Nobody knows Linux

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A Microsoft Vista DVD costs the equivalent of $3. You can get WindowsXP for $1.50. OfficeXP, $1.15. Where? Computer Village. Located in Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial hub, Computer Village is a market district in Ikeja, the state’s capital. Computer Village forms the nerve center of Nigeria’s IT industry, and is considered the biggest IT-oriented market in West Africa. Software, hardware, IT training, cellphones and other telecommunications equipment, you name it, they’ve got it. It’s a hustling bustling environment, packed with people and shops. The busy streets are lined with small stalls where young men and teenage boys sell a wide range of pirated software CDs out of cardboard boxes and beat-up briefcases. Operating systems, database management software (yes you, Oracle), games, image-editing software (Photoshop, Corel Draw etc), accounting and banking software, desktop publishing and office packages. And all the latest material, too. They had Vista on offer just a couple of weeks after it was cracked.

I doubt there’s any kind of software you won’t find at Computer Village. On the hardware end of the market, you have the choice between old-school refurbished 400MHz Pentium-based desktops, if you’re on a budget. But if money is as meaningless to you as flies to an elephant, then you’ll want to get yourself one of those top of the line dual-core processor machines with the 20″ flatscreen LCD, 200GB hard disk and so on. It’s all here at Computer Village. Needless to say, even the cheaper computers will cost you much more than that Vista DVD. But we’re not here to talk about hardware, anyway.

A RedHat v10 six CD set costs anywhere from $5 to $7, depending on your bargaining skills. I got my guy down to about $5.30, and told him I’d be back to make the purchase. Either that, or maybe I’ll get a free Ubuntu CD. Feisty Fawn. That same CD that Ubuntu ships out for free, costs about $2 at Computer Village. Why would open-source software be more expensive than proprietary software? Why does Linux cost more than twice the amount you pay for Windows? Is it because it’s the superior operating system? It is indeed the wiser choice, but quality is not the factor here.

It’s the number of CDs contained in the pack that matters. WindowsXP comes on just a single CD. RedHat, Fedora Core, SuSE (openSUSE) all come with at least 4 or more CDs. SuSE v10 has 5 CDs. And this is how the prices of these software packages are determined. Most of these guys selling their pirated goods are often unfamiliar with the actual software in their inventory. The first time I heard RedHat cost so much more than Windows, I was surprised and asked the guy, if he realizes that Linux should be much cheaper than Windows. I told him about open-source and free software, but he just waved me off and cast an absent glance down the sunny market street, as shoppers and traders alike streamed past like a powerful river.

“Linux is 4 CDs. How can you tell me it costs less?” he asked, and looked at me as one would at a mentally challenged child. I was baffled, annoyed and embarrassed all at the same time. But I couldn’t argue with his logic, really. Microsoft is king in Nigeria, and indeed in all of Africa. The developing world is Microsoft’s last bastion. Here Microsoft still commands unquestioning loyalty. People think since Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, and he made his money through software, then his software must be the best in the world. A year ago, I signed up for a Java course, and they were teaching us Linux basics. I had a difficult time getting my course mates to accept Linux’s superiority over Microsoft. The arguments would always end in “Yes, but no one else uses Linux. So what good are Linux skills?”

And that is the root of the problem, here. Linux, and the open-source movement in general, somehow missed Africa. It’s slowly gathering momentum in places like South Africa. But across the rest of the continent, Bill Gates owns the desktops and servers. All these internet cafés where criminal Nigerians mail their scam letters from, they all run on Windows. And they’re all infested with key-loggers, trojans, viruses, mass-mailers and all the other software tools a scamster might need. Daily system crashes are the norm. I avoid using these cafés, and fortunately, EFCC began a crackdown last year on internet cafés that tolerate these criminal activities.

The place I used to go to often had server issues and a lot of the workstations where unavailable due to problems caused by key-loggers and people arbitrarily downloading spyware-infested software from the internet and installing them. I told the admin he’s better off installing Linux on the server and workstations. Linux comes with KDE, these days, so usability shouldn’t be a problem. Most people use internet cafés just for browsing the web and sending emails. So, it shouldn’t be that difficult a transition for the customers to make. Maybe a short ReadMe on the desktop that explains how to launch things like the web browser and IM software.
And most importantly, Linux is immune to viruses, and how many of these guys would know how to install a key-logger or mass-mailer on a Linux desktop? User management would help prevent these issues. The admin agreed, but said he had no real Linux administration skills and his boss wanted Windows anyway. I offered my services, but again I was waved off. It seems they’d rather accept all the downtime and the accompanying loss of revenue that comes with running a Windows-based internet café in Africa.

It is this underexposure of Linux that is further widening the digital divide. There needs to be a large-scale intensive open-source campaign in Africa. From Casablanca to Johannesburg, open-source needs to make itself better known to Africans. Ask any kid on the streets of Nigeria, Kenya or Egypt. They’ve all heard of Bill Gates. But you would be hard-pressed to find someone who knows who Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman or Mark Shuttleworth are. At a time like this, where Vista seems to be the beginning of the end for Microsoft, it is imperative that people here are made to understand that the future is Linux. There’s no way around that. We cannot afford to let Microsoft drag us down with it. With all this talk about the growing digital divide, we as Africans risk being left holding the proverbial bag. And it would be packed with worthless Windows software. It’s foolish to think you can bridge a gap by adhering to a software philosophy the other side of the gap is beginning to abandon.

What we need is some kind of continent-wide open-source software initiative. Not just for Linux specifically, but for open-source in general. Public awareness programs, like ad campaigns, roadshows, seminars and conferences. Free or cheap training in open-source software(-development) in primary and secondary schools (start them young), and universities. Learning centres, where you can just walk in with your USB thumb drive or stack of empty CDs and burn all the free open-source software you need. Or maybe sit down for a class in OpenOffice.org or MySQL. How about online classes? Most of the IT certificates here are still mainly Windows oriented. I haven’t seen any school here that offers RHCE training. More enlightenment in this regard about what’s available in the global industry, please. How about venture capital for African open-source startups?

Obviously, we’re going to need a lot of help with this. I want to set up an online community with a focus on the above mentioned points. It should be a community for volunteers from all around Africa and from all over the world. Anyone who’s interested in seeing open-source grow in Africa should participate. It could be anything from telling people about the website, or compiling information for the community and its targeted group. Creating material for online classes. Maybe even volunteering to go to Tanzania, for example, and train school kids in Linux administration for a year. Or offering reasonably priced support for small and medium scale businesses who want to base their operations on open-source software. I think it’s imperative that open-source philosophy is introduced to Africa in a big way. These things are possible, if enough of the right people take it seriously and join in.

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