largesse to 9 billion dollars.

Re:International relations

[ZX-3]

there are many in Egypt who would like nothing more than to have little to do with America and its allies

While there may be some in Egypt who don't want anything to do with the USA, their government sure likes us! The US gives Egypt around two billion dollars a year in economic and military aid.

Re:International relations

[Anonymous Coward]

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

No I don't. In fact, I couldn't care less about them when I'm installing Linux...

Re:International relations

[negacao]

Linux isn't multinational either.

Linux has become has hacking always was: without a creed, race, or.. Any other nonsensical bullshit.

Re:International relations

[phrogeeb]

I'm just curious as to the ability of Linux to provide a favorable view of Western society to your Egyptian Linux installbase
Hell, it doesn't even give me a favorable view of Western society, and I live here.

Re:International relations

[isorox]

No, cause its easier and faster to install and run, and doesn't suffer from virus of the week

Re:International relations

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

And there are many in the US who would like to have nothing to do with Egypt or the rest of the middle east too, Linux isn't going to make a spit of difference in the matter.

Positive contribution?

[acceber]

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

Re:Positive contribution?

[one4nine4two]

Definitely a valid question, but it's still just begging for a stock answer. I mean, you already know what the answer will be, whether it's legitimate or not, so why bother to ask the question? I really doubt that Alaa Abd El Fatah is going to say that the installfest hasn't accomplished anything.

Re:Positive contribution?

[HBI]

You hit the nail on the head. I would much rather see a question that might provoke a more indepth response like "FOSS projects from Arab countries have been conspicuous by their absence from the larger community. Do you think that Installfest or your efforts in Egypt will result ultimately in the development of software that, while geared to local needs, might have wider application and enrich the community as a whole? What kinds of things are Egyptian or Arab developers interested in?"

Hardware

[dr_dank]

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?

What do Egyptians do after a bean dinner outside?

[Anonymous Coward]

Toot and come in.

Publicity

[JaF893]

In the original Slashdot article your "geurrilla marketing" technique is mentioned - could you elaborate on this please? In particular did you really heavily on word of mouth?

Distro?

[lacrymology.com]

What is the most popular distro in Egypt?
-m

Re:Distro?

[MrRuslan]

Camel Linux OS and Pyramid Cluster Bewolf Edition (TM)

Re:Distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

In keeping with Red Hat's naming pattern of color-garment, I suggest "Green Headband Linux" and "White Sheet Linux."

Re:Distro?

[LittleBigLui]

What is the most popular distro in Egypt?

RedFez ;)

Tell us how it feels

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux and the GPL are subversive loopholes in the copyright system designed to destroy the software industry. When you use Linux, you're effectively both stealing from software developers and endangering the security of your country. So my question is, how does it feel to profit off of a cheap communist scheme while simultaneously taking food out of the mouths of many hard working professional software developers?

Sincerely,
Darl McBride
CEO, SCO Group

Do you have public libraries...?

[RLiegh]

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?

Re:Do you have public libraries...?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking the Eqyptians if they have libraries? They practically invented libraries. Perhaps you have heard of the Great Library of Alexandria?

Re:Do you have public libraries...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be an asshat. I said "public" libraries; not "extinct" libraries.

Re:Do you have public libraries...?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's this site: http://www.arabeyes.org , they provide docs for arabic support under linux, develop kde/gnome arabic i18n, and even provide a live distro called arabbix!

Is Perl the favourite language

[Anonymous Coward]

of middle eastern *nix users.

The camel book

Net access shop

[carvalhao]

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

[kbahey]

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?

[cheros]

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?

Re:How easy was it to implement language support?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there's 28 letters, plus 10 digits. And there's only one case.

Re:How easy was it to implement language support?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but most letters can appear in many different shapes according to their placement in a word.

For example, an ending letter is almost always different than one in the middle of a word. Some letters can connect to the letters after them, while others are not connected.
Some specific two or three-letter combinations have their own special representation, and some letters cause other letters to change their height and position in the line.

Also, the vowels are expressed as diacritic marks above and below the letters themselves, and several other "modifiers" can be used as well to add emphasis etc.

In short, formatting arabic text on screen is a lot more complex than formatting a latin-based language.

However, much effort was already put into this and both Windows and Linux have pretty good support for arabic. It's the applications that have some trouble coping with such extended formatting

Mirror Here

[Pavan_Gupta]

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

Women.

[Mateito]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in Egypt, as in all muslim countries, women and non-muslims are second/third class citizens.

Re:Women.

[dr_dank]

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.

[mcmonkey]

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.

Yes, it will involve considerable searching. But when you find two women at such a geekfest that will let you rub them together, it'll be worth it.

Re:Women.

[sinserve]

Here my friend

Here are FOUR more.

I guess I will have to explain what "woman" means to /.ers.

Re:Women.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, I saw a lot more women in those photos than I did at any American installfest.

Your "muslim women are oppressed" stereotype is showing pretty strong there buddy.

Egypt isn't Afghanistan....

Re:Women.

[identity0]

Let me put it to you this way - last time we had an installfest in Memphis, Tennessee, I think we had some women. However, by the time it was over we were down to only guys, so we decided to take our post-install supper at Hooters. :P We have far to go, my friends, before women are regularly into Linux - perhaps if we had a "ladies night" at LUG meetings? ;)

Re:Women.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, I saw a lot more women in those photos than I did at any American installfest.
Your "muslim women are oppressed" stereotype is showing pretty strong there buddy.

But you don't understand: their husbands promised them a good thrashing back home if they failed to smile and look happy in front of the camera, to fool people like you!

