Ndiyo was a not-profit organisation based out of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, which aimed to promote networked computing that is "simple, affordable, open." Ndiyo, pronounced ''nn-dee-yo,'' is the

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language officially used in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes. * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa. * Swahili culture, the culture of the Swahili p ...

word for "yes". The company developed an ultra-thin client called the ''nivo'' (network in, video out) based on

Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical and a community of contributors under a meritocratic governance model, Ubuntu is released ...

and other

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

, for use especially in

developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...

. The data sent to the clients over the network was pixel data, using a similar approach to

Virtual Network Computing VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the RFB protocol, Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the computer keyboard, keyboard and computer mouse, mouse in ...

(VNC). The project worked on the basis of multiple workstations running from a single PC.

Quentin Stafford-Fraser James Quentin Stafford-Fraser is a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Cambridge, England. He was one of the team that created the first webcam, the Trojan room coffee pot. Quentin pointed a camera at the coffee pot and wrote the XCoff ...

, founder of the organisation, told

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

"We can make computing more affordable by sharing it". The system allows a basic PC running

linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

to be shared by many users. The Ndiyo Nivo was similar in concept to Sun Microsystems'

Sun Ray The Sun Ray is a stateless thin client computer (and associated software) aimed at corporate environments, that was originally introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999 and discontinued by Oracle Corporation in 2014. It features a smart ...

virtual display thin client, but at sub-$100 and using only 2W, it was lower-cost and used much less power, making it more suitable for these kinds of situations. In addition to its use by organisations within the United Kingdom, Ndiyo-based systems were deployed in internet cafes in Bangladesh and South Africa, and in Tanzanian Schools. The Nivo technology went on to become the basis of

DisplayLink DisplayLink Corp. (formerly Newnham Research) is a semiconductor and software technology company. It specializes in developing DisplayLink USB graphics technology, enabling connections between computers and displays via USB, Ethernet, and WiFi. ...

, a company founded by members of the team.

References

External links

Ndiyo!The Ndiyo system and the nivo

Video of a 2006 Ndiyo deployment in BangladeshVideo of a 2006 Ndiyo deployment in South Africa
Organisations based in Cambridge Swahili words and phrases Thin clients {{Compu-network-stub