As I am writing this, we (Maria and I) are on the train from Helsinki to Vaasa. It's Monday morning, around 10:30.

For the past three days we've been traveling home after a 7 day trip to Algeria. We'll be glad to be home after this exhausting journey, but at the same time we wish we were back over there as the weather was so much better (+22 over there compared to -15 here with lots of snow) and we miss the people already.



The purpose of the trip was work related, with a day or so scheduled for relaxing and sightseeing. Algeria is a beautiful country which has so many
places to visit and such diverse nature that one should spend a lot more time there to really discover the place. Something we will definitely do next time we're there.





The work we did was mostly network related at the Mohamed Khider University in Biskra http://www.univ-biskra.dz/, some 500km south of the capital Algiers. We installed servers during a previous visit, and this time we did a check-up while also installing a Network Management and Monitoring system based on Nagios and OpenNMS and also Moodle for e-learning and course management besides others.

As you are probably reading this on the PowerDeveloper blog, you might wonder what this all has to do with the Efika MX. We installed,
what we believe to be, the fist Efika MX on the African continent at the University. The Efika MX has been configured with Xubuntu, Ubuntu and Fluxbox to evaluate as a stand-alone system.



It also serves as a NoMachine NX client to connect to the NX Application Server, turning the Efika MX into a thin client.



While we did not have time to try the latest kernel on the spot, the system performed nicely. Future updates will enable hardware acceleration and native TFT display resolutions which should make the experience even better.





After the tests, the system was installed in the office of the rector as a demonstration for visitors there.





With the University work done, we visited several offices and plants of the ETUHP Menani company http://www.etuhpmenani.com/, a large enterprise active in utilities (oil an gas), civil engineering and road construction among others. We would not be able to do the work we do without their support, facilities and knowledge, for which we want to express our sincere gratitude.




More later....
Johan.