Re:Women.

[Mateito]

As opposed to those in the Baptist south of the US, or those in Catholic Italy?

Re:Women.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think women don't get abused in America?

OJ Simpson CUT HIS WIFES HEAD OFF and got away with it despite DNA EVIDENCE ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Don't tell me women are so well respected in America...

Re:Women.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Umm... speaking as an American who's lived his whole life in the south, I have to throw up a flag on that one. Anybody who tells a southern woman that she's second-class will likely get a serious beating. My cousin was a professional model *and* started on her high-school football team, and broke the arm of the last guy who was less than gentlemanly with her. I don't know about Italian Catholics, but once you've had a tractor rip the doors off your car you'll think twice about calling a southern girl "second class."

Re:Women.

[Mateito]

I meant stronger emphasis on the word "Baptist", given that the initial response was one of sexual stereotyping by religions.

Re:Women.

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Dig this... she's *Mormon.*

(but I get your point)

Re:Women.

[kbahey]

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.

Re:Women.

[superyooser]

It is obvious that you've never been to a Southern Baptist church or a Southern Baptist home. Since you probably don't live within 300 miles of a community of Southern Baptists, I'll provide you a link.

Friendliness

[FortKnox]

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.

Re:Friendliness

[hawkeyeMI]

Shouting is unneccessary, but RTFM is an important lesson. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll drive you out of business, or something.

Re:Friendliness

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. I work with a guy like that.

Show somebody how to do something, they can learn and proceed, maybe even get on to learn something themselves.

But tell them to read the manual before helping at all...even the simplest thing... no work gets done. What a pain in the ass.

Everybody here hates him.

Re:Friendliness

[gnu-generation-one]

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

Compare this with the friendly, happy attitude of those who help you though problems with proprietry products...

Let's take a sample opinion from somebody who will help you with a Windows application:

"I hate these people. I want to kill every single last one of them until they die from it. You can obviously read or that sentance wouldn't start with "It says" now flex that big grey muscle under your skull and figure out what those words mean. I don't need to sit here on the phone with you for half an hour listening to you install our software and occasionally telling you to do what it says RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Read, comprehend, DO. How do these people figure out how to breed? I stick it where? In her ear?"

Re:N/S

[jamonterrell]

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?

Pre-install questions or misconceptions

[dkh2]

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

LTSP question...

[sheeny]

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

[p3d0]

We already have about 10 of them.

my question

[hyperstation]

where can i get a tshirt with that kickass pyramid logo? :)

American nerds want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[Anonymous Coward]

i know you're just being funny or whatever but:
1. they speak Arabic, not "Egyptian".
2. i would wager that the percentage of Egyptians who can write ancient heiroglyphics is comparable to the percentage of those in the rest of the world who could do so.
3. Egyptians don't use Qat on a widespread basis. You could be thinking of Somalia, Ethiopia, or Yemen.
4. Most Egyptians are Muslim, so they don't drink beer.
5. Most don't ride camels, low rider or otherwise.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. they speak Arabic, not "Egyptian".

What kind of Arabic, though? Dialect-wise, I mean? To me, saying "Arabic" is like saying "Chinese." Pick two Chinese from opposite ends of the country, and there's a serious chance that their dialects are totally incompatible. I said "Egyptian" because I thought it would be more accurate and specific than saying "Arabic." Was I totally wrong on that?

> 2. i would wager that the percentage of Egyptians who can write ancient heiroglyphics is comparable to the percentage of those in the rest of the world who could do so.

That's why that was funny.

> 3. Egyptians don't use Qat on a widespread basis. You could be thinking of Somalia, Ethiopia, or Yemen.

I knew it was more of an African-Arabic thing to do, but what else am I going to use to replace Cheetos? This is hand-crafted humor here, man - there *will* be some imperfections.

> 4. Most Egyptians are Muslim, so they don't drink beer.

Of course, but I was trying to capture the range of nerd behavior. Is there no Egyptian beer at *all*? Damn, all that great food and nothing to wash it down with. Someday they'll learn...

> 5. Most don't ride camels, low rider or otherwise.

And I'd have to be an idiot to think so. But if you didn't giggle even a little at the thought of a riced out camel, then you are in *serious* need of a humor infusion.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[MentosPimp]

There most certainly is Egyptian beer.

And Stereotypically enough, it is called Pyramid.
It's a Pale Ale I believe, but I'm not beer expert.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[kbahey]

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.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Awesome! Are you Egyptian? You're much more fun to talk to than that other dude up there. You at least got *some* of my jokes.

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

That's something that's always interested me about the various Arab lands. It seems like they're always 100% traditional clothing or 100% western. I've always wondered what the reality was vs. what's usually seen on the news.

> By taking the English geekspeak letters FR15T P05T!? and translating them into the hieroglyph equivalent.

Could that actually be done? Oh, man... I'm thinking million-selling T-shirt if it ever gets done.

> Seriously, Egypt now speaks Arabic.

HAH! Cranky dude up there lied to me! Is the Arabic spoken in Egypt the "standard" kind, or is it a dialect? (Obviously, I know *nothing* about the language. I'd like to learn, though.)

> 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?

I knew I was way off-base with the Qat reference, but it was the best I could do. Mountain Dew is a drink prized by American nerds for its high caffeine content. Qat is the only Arabic thing that I could come up with that was similar. "Pyramid Dew" was just a stupid play on words imagining the Egyptian version of Mountain Dew.

> However, there is Fayrouz and all its flavors (non alcoholic beer like beverage, with many flavors).

