In Karachi, Me and Haroon Idrees organized the event at arranged it McDonald’s Stadium Road, Karachi. The community’s response was great, the event was attended by students, IT professionals, bloggers, journalists and local IT companies that provided open source solutions to government and private organizations. Discussions revolved around creating awareness about free and open source software in general and promoting Ubuntu in particular.

We were really excited to meet Dr. Athar Mahboob. He is the president of IbnKhaldun Systems, and he is a legend in Pakistan for the work he has been doing since last three decades. Specially the work he has done on Linux, for example his company recently developed a network for EOBI – Pakistan, which has branches all over the country and all of them are connected using workstations and servers running a slightly modified version of Ubuntu Linux.

In Lahore, Mustufa took the responsibility of organizing the event. Mustufa is a young IT student and he is very energetic and talented. He single handedly organized the event, gave a small presentation and entertained the guests. Again there were students from universities and IT professionals and the event was also covered by a TV news channel.

In Islamabad Waqas and Babar Zahoor of Pakistan Open Source Foundation hosted the event. In Islamabad they discussed Ubuntu’s WUBI installer and open source alternatives to Microsoft applications.

Pictures:

For more images and details please visit and join our facebook group Ubuntu Pakistan User’s Group.

Haroon Idrees answering a question raised by a new Ubuntu user

Sir Syed University's Students Joined in

Mustufa Sitting left in blue jeans and Ubuntu users from Lahore showing Free CDs

Mustufa giving his introductory presentation

Writing and Reading in Urdu on Ubuntu is not configured properly in a default installation. So most Urdu users face trouble once they have installed Ubuntu. Sometimes they give up too quickly and get back to windows and sometimes they spend hours figuring out a solution.

First of all I would like to assure that any one using Ubuntu can read and write Urdu just like they did it while using Windows. Ubuntu has full Urdu support, the problem is that you don’t have a few packages installed and a few settings tweaked. Just follow this step by step tutorial and you would have full Urdu support available with in minutes.

Step 1: Make sure that you have these packages installed:

• language-pack-ur
• language-pack-ur-base
• language-pack-gnome-ur
• language-pack-gnome-ur-base
• language-support-ur
• openoffice.org-l10n-ur-in
• ttf-nafees

If you are using Kubuntu then you would need:

• language-pack-kde-ur
• language-pack-kde-ur-base

To install these packages quickly use this command:


sudo apt-get install language-pack-ur language-pack-ur-base language-pack-gnome-ur language-pack-gnome-ur-base language-support-ur openoffice.org-l10n-ur-in ttf-nafees language-pack-kde-ur language-pack-kde-ur-base


Step 2:Note: If you are using Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy or later releases then you don’t need to do this step instead jump to step 3.

Since Dapper, there is a problem with Firefox in Ubuntu that it doesn’t render the Urdu web pages the way they should be rendered. Firefox that comes with Ubuntu has Pango disabled by default. We need to enable it so lets do it

Type this in Terminal:


sudo gedit /etc/environment


This command will open the environment file in your text editor with super user priviledges. Add this line in environment file:


MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0


Save the file and exit the editor. Now we have Firefox ready to render Urdu web pages.

Step 3: With Firefox working fine and all required packages installed. We still need to download and install fonts. While downloading packages we have installed ttf-nafees (Nafees Web Naskh) but there is another popular Urdu font that you need in order to view most Urdu webpages correctly. The font is BBC’s Urdu Naskh Asiatype. You can download it from here.

Open Terminal and type this:

sudo nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype

this will open a Nautilus window, paste your fonts here.

Step 4: Now we need to download a Urdu phonetic keyboard layout. You have many choices here you can use Crulp’s Phonetic Urdu Keyboard Layout or use Urdu Web’s keyboard layout. I use Urdu Web’s keyboard layout and you can download it here. After downloading your keyboard layout rename it to pk not pk .txt just pk and type this command in terminal:


sudo nautilus /etc/X11/xkb/symbols


This command will open a Nautilus window. Paste the pk file in symbols directory replacing the pk keyboard layout that comes with Ubuntu by default.

