Pardus OS by Turkish Developers

Please Welcome: Anatolian Leopard a.k.a. Pardus 1.0

Pardus, named after the famous Anatolian leopard, is available for download online.

The open source, Linux based operating system Pardus, developed within the scope of the Uludag Project under the auspices of the National Research Insbreastute of Electronics & Cryptology (UEKAE) of the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), is now available for download.

Pardus 1.0 fully supports the Turkish language, and is designed for easy installation and operation. It was developed by a group of distinguished Turkish software developers. Empowered with innovative technologies, Pardus is expected to arouse interest in the global Linux community.

Developed With Free Software Approach Pardus developer buttoc. Prof. Erkan Tekman said that they developed Pardus through the free software approach. Tekman said: "Pardus is free software and will be distributed under the General Public License freely. We started working on Pardus in 2003 when the necessity of having a national operating system emerged. In 2004, we completed the planning and design phases and entered the implementation phase."

Tekman added that the open source software has several advantages over closed and proprietary software. He said "The first advantage is security. Open source software, by its very nature, is inspected by thousands of eyes from the very beginning of the development process to the release stage. If a developer or a company with evil intentions drops some suspicious code into the software, it cannot remain hidden from all these cautious eyes for long. Because the source code is open, possible security flaws are patched immediately. Besides, since the open source software is controlled and inspected by a large group of developers, it is much more stable than proprietary software. Flexibility is another buttet of open source software, since the source code can be modified and changed as needed and thus the software can meet new requirements. Linux, which is being developed by a global community working together, provides savings in total cost of ownership through its licensing method and its ease of maintenance and management as well."

According to Dr. Tekman, there are 300 different Linux distributions including those that support the Turkish language. However, Pardus sports full Turkish spelling check and provides grammar support, through the Turkish Natural Language Processing Library and Spell Checking Plug-in called Zemberek. This is available not only in office programs, but in most desktop applications, including instant messaging and e-mail clients.

"We have a configuration manager that enables application installed in the system work in harmony," adds Dr. Tekman, "We called it ‚OMAR. We named our package manager PiSi. They offer very smart and original solutions for two, previously not addressed problems. Sharing of ‚OMAR and PiSi with the global Linux community may well be declared as the first free software export by TUBITAK."

Pardus comes with numerous popular free software like Firefox web browser and OpenOffice.org office suite. Various applications, from Internet tools to games, from media players to personal information managers are also included in the Pardus CD.

With the widespread use of Pardus, Turkey's software imports are expected to decline dramatically, and hardware sales and computer ownership to increase consequently, as the total cost of ownership of computers drop off. Pardus will also contribute to Turkey's efforts toward becoming an information society and accelerating the e-transformation process. It is believed that, with the introduction of Pardus to the world at large, Turkey will secure itself a firm place on the global IT platform.

www.uludag.org.tr Pardus is a Linux based, open source, national operating system, developed by the National Research Insbreastute of Electronics & Cryptology (UEKAE) of the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). The Pardus infrastructure is designed modularly in a human-centric and task-based fashion, for easy installation and operation. Pardus is distributed and used freely under the General Public License (GPL).

TUBITAK UEKAE is a research insbreastute, which leads in developing new technologies in information security, communications and advanced electronics with more than 30 years of experience. UEKAE manages projects for state and private organizations, and contributes to science by cooperating with the universities as well.