Hmm... I have a friend who goes to Egypt about once a year. I'll have to get her to bring some back for me. Sounds tasty!

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

Heh... I know. Just a play on Western sterotypes of Egyptians. Same with the camels.

> 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.

You can eat camel? Oh *man*! That's something I have to try before I'm gone.

Seriously though, thanks for the info. We don't know nearly enough about you guys over here.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[kbahey]

> Awesome! Are you Egyptian?

Yes I am, but not living there for quite a few years.

> That's something that's always interested me about the various Arab lands. It seems like they're always 100% traditional clothing or 100% western. I've always wondered what the reality was vs. what's usually seen on the news.

Normally it is on a country per country case by case thing, so there is huge variations. For example, in Egypt most people in the cities would wear western clothes. Most of the folks in the villages and rural area would wear the traditional dress (flowing robes, cap or turban, ...etc.)

The history of such dress codes has to do with the "Westernization" in the colonial and post colnonial periods (say late 19th and early 20th century).

>> By taking the English geekspeak letters FR15T P05T!? and translating them into the hieroglyph equivalent.
>
>Could that actually be done? Oh, man... I'm thinking million-selling T-shirt if it ever gets done.

I was joking here. I am sure FIRST can be translated, but POST is so internety, I do not think we can find a word for it.

>> Seriously, Egypt now speaks Arabic.

>Is the Arabic spoken in Egypt the "standard" kind, or is it a dialect? (Obviously, I know *nothing* about the language. I'd like to learn, though.)

No country speaks standard Arabic on a day to day basis. Standard Arabic is used in newspaper, official speeches, news bulletins on TV, ...etc. But each country has a dialect of Arabic on its own. They can be quite difficult to undestand to unintelligible altogether (e.g. Egyptian folks have trouble understanding the Gulf Arabs, and cannot undestand Algerians, Tunisians.

Another example, in Egypt, the J sound is pronounced as a G. Something that does not happen in the rest of the Arab countries.

Also, the gap between dialects have narrowed, because of the prevalence of satellite TV. Now countries are exposed to other dialects more often.

> Mountain Dew is a drink prized by American nerds for its high caffeine content.

I know that one! Been reading Slashdot for years. I like Mountain Dew too, but never knew it contained so much caf until I read that here.

> Qat is the only Arabic thing that I could come up with that was similar.

Actually Qat is more on the other side. It sedates the person and make him asleep. So it is the opposite of Caffeine.

> "Pyramid Dew" was just a stupid play on words imagining the Egyptian version of Mountain Dew.

Yup. I got the joke.

> > However, there is Fayrouz and all its flavors (non alcoholic beer like beverage, with many flavors).

> Hmm... I have a friend who goes to Egypt about once a year. I'll have to get her to bring some back for me. Sounds tasty!

Really depends on your taste. It is sweet, and fruity, more appealing to the local taste there. So it is not like beer. There are two varieties as I recall, one in glass bottles, and one in aluminum cans. Ask her to get both.

>> 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.

> You can eat camel? Oh *man*! That's something I have to try before I'm gone.

I should try it too. Never tried it myself. Here it is good.

> Seriously though, thanks for the info. We don't know nearly enough about you guys over here.

True, and it is sad too. With all the problems in the last few years, the gap has widened more and more, and US Foreign policy is making it worse.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't have a "pyramid" beer, we have sakara (which is actually a name of a pyramid, but a specific pyramid not any pyramid :-) and we also have stella beer.

Re:American nerds want to know...

[MentosPimp]

Yeah, apparently I spent too much time Drunk.

Pyramid beer is brewed in Washington.

http://www.pyramidbrew.com/about.php

what a letdown.

Re:International relations (real question)

[Anonymous Coward]

What ObviousGuy obviously meant was: Are you going to use Linux to build missile guidance systems and electronic warface devices? Or will it be used to design quilts and stuffed animals?

Linux installations on laptops, notebooks and PDAs

[wehe]

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 database.

Best Linux distribution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Gentoo the preferred Linux distribution at the installfest? I find that it takes a little more work to get going than, say, Mandrake or Red Hat, but that every installation is tailored to the computer it runs on (and is therefore more efficient).

What kind of computers?

[Pavan_Gupta]

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! =)

Re:What kind of computers?

[kbahey]

One thing I noticed in Egypt, as opposed to other countries in the West: the lack of good used computers.

Here, you have companies leasing things for 2 or 3 years and then selling it. You can get good usable Pentium III computers for a very good price, and they make very nice servers or second machines. Almost every computer shop here (Ontario) has some stock of these.

In Egypt, leasing is not a common business practice. Also, companies (and individuals) hold on to the PC until it is virtually unusable, this could mean 6 or 7 years or even more.

Of course the economice factor is there, but it is also the culture of holding on to things one own (as opposed to the culture of disposable things in the West).

What is the killer app in Egypt?

[eltoyoboyo]

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

Re:What is the killer app in Egypt?

[BigBir3d]

solitaire...?

Re:What is the killer app in Egypt?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Egyptians don't give a shit about Jews in the rest of the world. They just want them out of Israel... and that, only because the Jews went in and kicked out the Palestinians, and the Egyptians think that was a pretty raw deal. Which it was, obviously. Before Zionism, there were Jews (and Christians) all over the middle east. Still are.

The establishment of Israel was the worst thing possible for the development of democratic governments in the Middle East. Because it was an example of Western imperialism, and besmirched the good name of liberal democracy. The continuing brutality of the occupation (and how else are you going to suppress a popular revolt, but brutally?) is making things worse.

