Are We Entering the Golden Age of Forks?

In July 1998, the Frenchman Gaël Duval released his new GNU/Linux distribution called Mandrake-Linux. It was a fork of Red Hat using the KDE desktop - something that Red Hat itself was unwilling to provide because at that time the underlying Qt libraries were not open source. In 2005, the company set up to develop Mandrake-Linux further, MandrakeSoft, purchased the Brazilian open source company Conectiva, and the resulting distribution of the combined forces was re-named Mandriva. And now Mandriva is returning to its roots as a fork by being forked, as a new distro called Mageia:

On Open Enterprise blog.

OLPC: Out; OLPH: In

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I've given up on One Laptop Per Child. Happily, I've now come across something to fill the meme-sized hole that leaves:

Gdium.Com is launching the One Laptop Per Hacker program.

Here is your opportunity to contribute to the Gdium revolution.

The Gdium Team is opening a site and a program centralizing all the developer centric resources for the Gdium.

The OLPH program is supporting developers, contributors, creative artists, and other innovators who wish to:

* Optimize, improve the OS, Human Interface and/or Application stack of an “education centric” netbook.
* Experiment with the look and feel
* Provide and disseminate their new application stacks
* Redesign the artwork
* modify the hardware or integrate some nifty gadgets.
* Experiment with the Gdium to support new vertical markets.

For a limited set of selected contributors the Gdium Team provides a set of materials and services, enabling them to get an early start on this machine.

Gdium, in case you were wondering (as I was), are creating the groovy Gdium Liberty, which rather idiosyncratically uses Mandriva (remember that?).

Vladivostok Gives Free GNU/Linux Netbooks

I've written before about the increasing uptake of, and innovation around, free software in Russia. Here's another fascinating experiment, involving the Vladivostok State University of Economics and Services, which is giving students netbooks running the Mandriva distro:

Интересный эксперимент решили провести во Владивостокском государственном университете экономики и сервиса — вместо традиционных бумажных конспектов и ведомостей учета посещений вся работа вуза переведена в электронную форму. А преподаватели и студенты (все без исключения) в настоящее время бесплатно получают нетбуки Asus Eee PC 900 для работы с электронными ресурсами вуза как в учебных аудиториях, так и дома. Всего до 4 декабря только учащимся будет передано 997 нетбуков.

[Via Google Translate: An interesting experiment decided to meet in Vladivostok State University of Economics and services - instead of traditional paper notes and account statements visits all the work of high school is available in electronic form. And teachers and students (without exception) are currently free netbuki Asus Eee PC 900 to work with electronic resources in university classrooms or at home. Total until December 4, only 997 students will be transferred netbukov.]

This use of netbooks has had a knock-on effect on the university's coursework, which is now freely available for download (although bizarrely, many of the 400 courses are in Microsoft Office formats).

Uzbeks, Rejoice!

You have your own distro:

Завершена работа над созданием релиза Linux дистрибутива Doppix 2008.0 Edu, национальной операционной системы Узбекистана. Дистрибутив базируется на Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring Free, содержит полный набор образовательных, офисных и мультимедийных приложений, и предназначен для использования в среднеобразовательных учебных заведениях (школы, колледжи и лицеи), а также на домашних компьютерах и рабочих станциях предприятий.

Doppix 2008.0 Edu поддерживает 3 языка: узбекский (кириллица/латиница), русский и английский. В процессе разработки нестабильные и устаревшие пакеты были заменены более новыми. Также был добавлен обширный объём документации и расширена справочная система. Дистрибутив Doppix 2008.0 Edu разрабатывается с учётом местных условий специально для учебных заведений. Основной упор при разработке сделан на стабильность, простоту и общедоступность.

[Via Google Translate: Completed work on a Linux distribution release Doppix 2008.0 Edu, a national operating system in Uzbekistan. Distribution is based on Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring Free, contains a full set of educational, office and multimedia applications, and is intended for use in secondary schools (schools, colleges and lyceums), as well as home computers and workstations enterprises.

Doppix 2008.0 Edu supports 3 languages: Uzbek (Cyrillic / Latin), Russian and English. In the process of developing unstable and obsolete packages were replaced with newer. Also added was a vast amount of documentation and expanded information system. Distribution Doppix 2008.0 Edu developed to suit local conditions specifically for schools. The emphasis in the design placed on stability, simplicity and accessibility.]

OOXML: Poland Refuses to Roll Over

More fat ladies who haven't sung:

Tomasz Bednarski (Mandriva Poland) wrote a letter to PKN president, Tomasz Schweitzer, in which he expressed his concerns about the Polish OOXML ratification process which Bednarski took part of, as a member of the technical committee 182.

...

So, it seems that the OOXML saga in Poland is far from over and there will be more proceedings in the nearest future, which we will pass to you as soon as we hear about them.

Mandriva Goes "Eee"

I've written many times, both on this blog and elsewhere, about the importance of the Asus Eee PC and its ultraportable siblings in terms of defining a new market sector that is deeply problematic for Microsoft. Here's a further sign of that machine's influence: one of the major distros explicitly supporting the Eee out of the box:

We at Mandriva noticed Asus's excellent Eee PC low-cost, miniature notebook taking the world by storm. Thanks to our work on the Intel Classmate PC, we already had extensive experience of working with this type of system, and it was simple to make Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring 100% Eee-friendly. The Eee comes with a capable Linux distribution, but should you reach its limitations or prefer to install your favourite distribution instead, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is ready. It supports all the Eee's hardware out of the box, with no configuration required, and the Mandriva configuration tools and applications have been tweaked to be friendly to the Eee's lower resolution screen.

(Via Eee Site.)