Salam Anmar, Guys
Before starting Arabbix v.2.0, I wish to have a set of clear goals for the project in order for the liveCD to truly benefit people in the Arab speaking world. Unfortunately, I am unable to determine the goals on my own since my knowledge of the ME is rather limited.
The ME is: In places poor, where Internet connection is scarce, or not fast. First language is not English, so proper Arabic support is a must. The industry/economy is not highly IT'ed just yet. There is room for OSS solutions and companies and they know how to play right. The CD gotta appear professional.
To help focus the discussion I have the following goals that I believe are necessary: 1. Must be installable on the HD 2. Must have Parted (parition editor for Fat32, NTFS, EXT2, etc) 4. Must have Arabic instructions on how to use the LiveCD and what you can do with it 5. Must have a light environment (XFCE4 for example) for all those 486s out there in the ME. In addition to GNOME of course.
Unfortunately, XFCE is not Arabised yet, and IIRC there is no proper team yet. Ping Nadim and he will let you know. Gnome's 2.16 complete translation is nearing, and probably be ready before 2.18 ships.
6. Must have the computer science students in mind. Maybe bundling some books on linux (Arabic one would be great) or tutorials. 7. Must have OpenOffice 2.0.x for Windows in the CD so non Linux users can get it 8. Should promote the spirit of volunteering and Arabeyes 9. Should have Arabic based art (regardless of religion) 10.Must be based on Ubuntu (due to ease of setup and the Debian connection)
Or Debian based, for ease of customisation as I guess more people are familiar with it. Basing it on a fast changing distribution (in itself and its goals) is risky IMO. It all comes down to what you are familiar with of course. Finally, in ubuntu style, we could have a few windows applications with a suitable interface, I'll help with that as I maintain the recently released ArabicOpenCD. A few people have even contacted me wanting to help in its development. I suggest setting up a workshop with the interested developers to move this forward and give it an "official" appearance. Djihed _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