Or, well, maybe they do care about Jews in the US, because they think that's where the support from Israel comes from. Maybe. More likely it's just leftofter racism, prejudice, and ignorance on the part of the population-at-large. Luckily, those things are going away.

Slowly, though, as evidenced by your moronic post.

Go ahead and demonize your supposed "enemies" rather than thinking rationally and justly. You know in your heart you're wrong. Unfortunately it'll probably just make you more venemous (a common defensive reaction).

Re:What is the killer app in Egypt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent post. MODERATORS, PLEASE MOD UP.

You make a fine point there. The hatred towards Jews is mainly frustration with Israel and its atrocities.

As an Egyptian myself, my grandfather had a business partner who was a Jew. I do not know when exactly was that (after 1948 or before).

Also, many buildings and even entire districts are named on Jewish personalities (e.g. Semoha district, Ada buildings, Saba Basha district, ...etc.)

There are also famous retailers (Ben Zion, Adas, ...etc.) who were all Jews living and prospering in Egypt, up to 1952.

Do you watch Stargate SG-1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eager minds want to know...

Computers in Egypt?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Parent is Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

See this comment. :)

It would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be absolutely awesome if Linux could encourage people of all races and nationalities to gather together and sing Kum Bah Yah in peace.

Re:It would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be absolutely awesome if me taking a shit on the sidewalk would make super models sleep with me.

Re:It would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

Not with the current crop of sound drivers

Re:It would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no. They'd stand on a hilltop and sing:

I'd like to buy the world a GNOME and furnish it with Moz,
Grow Apple iPods and honey pots, and snow white's peach fuzz.
I'd like to teach the world to compile in perfect gcc,
I'd like to buy the world a Tux and keep it company.

Re:It would be great

[ajs318]

Part of the reason why cheapo, povvy on-board sound cards are badly-supported under Linux might well be that Linux developers don't like cheapo, povvy hardware -- they prefer decent sound cards. And it's hardly as if they sound any good under Windows anyway.

Linux is free. What about the hardware?

[solojony]

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

Question

[AndroidCat]

Yes, very well done.

From the description, one of the greatest assets of the event was that Linux users, seeing that the organizers were being swamped, pitched in and volunteered. In Egypt, would a Windows-based event had anywhere near as much spirit?

Any chance of a local distro?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Conectiva 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!

Duh!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

They install with hieroglyphics. They have also demonstrated exceptional skill and understanding with Perl.

Most Common OS

[Short Circuit]

What is the most common operating system in Windows, and how is it normally obtained?

Re:Most Common OS

[Frizzle Fry]

What is the most common operating system in Windows

My guess is Windows.

Re:Most Common OS

[Short Circuit]

Haha. Whoops!

And I even used Preview.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't.

Do you like the GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Linus Torvalds (CA)

Richard Stallman

Eric Raymond

the GNU project (Boston, MA)

U.S. Dept. of Defense & US Academic Institutions

redhat - love it or hate it.. most widely used distro (VA)

IETF (Reston, VA)

etc...

The point isn't which nationality what parts came from; the point is freedom. These things are made possible by contributions from Smart and Effective People all over the world!

(and if I was really an ass I would make some comment about how Canada wouldn't be what it is today if not for their immediate proximity to the US)

Re:Do you like the GPL?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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!

Re:Do you like the GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's lived in the US for 7 years now. I don't know if he ever applied for citizenship but I think it is safe to say that he is American as anybody else in this country. Remember that this country is made up of immigrants. They (and I say they because my ancestors had nothing to do with it) did a good job of wiping out in the indigenous population. Hell even they probably came across the Bering Strait land bridge many thousands of years ago.

It would take too long to list out all of the great minds who came to America and made a name for themselves.

Re:Do you like the GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is so Americanized now he drives an SUV
that has a cartoon sticker of Calvin pissing on
a burning Finnish flag.

-A Nony Mouse

More particularly,

[Dlugar]

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 (gtk2 fork of xmms).

Dlugar

Re:More particularly,

[kbahey]

I made this a question on its own here.

Hope the mods make it more visible

Re:More particularly,

[B2382F29]

Rhythmbox should be what you are looking for, i use it for all my Ogg/Vorbis-Files, including those tagged with chinese names.

Re:More particularly,

[forevermore]

The problem is not with the player, but with the id3v2 tag spec. Until the latest (v2.4, I think) version, id3 tags have been specifically set to the ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) charset. This means that any compliant player will interpret the characters as Latin1, no matter what they look like. The latest spec activates a "charset" flag, which I think allows a total of 3 charsets, one of which is UTF-8. Unfortunately, id3lib does not support this version of id3v2, so there aren't really any tag editors that are able to write UTF-8 tags (easytag's author is working on migrating away from id3lib, but it's far from ready yet). I was able to test all of this by hacking up my copy of perl's MP3::Tag library to write the UTF-8 flag, and watching rhythmbox correctly display the UTF-8 tags (gstreamer's tag reader is aware of the latest tag version), although xmms still had issues.

Distros

[arvindn]

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?

Re:Distros

[metlin]

In the same note, are there any organizations/companies that have played a major role in helping Linux become popular?

For instance, I know that in India, the magazine PC Quest was initially responsible for making Linux popular - they used to distribute Linux CDs (started out with Slackware and then moved on to Redhat) free with their magazines, and this helped spread the word :)

And how big a role do LUGs really play in actually making the general public (schools, businesses and the common user) aware of Linux? Are they actively involved (I know that ILUGC in India is quite proactive) or do they have any kind of tie-ups and the like with organizations to help spread Linux?

