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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.
http://www.pug.bz:9876/~gupta_p/installfest/
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.
Here my friend
/.ers.
Here are FOUR more.
I guess I will have to explain what "woman" means to
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?
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!
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.
...etc.) More importantly, this led to many web sites showing correctly in Arabic ONLY when used Internet Explorer.
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,
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).
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> 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.
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.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
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.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
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.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I am an English-speaker living in Sweden. I can tell you it's a combination of:
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.
> Awesome! Are you Egyptian?
...etc.)
...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.
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,
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,
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.
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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.
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