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A description of the history and status of Linux in Lebanon in both the educational and commercial sectors.
by Ibrahim F. Haddad
Linux was introduced at the Lebanese American University (http://www.lau.edu.lb/) Byblos Campus (LAU-Byblos) in November 1994 by Professors Walid Keirouz (walid@lau.edu.lb) and Haidar Harmanani (haidar@lau.edu.lb). Before introducing Linux, the computer lab relied almost exclusively on Microsoft, Borland and Novell products. No one at LAU, and very few elsewhere in Lebanon, had heard of Linux. The first installations were done at LAU-Byblos using floppies on i486/33 machines with 8MB of RAM with kernel 0.99. Later on, these machines were upgraded to include CD drives so that we could do CD-based installations. These Linux PCs were configured into one of the first IP networks at the university (NFS, YP/NIS).
After the installations were complete, students were given access. Since the shell environment seemed a bit strange to those who had used a graphical environment, they were constantly complaining. Shortly thereafter, more Pentium machines were ordered to use as Linux machines. By the time the new machines arrived, students had become familiar with Linux and were ready for an introduction to the X Window System. X turned out to be more fun for the students, because of the network utilities and all the shareware programs that come with it. These conditions inspired the students to install Linux on their home machines, turning them into 32-bit multitasking workstations capable of running almost all the software necessary for their courses.
With Linux, students can have a workstation at home that is almost identical to the workstations in the computer lab and can run the same programs and tools.
Linux is now being used by the Computer Science/Engineering faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students. The professors' Linux machines are hooked to the university network and course materials are posted on the local web site for students to download. Apache is used as the web server.
Needless to say, having Linux at home is a big plus for students who are not able to stay late at the university, in particular for those living off campus due to limited on-campus accommodation. Also, most graduate students have at least a part-time job and are not able to spend much time at the university outside of class. The best solution for them was to install Linux on their home machines; thus, all Computer Science graduate students have Linux installed at home.
In the graduate school, Linux is used mainly in the following graduate courses:
At LAU-Byblos there are two computer labs. The Computer Engineering Center includes a Linux server with NFS/NIS with six Linux clients. The machines consist of P90 with 16/32 MB of RAM, 1.0 GB and 4.0 GB SCSI Drives, SCSI controllers, CD-ROMs and tape backup in addition to a PostScript HP laser printer. The Computer Science Center includes four Linux boxes, seven Sun SPARC/Solaris machines and one SGI workstation. The Linux machines are 166MHz Pentiums with 32MB of RAM and 1.5/2.5GB hard drives. One of them is running Red Hat 5.0 and the other three run Slackware with kernel 2.0.30.
Most of the time, especially near project due dates, an available Linux machine cannot be found in the computer centers. For this reason, the department is currently in the process of purchasing five new Pentium machines to put in service in the Computer Science center. These machines will also be used for the network and operating system lab courses.
The Computer Science Department is involved in Electronic Design Automation and Computer Networking and Electronic Publishing research. More information can be found at http://vlsi.byblos.lau.edu.lb/.
Dany Said (dany@flame.byblos.lau.edu.lb), a graduate student in C.S., is working with Professor Walid Keirouz on high-performance computing for wave propagation. For this purpose, they have put together a Beowulf cluster of eight P-II/300 machines running a customized version of Red Hat 5.0. Tools used in this project include PVM, MPI and ZPL (a data parallel language developed at the University of Washington, Seattle, http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/zpl/). More information on this work can be found at http://flame.byblos.lau.edu.lb/.
At this time, four universities in Lebanon are using Linux.
At present, very few companies in Lebanon are using Linux except for a small number of firms needing a cheap, effective setup. For these companies, Linux is the only choice due to its low cost and suitability as a web/mail server. One of the popular Internet Service Providers here uses Linux for its proxy server, and many web design and publishing companies are using Linux for simulation purposes and for checking their designed web pages.
The most widely used distributions are Slackware 96, 3.0, 3.4 and Red Hat 4.2, 5.0 and 5.1 from both Red Hat and CheapBytes (http://www.cheapbytes.com/) and the Debian distribution.
A major obstacle to widespread use of Linux here is the availability of pirated software in Lebanon. For example, one can get an NT 4 Server CD for $5 US or MS Office 97 for $8 US. As a result, many organizations do not feel the burden of software purchases and view software as having no value.
The Lebanese market is almost a raw market when it comes to Linux/UNIX. We are doing our best to push Linux into the marketplace. We believe that Linux, in some areas, has reached the required level to compete with other operating systems, in particular as a web/mail/ftp server.
Ibrahim Haddad is a computer science graduate student at the Lebanese American University (Byblos Campus), Lebanon. Among his interests are development of Intranet/Internet and web applications. Ibrahim can be reached via e-mail at ibrahimh@cyberia.net.lb or through the web at http://aleph.pdi-berlin.de/~ibrahim/.