Why Pardus?

The following observations are revealed when we examine the place of the operating systems in the area of information technology in our country, the sectors they indirectly affect and their relations with the development motion in general:

  • An operating system is required on which critical applications can work for the purpose of national defense, security and savings, which supports an open and standard data structure, whose source code is open as to allow for security monitoring and which can be deployed without suffering any financial burden.
  • Redirecting the activities in Turkey about the information technology toward the value added projects and focusing on the high technology based on research and development activities are required.
  • It is compulsory that the local data buildup which is both prerequisite and the result of such buildup are ensured in terms of both technological field and business processes.
  • It should be preferred to determine the direction of the technological development, to change the weight of differing areas and thus to be dominant on the roadmap of the said operating system depending on the requirements of the country.

Proceeding from that, it has been decided to enter into business to create a Linux-based distribution.

Pardus Vision

It is necessary to define the area to be covered over time by the distribution in order to make various high level preferences and determinations.

  • The distribution shall become an operating system distribution in the vertical markets with differing versions, in various use styles and areas, preferred, used and deployed in every sections of the society.
  • Although a non-profit organization, a sustainable organization shall be created which can stand by means of the business models to be created and used, and with its own resources.
  • The developers shall make original contributions to the Linux and open source society on a global scale by brining applicable and innovation solutions to the existing technological problems.

Pardus Aims

  • To provide full Turkish support by making the character structure compatible to Turkish (UTF-8 compatibility) and by making all the messages and documents visible to users into Turkish.
  • To ensure that it is an operating system which can be installed and used more easily than the existing Linux distributions and other competitive operating systems.
  • Designing its in a modular configuration which can achieve the required flexibility and high performance with a task-based and human-focused approach rather than a tool-based and technology-based one.


 

History

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.

Team

As the application plan becomes more clear and concrete, it was then time to become focused on the technical aspects of the project. Then the personnel to become the core people of the team to create the Linux distribution and to prepare a model architecture were selected and hired. At this stage, the ways to make use of the information buildup and experience as much as possible were searched considering the Linux history of Turkey, existing and planned distributions, open source and Linux society and their initiatives. Finally, the implementation stage of the project has been launched with the formation of the core staff at the end of the year 2003.

Plan

Pardus project has been divided into subprojects for more flexibility and ease of management and the scopes of these subprojects have been determined. The required infrastructure for the distribution has been planned and we started to establish this infrastructure in stages. The basic components of the distribution to be developed locally have been determined and the requirements analysis has been initiated for these components. As of early 2004, the planning stage has been completed and design stage was launched.

Pardus 1.0 was officially announced in 27 December, 2005. About one year later, Pardus 2007 was ready to be downloaded from servers (18 December, 2006).

Developers are currently working on Pardus 2007.2.

Logos

Pardus logos in different size and resolutions can be found here.


Information and documents on Pardus web pages can be used freely anywhere with original source credit.
For information and suggestion(s) please write to info_at_pardus.org.tr
TÜBİTAK - UEKAE, PK.74 41470, Gebze / Kocaeli.