Ahlen Y'shabab :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Mabruk 3alal installfest, arju lakum al-nja7 wal taqadum :-)

Su'ali huwa; kayf hiya dirasat/sina'at "al barmajiyaat" fil watan al arabi? Ana talib
7isab fi amrika, wa fil ghorba min lama kunt 5 sinin, ashan kiza mashuftish 7alat
alwatan alarabi min qurb :-(

B'ti3rif 3an ay websites (kief bitqulu "website" bil arabi?) lil barmajiyat ow ay nou3
min tiqniyat ukhra?

3afwan 3an 3arabiyti, mamti betitkalim masri waboy filistini :-D

- Dave

Complexity of RTL and Hebrew / Arabic Development.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[elenaran]

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

2nd attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you walk like an egyptian while installing linux?

Newbie users, expectations and frustration...

[Tord]

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?

[Weaselmancer]

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

[prog99]

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!

Hello. My name is Alaa Abd El Fatah

[Anonymous Coward]

...or at least that's what it says on my pilot's license.

Install and Donate....

[kevlar]

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.

Re:Install and Donate....

[kevlar]

Ahh, I see, so you're in the "terrorism is justified" party of thought.

Re:Install and Donate....

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me you didn't know the Zionists used terrorism to kick the British out of the territories?

Of course terrorism is wrong. It's also wrong when it comes from the barrel of an American-made Apache helicopter. A lot more destructive too.

Ass.

Re:Install and Donate....

[kevlar]

The mere idea that the US Army intetionally kills innocent people is simply absurd with the exception of a minute few (since there are murderers in every country and every ethnicity).

Israel from day one did not bulldoze Palestinian houses and farm land. They did this in retaliation to homocidal maniacs who tell ignorant people that they will go to heaven if they kill a bunch of Jews. Killing based on religious or ethnic traits is simply genocide.

Yes Israel has killed more Palestinians than the Palestinians have Jews. Yes its not so black and white. The difference though is that Israel is and has been operating in self defense for over 10 years and attempting diplomatic negotiations repeatedly along the way. The fact of the matter is that if Israel were occuppied by the PLO (instead of vice versa), the Palenstinians would have already killed all the jews.

But with respect to the US Military, calling them terrorists is simply stupid. We had 3000 people die in an instant on 9/11 and the overwhelming potential for millions to die based by a terrorist financed and executed nuclear holocaust, all because the Arab world can't get their shit together, educate their people and reject Islamic Sharia and its caveman justice. As a result, we now have to clean up their pile of shit for them, and if it means that NYC never gets nuked by a crazy Muslim, I don't care how many people die in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, N Korea or Malaysia.

The US spent the last 15 years not fucking with anyone and as a result we were attacked on a scale more horrific than Pearl Harbor. SO EAT MY ASS YOU PIG FUCKER.

Re:Install and Donate....

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel from day one did not bulldoze Palestinian houses and farm land. They did this in retaliation ...

Let me see if I understand. Israel is innocent because it was retaliating ? Well, the ones you call "maniacs" can claim exactly the same. So I guess the discussion will go: (jew) I was retaliating t-1! (arab) What are you talking about ? I did t-1 because you did t-2 ! (jew) Hey, but that was just because you had done t-3 before ! (arab) Hold on, t-3 was a retalliation against t-4 ! (jew) I would say t-4 was a retalliation against... STOP ALREADY !

Lets get things straight. This I-am-only- retalliating talk has to stop. To be fair, who moved first ? IMHO (do correct me if I am wrong) Palestines were living their quiet little lives when, one day, WWII ended and Jews all over decided to come into their country for a holiday with no return ticket. And THAT, my friend, could not be a retalliation against palestines, though it was, IMHO, just cause for palestines to retalliate against (like "what do you mean you are not leaving ? it's 3am already!").

Tell me, could you construct an argument that in fact Jews were retaliating against Palestines because of what Europeans (Germans, etc) did to Jews ?

all because the Arab world can't get their shit together, educate their people and reject Islamic Sharia and its caveman justice.

Or is it all because jews can't get their shit together, educate their people, convert to Islam and adopt Islamic Sharia ? If that happened there wouldn't be any trouble, would it, would it ?

Frankly, don't expect the solution for this problem to be jews converting to islam anymore than it be muslims stopping being muslims...

Re:Install and Donate....

[Anonymous Coward]

wow .. interesting ...
and what other pearls of wisdom did your nazi boyfriend bestow upon you?

Re:Install and Donate....

[kevlar]

I am far from being a Nazi, a biggot or a racist. I am merely pointing out the ridiculously obvious that our PC world refuses to acknowledge.

Re:Install and Donate....

[kevlar]

Let me explain something to you: I am utterly and completely atheist. I do not believe there is a God. I also believe that its everyones right as a human being to practice their religion freely. I also believe that its every individuals responability to RESPECT other people's beliefs and life styles and if you can't RESPECT it, then you TOLERATE IT.

The problem with the Middle East today is that they practice Islam the way people practiced Christianity in 1000 AD and they have no respect for life, not even their own. When I say that they need to "get their shit together", I am saying they need to modernize their society and stop being hateful. They need to stop strapping dynamite to men, women and children and blowing up buses and cafes, not convert to Judaism or Christianity or any other fucking useless religion. These people are quite frankly living in ancient societies in the modern world. Their societies are not compatible with anything other than Islam. They teach anger and hatred. They practice disowning family members over ridiculous things like not praying. This is the single solitary reason why they murder innocent men, women and children and fly planes into buildings. This is the single reason why they will eventually level an entire city like NY.

