Linux and Us Kenyans

Alot has been posted on the comments forum of my star post on 3G networks, Internet access in Nairobi and Kenya. A new crop of young Kenyans are emerging chanting the Linux mantra. And we the older geezers (MS-DOS, BASIC, DBASE I, II and III and Wordperfect crowd) are nodding our collective heads.

While my experience with Linux is rather scanty (never mind that I advise you on this post on how to reset a forgotten password in Ubuntu), I do have a dual boot WinXP / Ubuntu 7.04. I also have the Ubuntu 8.04 CD somewhere on my crammed shelf and am awaiting delivery of Ubuntu 8.10, thanks to our brothers @ Canonical. Feel free to contact me for a copy.

Recently at a shopping mall in Nairobi, I lit up my trusty hp laptop, fired up Ubuntu and was surfing away in seconds, bila configs. I did lots of stuff, watched videos, burned CDs and DVDs, backed up my work to an external disk, wrote poems (see my other weakness here) and basically felt good while surfing for free, using free software. That’s how the world should be like, no?

NB: Is anybody working on Kenux……a Kenyan flavoured distro of Linux. I think Asianux is already on, Google it.

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Of a 24-hr Nairobi, Wi-fi and Writing

It’s been a long weekend here in Kenya, thanks to our peculiar way of celebrating national holidays. If it falls on a Sunday, the following day is a public holiday, to reward us for the serious celebrations and otherwise that we engage in. So its been a whole 3 days, alot of time to sample what our lovely city Nairobi has to offer, albeit in daylight.

So inspired by some research I need to do for my book (see my other blog), I go down Ngong Road to Prestige Plaza, that icon of 24-hr shopping mall phenomenon. Many people wonder what Nairobians do up all night, but you just need to go to Prestige and the adjacent businesses and see. My visit was during the day, and I was there to hunt down a real wi-fi hot spot. Those innovative guys at MoMovies have again led the pack. They ae piloting a 24-hr wi-fi hot spot as a new channel of business, besides their 24-hr video library in the same mall. They hold the largest collection of original DVDs, complete with home delivery and online ordering, so go over and sign up.

After a little hunting for a power socket, I fire up my laptop, launch Ubuntu and am online in minutes. It really flies, by Kenyan standards. We have alot of broadband this and broadband that here, the word is grossly misused. The service is great, and I will be going down to pay for the same service when its launched commercially. I will even follow them to the other malls where they are planning to launch the service. Kenyan coffee and wi-fi, great combination.

So with blistering speed wi-fi, I did alot of research and filled tonnes of pages with material. Being a typical Nairobi end-of-month evening, I snapped my laptop shut and was home by 8pm.

We need that kind of service here in Nairobi. The person who extends the hot spot to cover my balcony has an instant customer. I wonder if the people who do business development, or whatever they call it, for ISPs read such pieces. I think they don’t.

New to Microsoft Word 2007

I have been drive testing the above, and one cool feature is the word count thingy at the bottom left on the status bar. Nothing could be more exciting as you write a book! I can literally see my word count grow in tandem with the soreness of the finger tips. This “live ticker” of word count into numbers keeps me motivated and hungry for more!

Am at the phase of wrapping up the my book and it has come out well. I have a list of publishers whose doors I shall be knocking soon, so all you publishers out there, am coming !

I also discovered Notepad ++ ver 4.8.5, a great application that I write my blogs (like this post) offline and do other plain text editing. It is also great for XML and HTML editing, other things am learning! Did I mention 7Zip? Check out these utilities, and donate.

Am also waiting for my new Ubuntu CDs to be shipped, since downloading the ISO image on this side of the digital divide is a real pain in the back side. Are the ISPs and the fibre optic cablers reading this? I terribly need broadband (real, not imagined) on my balcony, barefoot (bila shoes). Talk to me people!

Still, hey life is truly phenomenal! Am enjoying it!