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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.
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?
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.