Step 5: Point your mouse to an empty space on your Top or Bottom Panels, right click and select Add to panel. A window will open giving you choices of applets to add on your panel. Select Keyboard Indicator and then press Close button. Now you have an applet on your panel showing the default USA. Take your mouse over there and right click to select Keyboard Preferences. In the Layouts tab press the Add button. Now select Pakistan from the list of Available layouts and then press Ok and then press Close.

Now you have Phonetic Urdu keyboard layout and you can switch between US English and Urdu by clicking on the indicator or by pressing both ALT keys together.

Step 6: Restart your computer.

Now check if you can not read, write and edit Urdu web pages, text files and documents on your Ubuntu box. Still having problems? Please make sure that you have followed the instructions exactly as provided above. If every thing is all right and you think you have followed the instructions then leave a comment so that we can improve this tutorial.

I didn’t get much out of the Ubuntu team, because:

• It is difficult to communicate with team members.
• Most team members are not very enthusiastic. I hardly see any reply from team members on the mailing list and even after several emails I failed to get them work on Rosetta.
• They don’t have the tools (ability to read and write Urdu on their computers) and knowledge (Working knowledge of English and Urdu languages) necessary to work on the project.

I tried my best to develop an interest and enthusiasm among team members but so far it hasn’t worked out the way I expected.

On the other hand UrduWeb already had a localization team and some very enthusiastic members when I joined them to get help with Ubuntu Translators. Admins at Urdu Web approved my suggestions and provided me the freedom to carry out my projects and helped me implement them. We are not seeing great progress on Urdu Web front either, but it is moving a head, slowly but steadily.

After the launch of Word Bank we sparked an interest and hope among Urdu Web Localization team members. We created a Localization Policy Guideline and I took responsibility to coordinate the team effort. We have also made a team to review the quality of translations on Word Bank and Gnome. The glossary we have made on Urdu Word Bank is the greatest achievement we have made so far. It is going to help lots of translators in the future. I am now working hard to get Gnome translated on UrduWeb and then I will upload those po files on Rosetta.

My Cable Internet service provider also uses the same stupid MS ISA server firewall. They are a nice group of guys but they act crazy sometimes. This time, they updated the servers and forced me to authenticate to a proxy server. No big deal, I knew how to get around this trouble but this time they had gone totally mad and configured the sever to accept HTTP requests from Mozilla and IE only.

I was unable to download updates using either synaptic or apt-get. Fortunately I found Micheal Carden’s Ubuntu – ntlmaps post and it solved all my problems. Not that I was unaware of ntlmaps but actually I was unable to get it configure to use my proxy. Micheal Carden’s post explained how he solved this by moving the server.cfg from /etc/ntlmaps/ to /usr/lib/site-python/ntlmaps/main.py. This ntlmaps thing just works!

• Improved the wiki pages for Ubuntu Urdu Translators and Pakistani teams.
• Persuaded the Canonical and got a mailing list for Ubuntu Urdu translators.
• Encouraged the teams to actively take part in the translation efforts.
• Discussed the collabration with Gnome Urdu Translation group.
• Encouraged the team to adopt a goal oriented strategy.

Currently I am involved in the translation of some templates on Ubuntu. I will be spending more time on developing a small software to assist Urdu Translators everywhere to find out the translations of most commonly used terms and phrases and add new translations. This project will provide a web interface to search for an English term and provide its translation in Urdu. It is not a dictionary but a word bank where any one can deposit, change, improve and look up for translations. With this project in action, I am hoping to see great improvements in the quality and progress of open source software translations in Urdu. Every one is invited to join the team or start translating templates without joining the team. Below are some links that would help new contributors get started:

• Ubuntu Urdu Translation Templates
• Ubuntu Urdu Translators Team
• Ubuntu Urdu Translators Mailing list

Ubuntu is most of all a community. All of the software, artwork and documentation in Ubuntu has been created, tested, used and discussed openly by people around the world participating in the Open Source community made possible by the Internet. Anyone who uses Ubuntu is part of this global community, and we invite you to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your needs. To make it yours!

