Report: Pardus Linux

Linux Distribution Pardus 2011.2 Cervus elaphus http://www.pardus.org.tr/en/

Background

The Linux distribution chosen for this report is Pardus Linux. This operating system is made by Pardus project, which is owned and operated by TÜBİTAK BİLGEM, the leading free software initiation of Turkey, since 2003. Pardus project is focused on developing a mainstream operating system, and also aims to develop a high level technological innovation.

Since 2005, Pardus project has released several products for individual users. After 6 years, products are being offered to corporate users as well. Some of the products also offered by the Pardus project include development, migration, setup and other support directly or with other partners.

Pardus, originally code-named “ÖZGÜR” (meaning free), was initiated by the Prime Minister of Turkey in September 2003 as a research product. It took a year of Research and development for Pardus Linux to be released as a live CD.

People started becoming interested in Pardus Linux as it had a different design and approach for a Linux operating system than the other available ones. Finally in 2007, Pardus 2007 was released as the first stable version. It was to be used in corporations, and lead to an increase in Pardus Linux popularity around the world.

After some years of development and releases, Pardus 2011 was released.

The main target audience for Pardus Linux seems to be home, developers and corporate users. However with two different variations (corporate and home), this distribution specializes for each type of user.

Pardus 2011.2 Cervus elaphus, the version being used in this report, can be downloaded from the mirrors on Pardus’s website: http://www.pardus.org.tr/en/pardus/indir/ The downloaded ISO file is approximately 1.2 GB in file size. This is quite a large for a Linux distribution as others similar distributions are around the size of a standard CD.

Installation/Startup Pardus Linux was installed into Mac OS X Lion using VMware Fusion 4.0. The amount of RAM dedicated for this 8 GB disk spaced virtual machine was 512MB. One processor core at 2.0 GHz was also dedicated for this virtualization. The requirements for installation were:

• CPU: x86 (Intel or AMD min. 350 MHz, recommended > 1000 MHz)
• Memory: 256 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
• CD-ROM: 4x or better
• Disk: >4 GB

Creating this virtual machine was quite standard. Like any other virtualization, the downloaded ISO file was selected and the next steps were taken as directed by VMware.

After creating the virtual machine, Pardus was booted for the first time and the boot options were displayed. Pardus offered several major languages for installation. English (US) were selected in for this one.

File:IMAGE Figure 1 - Startup

One of the attractive features of Pardus was that it was very user friendly. Being dedicated towards being an easy-of-use distribution, the makers did a well job getting the expected result.

The installation process was very simple and looked elegant compared to other distrubtions.

File:IMAGE Figure 2 - Pre-installation

The options were laid out very nicely and weren’t redundant or complicated.

File:IMAGE Figure 3 - Date setup

File:IMAGE Figure 4 - Disk setup

The partitioning settings were also easy to use. “Use All Disk” option was selected in this installation.

Throughout the installation, which took about 25 minutes, various features of Pardus were shown. Pardus came with all types of preinstalled software that users look for in modern operating systems. Noticeable applications were LibreOffice as the productivity suite, and FireFox as the default web browser.

File:IMAGE Figure 5 - Installation

There were no prompts or disturbances during the installation. This seemed to be a great thing as it could be left to install without needing a careful watch for any user or network settings dialog that would pause the installation like a Windows setup.

Figure 6 - Installation complete

After the installation was completed, a restart was required. The restart screen was also nice as it was a graphical one rather than a ‘text-based’.

File:IMAGE Figure 7 - Starting up Pardus Linux 2011.2

After a smooth and hassle free installation, upon first boot, a few steps were shown to personalize the operating system.