WRT retaliation; in war, unfortunately those who do not fight are the ones who die. Terrorists require immediate and overwhelming responses to their actions. If the response is not immediate and overwhelming, they grow bolder. Bin Laden spent the 80's and 90's blowing shit up. He started small and got bolder and bolder going after larger targets. Our response then by Clinton was to launch cruise missles into factories believed to be sponsoring terror based on old irrelevent information. As a result, Bin Laden felt untouchable and hence 9/11.

Right now we are living in a day and age where if we do not STOP terrorism NOW there may very well not be a tomorrow for MILLIONS, possibly BILLIONS of people. We are headed full steam towards a nuclear attack and when it does happen, the retaliatory response will change from "kill the hostiles who take shots at our humvees" to "kill everyone and don't give them a chance to re-group". It sounds crazy, but that is the state of the world right now.

P.S. Before going on your 150 word rant, read what I post and put it in the proper context.

I've always wondered...

[St. Vitus]

Is killing a cat process punishable by death?

Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

In an environment of young males, computers, and internet access, downloaded pornography tends to spring up in great abundance. ;) What is, in Egypt, the cultural atmosphere surrounding porn? Is it even legal to possess? A related question: do the people installing Linux (or even computer-savvy in general) tend to be more progressive and Westernized in terms of their cultural values than the societal average?

arabeyes

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't anyone mention Arabeyes or anything.

http://www.arabeyes.org/

Re:Motives - SUPPORT THE PARENT QUESTION!

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally support the parent question. People with mod points - mod it up!

You can not ignore the political conditions, and we are now very well informed about rich middle eastern nationalists/fundamentalists rallying against the westernized nations. What is next? Blowing up a McDonalds? Or shooting people in a western company's building? Oh wait...

At least this move is not violent...

"Who provided the funding?" is another interesting question.

There are still people out there who do not buy japanese cars because of the past (same with german cars) - is this another "grass roots attempt" of the kind?

Re:Umm Kulthoum

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't happen. Everyone knows that OGG doesn't support anything more finely divided than the western 12-tone scale. Best to use Apple's iTunes format.

Arabic 1337sp33k?

[Anonymous Coward]

3afwan 3an 3arabiyti, mamti betitkalim masri waboy filistini :-D

Finally, a common link between the Arabic and Western world has been forged by 31337 H4X0RS using Arabic numerals as a means of communiation. In this newfound lingua franca, I pose the following question:

1N j00r 3xp3|231NC3, D0 4|24|31C L1NUX US3|2S UND3|2S74ND 1337?

Re:Arabic 1337sp33k?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's using a '3' to mean `ayn. That letter sort of looks like a 3, but is more commonly written as `.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

History of Egypt motivation to switching to Linux

[kbahey]

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).

What distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a specialized Arabic one??

Bloodthirsty?

[spun]

You know, not everyone in a country supports the actions of everyone from that country. I, for instance, am apalled at the recent torture of Iraqi prisoners by our soldiers. I think murder and torture count toward bloodthirsty monster status, what have these poor Egyptian geeks done to deserve such a label?

Re:Bloodthirsty?

[corbettw]

You know, not everyone in a country supports the actions of everyone from that country.

That's true, however how many Egyptians stand up and say "it's wrong to kill Jews"? Not many. In fact, anytime someone (like me) tries to condemn suicide bombers and their ilk, the usual apologetic answer is to claim Israelis deserve to be butchered like animals.

Contrast that with the example you cited of MPs abusing prisoners in Iraq. Pretty much everyone, from the top down, in America wants those goons in prison, or worse (personally, I want them tried for rape and executed).

The truth of the matter is that most Egyptians support destroying Israel. Pretending that isn't the case, or shouting down someone who insists it with name calling, doesn't solve anything.

Egyptians, and Arabs in general, are not our friends, and we should not be encouraging them to advance their tech base. Instead, we should be isolating their economies and starving their people until they stop trying to kill us and our real friends. If the situation were reversed, they wouldn't hesitate to kill all of us.

Re:Bloodthirsty?

[SandMouse]

Thank you for your Hannitization. You're probably listening to him now. I'm an Egyptian who deplores innocent lives. You know the US has had this policy of starving, torturing and stifling technological advances in the middle east by propping up Mubarak in Egypt. I really dont think the policy works. BTW...are you Dubya? You sure sound like him. Know that the end of great Republics begin when they start to believe that they have the exclusive right to food, clothing and advancement. Shame on you.

Re:Bloodthirsty?

[corbettw]

I'm an Egyptian who deplores innocent lives.

Yeah, well, that's really the problem, isn't it?

Or was that a Freudian slip, and you meant to write "who deplores the taking of innocent lives"? If so, why don't you try this thought experiment, Abdul: when you hear that someone has killed a mother and her four children as they drove down the road, what is your initial response? What about when you find out they were Jewish settlers, living in Gaza? Does this change your outlook on the crime?

I can safely say that if I heard that Americans had done something heinous like that, then they should be treated as criminals, with no ifs ands or buts. In fact, earlier in this thread I said the American MPs who were caught molesting Iraqis prisoners should be tried for rape, then executed. 'Cause ya see, Abdul, civilized people get outraged when their own people commit crimes against humanity. They don't offer up lame ass excuses for deplorable behavior. Until you people get your collective head out of your ass and start treating criminals the way God intended, noone in their right mind is going to believe you when you say you "deplore the taking of innocent lives" (when you manage to say it correctly).