Here is a list of how I am contributing to Ubuntu GNU/Linux. It is not much comparing to what so many others are doing for the community. But I think showing off contributions is one way to inspire others specially those who are un-familiar with open and free software philosophy.

• The easiest way to contribute is to use Ubuntu. I am using it for five months now.
• I have distributed Ubuntu Linux CDs to some friends. Successfully convinced one of them to use Ubuntu at home.
• I am spreading the word on Ubuntu by blogging and writing about my Ubuntu experience on various local forums.
• Currently I am trying to improve the out of box Urdu support in Ubuntu. I am trying to get in touch with MOTU’s and Developers.

I am also a member of Urdu Translators and Ubuntu Pakistan Teams. Not much progress going on in both of these teams I think we don’t have good leaders to motivate rest of the team members. We need to organize small events in Pakistan to promote Ubuntu particularly for schools, Internet Cafes, small businesses and home users. We also need translators for Urdu translation of Ubuntu. I want to do lots of things but it seems like may be I am over excited or the other community members are busy somewhere else.

After upgrading to Dapper, I found that Firefox in Dapper does not render Urdu fonts properly. Since I spend a lot of time reading Urdu blogs and news sites, it was a major issue. It even forced me to install Konqueror, Galeon, Epiphany, Swiftfox, Firefox’s mozilla built. I spent many hours reading bug reports, comments on the bug reports, following different forum discussions and sharing my problem with users on all these platforms. I tried many solutions none of them worked out. On my way I found that several other people using different Linux distros were facing the same problem.

Then finally I found a discussion where some users were suggesting that Pango support should be disabled for Firefox. They suggested eachother to add MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 line in /etc/environment file. I tried this solution but it didn’t work. Then I tried MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0 and bingo!

Now I can read Urdu web pages and firefox renders these web pages perfectly displaying Urdu fonts beautifully even better than the Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows.

I am not sure about what was really wrong with Firefox but I guess that Ubuntu Dapper has pango support enabled for selective locales only. Firefox didn’t render Urdu fonts using Pango. I am not sure about this and would be grateful if someone confirms this to me.

The moral of story is that my Ubuntu Linux is very powerful and using it I can do whatever I want. You the windows user? Can you do this with your Windows?

Remember these CDs will take atleast 4 to six weaks to arrive. You can get Ubuntu quickly if you order your CDs from Linux Pakistan (Rs. 35 only + shipping charges). Feel free to contact Tariq Farooqi for any questions, information or details.

There are many other ways to get Ubuntu CDs. Check out your local computer hardware and software stores and shops. Contact Pakistan Linux User Community members in your town if any one of them has spare Ubuntu CDs they would love to help you. I am one of the PLUC members so feel free to contact me if you are in Karachi.

1. Pakistanis who spend their time in front of computers at work are forced to work in a Microsoft Windows environment.
2. Home users in Pakistan demand full multimedia support so that they could watch pirated videos on their computers and enjoy pirated music. So who cares about using a free legal software.
3. Young computer users prefer to spend their time playing games and most such games are made for Windows. They also don’t like the way Linux based distros treat Instant Messaging. You can not show or view web cam of your MSN Buddies using Gaim.
4. Small Businesses, aren’t they aware of the fact that Linux has tools which could increase their productivity.
5. What about schools? Does any body ever tried to sell thin clients running on Linux to any local school? Like that $100 laptop thingie, can’t we do such a thing in Pakistan? May be we can not create a laptop but we can atleast equip schools with low price, highly reliable and better learning machines. Reading about edubuntu I think that it has so many learning oppurtunities, it is a great tool for schools.

There is a lot more to it. Please add your reasons in comments. Why you think Linux is not catching up in Pakistan?