Pardus:Contents

Revision as of 14:24, 4 June 2010

What It Is

Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution developed in Turkey, as a product of the Pardus Project. It was named after the Anatolian Leopard.

Pardus is an easy-to-install and use operating system, with many enhancements to desktop usability, compatibility and security. Through the versions from Pardus 1.0 to Pardus 2009.2 (current version), users can connect to Internet, read e-mails, securely communicate with others and exploit the computer's multimedia capabilities by listening to music and watching movies.

Ladislav Bodnar, the creator of DistroWatch, wrote in his round-up of Linux in 2006 that Pardus is one of the distros he was most impressed by this year "...thanks to unique package management ideas, innovative start-up sequence and general desktop polish..."[1]

Pardus is open source and freely distributed as a GPL (General Public License) product. It can be installed in Turkish, English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish or Brazilian Portuguese.

Background

Pardus was started and is developed by TÜBİTAK - UEKAE. This project aims to develop a GNU/Linux, plans on answering the expectations and basic desktop requirements of people who are computer-literate by using the excellent means of a Linux distribution, and code or architecture with building tools that will make it easy to use and set up operation.

In the year 2003, the necessity for a Linux distribution, similar applications all over the world, existing conditions of the software industry and the tendencies have been searched. The human resources of the country in the information technology area, the capabilities of the local software industry and their competitive aspects were examined. In the light of these findings, it has been concluded in the summer of 2003 that formation of a Linux distribution is an appropriate decision, and than concrete planning activities were started.

The existing operating systems, including primarily Linux have been examined, and open source software methodology and philosophy have been examined in detailed. As the target is to establish the organizational structure to make a distribution sustainable rather than merely establishing that distribution, the business models that can be used in the software industry, especially within the framework of the open source have been examined.

After these studies, it has been decided in the 2003 fall to create a Linux-based operating system distribution for which we can develop our planned software under GPL licenses.

Releases And Packages

The Pardus Live CD was the first product of the Pardus Project. The latest stable version (Pardus 2009.2 Geronticus eremita) of the Live CD includes the Linux 2.6.31.13 kernel, office tools (word processor, spreadsheet editor, presentation tool, etc.), Internet tools (browser, e-mail, instant messaging, relay chat etc. clients), multimedia and graphics tools (video player, music player, etc.), games and lots of other applications. COMAR is the configuration manager developed inhouse.

Goals

The goals of project are to develop a widely-used distribution, form an organization that will continue this distribution and contribute to the original technology by creating an ecosystem using this distribution and open source software around it.

Potential Users Of Pardus

Pardus is designed to fulfill the requirements of the following types of users and organizations.

• End users with basic desktop knowledge: Pardus includes many desktop applications for daily use, including mail reader, peer-to-peer download software, chat applications, internet browser, CD/DVD burner etc, as well as complex, niche applications like Blender (3D editor), GIMP (graphics software) and Scribus (desktop publishing).
• Developers: Pardus comes ready with required software (languages, libraries and development environments) in order to develop applications.
• Organizations in need of a server: Pardus repositories contain many servers like Apache, MySQL, OpenLDAP, DNS, etc.

PiSi Package Management

PiSi (Packages Installed Successfully as Intended, is the package management system of Pardus. It is the tool that installs, upgrades and removes the software packages successfully, as intended. PiSi stores and handles the dependencies for the other packages, libraries and COMAR tasks.

Some features of PiSi are the following:

• Uses LZMA
• Implemented in Python
• Efficient and small
• Package sources are written in XML and Python
• Fast database access implemented with Berkeley DB
• Integrates low-level and high-level package operations (dependency resolution)
• Framework approach to build applications and tools upon
• Comprehensive CLI and a user-friendly Qt GUI (distributed separately)
• Extremely simple and fast package construction

Hardware Requirements

For Pardus 2007, the hardware requirements are;

• At least 1200 MHz of CPU (Intel or AMD)
• 256 MB RAM (512 MB recommended)
• CD-ROM (4x or better)
• 4 GB of hard disk space

The new stable version, Pardus 2008, has more or less the same hardware requirements.

Developer/Technical Documents

Technical documents for those who are interested in contributing to the development of Pardus Project.

• How to be a Member of Pardus Testing Team
• New Developer's Guide : for those who are interested in being a Pardus Developer

External Links

All external links about Pardus can be found at Pardus links page