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

English or Arabic

[tindur]

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

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?

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?

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?

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?

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.

Positive contribution?

[acceber]

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

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?

Distro?

[lacrymology.com]

What is the most popular distro in Egypt?
-m

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.

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?

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?

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! =)

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?

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?

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?

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