Next time a fanatic blows himself up, along with the 20 people closest to him, I want you to go your local cafe and tell everyone who will listen that the man was a monster who deserves to rot in hell. If you aren't willing to do that, then you're complicit in his actions, and deserve the same fate. Jesus, whom I'm sure you respect, stated repeatedly that luke warm actions are not enough, you have to take a stand and do the right thing, no matter the consequences. That's true martyrdom, and the MidEast would be a better place if you and your countrymen learned that lesson, and fast.

If you care to continue this discussion, feel free to email me at cory@waddingham.org.

I'll tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

They live too close to fellow ragheads. So they must condone torching themselves in order to kill others. You can't trust any of 'em I say. If I was a guard I'd be urinating on them too. While hooked up to those electrodes.

Which distributions support Arabic the most?

[kbahey]

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?

my question

[zogger]

In the install fest, which was the primary reason for all the new interest? Was it (some examples), because linux is viewed as just better quality than the alternatives, or is it that it truly is "free" to use and develop without making copies of "the other guys", or is it just "trendy" like people like to try out new stuff, and etc? Whatever the reason, I was interested in the MAIN reason for all the interest. Thanks.

You're right, not every Egyptian hates Jews.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall, there was one guy in Cairo who had a Jew friend.

So yes, you are right, not all of Egypt want to see the Jews buried.

MOD THIS DOWN!

[SetupWeasel]

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 ...

[pherris]

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?

Arabic doubtful, chisels not good on monitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

King Tut found this out a long time ago when trying to install DOS: Millennium Edition on his Cuniform PC.

Lack of Egyptian geek-babes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those burkas really put a damper in identifying who the hot Coptic-Goth chicks were.

Egypt vs. Israel

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you feel about installing software that was developed by people of the Jewish faith? Observing Egypt from the US, we see anti-semitic propaganda being pushed by the Egyptian government such as the documentary on The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion broadcast by state television. Does religion besides anti-Microsoft zealotry affect the way you use open source? Is there a Arab distro that takes this into account?

It's X and KDE, not the distro.

[Kickasso]

Get the latest X and KDE releases and be happy.

Re:It's X and KDE, not the distro.

[kbahey]

I agree.

But the point is: most people do not want to download source, compile it, and install/configure it.

Therefore, it has to be on the distro that you got from the installfest, or from a friend.

The vast majority there are people with dialup connections, and are billed per minute! Downloading large apps (or even ISOs) is very tedious and expensive (not to mention it ties up the phone line too).

So, the question is which distro works out of the box in Arabic with the most apps working in Arabic, and with the least problems?

Re:It's X and KDE, not the distro.

[Saiai Hakutyoutani]

Do you mean with actual Arabic translations, or only for entering and displaying Arabic?

Qt and GTK+ based apps (Starting with GTK+ 2) have myriads of intricate functions for rendering text, so they should all be able to display and input Arabic correctly. However, Qt still lacks suport for input methods completely, and GTK doesn't come with an Arabic one preinstalled.

And as for Arabic translations, that's a nother thing, of course.

Re:It's X and KDE, not the distro.

[kbahey]

Mainly, entering and displaying Arabic.

As a techie, this is the way I want things to be. I don't want a full Arabic interface.

However, for end users (say office admins, ...etc.) they *may* want a full Arabic interface. Really depends.

OT: Swedish English

[Dr. Cody]

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.

Re:OT: Swedish English

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, det är för att vi tycker om att skryta
med hur bra vi kan engelska!

Go buddy, go! :-)

Var bor du? Eposta root på vmlinux.org om du vill snacka någon gång...

ha det bra!

Re:OT: Swedish English

[Anonymous Coward]

Men, om man talar med svenskor, kan man lyckas tala på svenska. Jag brukar försöka använda kvinnliga kassor när jag behöver tala på en affär.

Jag bor i exotiskt Västra Aros och läser vid MdH.

Re:OT: Swedish English

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Icelandic, living in Iceland, and English is my third language ( Swedish being my second one - Heja Sverige ! ;) ) I still prefer to use all my software in English. I have translated a few packages to Icelandic ( proofreading parts of KDE, SquirrelMail, a few MacOS X progs etc ) but the translations bite me back when I got to support them since my usage of these is in English :-P

But a small story about Swedes and their reluctance to speak Swedish to "foreigners"...

I mainly speak "Skånska" ( south swedish dialect ), and do so very well ( if gurgling a language can ever be done well ;). Once while living in Klippan, Skåne, I had my siblings over for a visit. Of course I spoke Icelandic to them. One day we had to take the bus to another town. We enter the bus, and I ask the chauffeur "hur mycket kostar det för oss fyra till Munka?" ( how much does it cost for the four of us to Munka ) - he promptly answered back in a horribly bad English: "It kostar fortjon and fiftee"... - duh !

I use gentoo.

[Kickasso]

But it's not dialup-friendly.

Fundamental Islamic groups vs. open communication

[Lodragandraoidh]

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?

Re:N/S

[cozziewozzie]

It might be an interesting statistic, but do you really think they questioned everybody at that installfest about their religious/political beliefs? Looks like they had their hands full just copying the friggin CDs!

Re:N/S

[jamonterrell]

And that would be an interesting answer in itself. My guess is that there were most likely a higher ratio of non-natives to natives in the installfest than in the country's general population. If this is true, then it would be interesting to know if (or that) geekdom trumps differences in religion. That's what I'm getting at here.

Re:Fundamental Islamic groups vs. open communicati

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't think Egypt falls under Islamic fundamentalism.

Considering all Islamics to be fundamentalists is like considering all christians to be members of the KKK.

(saw that on some show :)

9-pin printers

[Atario]

Also, was enough technology around early enough in Egypt for people to be chronically annoyed that their printers had no true descenders, and so, mangled the name of the country when printed?

|\|0, r3411y...

[Atario]

Is there an Arabic equivalent to 1337 5p34k?

And if people practice it (except for irony), do they get their keyboards cut off?

Please?

What are the internal politics like?

[Mr. Protocol]

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?

Don't be an ass

[magefile]

start treating criminals the way God intended [...] Jesus, whom I'm sure you respect
I'm not even gonna touch this.

stated repeatedly that luke warm actions are not enough, you have to take a stand and do the right thing, no matter the consequences.
There's a difference between courage and stupid, senseless futile actions. If he stood up in the local coffee house, is that going to change anything? Is it quite likely that he'd be killed? The way to change things is by getting the government to treat criminals as criminals. And actually, AFAIK, Egypt, while it's a horrible place, law-wise, isn't sending suicide bombers into Israel. Don't paint all Arab nations with one brush. Keep in mind, too, that non-extremist Islam (in the Ottoman Empire, up to and including Suleyman's reign) has historically been one of the most tolerant and peaceful cultures in the world. Especially compared with Christians, who were responsible for the Crusades, the destruction of Native Americans in the US, and several other atrocities. That was also a generalization, but at least I'm generalizing about the mainstream of the time, rather than the extremists.

Re:Don't be an ass

[Anonymous Coward]

"specially compared with Christians, who were responsible for the Crusades, the destruction of Native Americans in the US, and several other atrocities. "

Learn your history, nitwit. Do you think the Muslims who drove into Spain and the Balkans forcing people to convert or die were there out of tolerance?

Furthermore look up what the Turks did to the Armenians in 1911. Don't whine about how supposedly tolerant the Muslims are. They are not.

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.htm l

Re:Don't be an ass

[corbettw]

First off, the Crusades were justified to stop the rampaging Muslim hordes were who so tolerant they killed everyone in their path. Second, I hardly think the people who unleashed the Armenian genocide can be considered "tolerant". Third, there's a reason "the bloody Turk" was so reviled throughout eastern Europe.

As for whether standing up in the cafe can change anything or not, yes, it can. Sure, he might be executed, even tortured. But the West is free today because men in the past dared to do that exact same thing. If the Arabs want freedom for their children, they're gonna have to take some chances. "Freedom ain't free."

Re:Don't be an ass

[magefile]

I'm just saying, they have not always been an (generalization coming) aggressive, intolerant set of nations. Just like we've had our ... nasty spots (assuming you are also American).

Freedom of Speech, Web Access?

[magefile]

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:Freedom of Speech, Web Access?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet censorship?

none

legality of certain types of software ?

encryption illegal without permission. But law is not enforced. I use gpg everyday.

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?

no don't think so. Most of emails are hotmail accounts. May be emails looked for certain keywords, not sure though. you can send and receive emails to and from anyone anywhere.

huh?

[zogger]

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...

Re:huh?

[iminplaya]

Welcome to the wonderful whacky world(www) of slashdot moderation. The millions of trained chimps are taking a break from their shakespeare project, and somebody gave them their mod points to use up.

Re:History of Egypt motivation to switching to Lin

[cdc179]

Al Jazeera web site for example shows only the middle pane in FireFox, and the side menus are only visible under IE.

I bet if you get the User Agent Switcher and send your browser as IE on 2000 the site will display.

Try it and let us know, or post a link where we can test it out.

Re:Smell

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll? I thought it was hilarious! It's true! Say what you like about people being the same the world over, but it's a fact of life that some people from some cultures (european, thai, american) bathe/shower more than others (indian, egyption, african). If you don't believe that, you're kidding yourself.

Re:Complexity of RTL and Hebrew / Arabic Developme

[Anonymous Coward]

government probably disallows any contact

Re:History of Egypt motivation to switching to Lin

[kbahey]

I do not think this does the trick.

But even if it did, it is a classic case of "Microsoft is the only platform that exists" when developing a web site. Myopia, and just shows the point I made in my original post.

Anyway, the site is Al Jazeera. Try it yourself.

The center part should render fine on any OS/Browser combo that supports Arabic (Windows with Opera and Windows with FireFox, Linux with Konquerer do show it correctly).

However, when the menu on the left and on the right will not show unless you are on IE. Some parts of the page use ActiveX as well (Yuck!)

Re:I18N

[Anonymous Coward]

your wishes r orders
we made it just for u ;-) but we called it arabbix.
check http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=Arabbix&P HPSESSID=49b896d84bc73a11f341cbc3b425e19f

I guess so....

[zogger]

... not that I was really annoyed, more puzzled, so the "huh?" comment. Oh well, don't matter, I bet the question gets asked anyway, someone else will have asked it(similar anyway) and it will be modded to+5 so it gets included in the list. So I get what I want anyway...heh

Greek colonists

[Anonymous Coward]

Greek colonists created the library of Alexandria you nitwit. Arab and all muslim countries do not value reading and knowledge and so they do not spend much money on libraries. Egypt has opened up a new, large and expensive Library of Alexandria though as a national library. It is a waste of time though, national libraries have lots of books, but you cannot take books out from them. I have never been to the Library Congress, yet I am an American, it is far from my house and any book they have that I would want to read, I would have to read there in the library, which is difficult.