Hanthana Linux (operating system)

Hanthana Linux
Developer Hanthana Community
OS family Unix-like
Working state Current
Source model Open source
Initial release 19 September 2009 (2009-09-19)
Latest release 21 (Sinharaja) / April 2015 (2015-04)
Available in Multilingual
Update method Yum (PackageKit)
Package manager RPM Package Manager
Platforms i386, amd64
Kernel type Linux (Monolithic-based Hybrid)
Userland GNU
Default user interface GNOME
License Free software licenses
(mainly GPL)
Official website hanthana.org

Hanthana Linux is a computer operating system based on the Fedora distribution, distributed as free and open source software.[1]

It is specially designed to cater to the needs of Sri Lankan computer users who are unable to access the Internet frequently, with many most-wanted applications built in.[2]

Hanthana is developed by the Sri Lanka-based Hanthana Community.[3]

History and development process

Hanthana is a remix of the Fedora operating system. The original aim of the Hanthana team was to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop with as many useful applications preloaded, as downloading applications through Internet is not possible for many rural areas of Sri Lanka.

Hanthana's first release was on 19 September 2009.[4] Since then, Hanthana community has released new versions of Hanthana every six months with commitment to support each release for eighteen months by providing security fixes, patches to critical bugs and minor updates to programs. Once a new Fedora version is released, after some time, the corresponding Hanthana version will be released and it contains all the software updates up to the date of release.

Hanthana packages are based on packages from Fedora's: both distributions use RedHat's rpm package format and package management tools Yum (PackageKit).

Features

Hanthana is composed of many software packages, of which the majority are distributed under a free software license, making an exception only for some proprietary hardware drivers. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Hanthana. Hanthana focuses on usability, security and stability. Hanthana also emphasizes accessibility and internationalization to reach as many people as possible. From the start UTF-8 is the default character encoding, which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts.

Hanthana comes installed with a wide range of software that includes OpenOffice, Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission, GIMP, and several lightweight games (such as Sudoku and chess).

Installation

Installation of Hanthana is generally performed with the Live DVD. Hanthana can be run directly from the DVD (albeit with a significant performance loss), allowing a user to "test-drive" the OS for hardware compatibility and driver support.

Users can download a disk image (.iso) of the DVD, which can then either be written to a physical medium (DVD), or optionally run directly from a hard drive (via UNetbootin or GRUB).

Following minimum hardware specifications will ensure your work on Hanthana easier and faster:

For text mode recommended processor : 200 MHz Pentium Pro or faster minimum memory (RAM): 256 MB For graphical mode recommended processor : 400 MHz Pentium Pro or faster minimum memory (RAM): 640 MB recommended memory (RAM): 1152 MB Hard disk minimum free space of 15GB A DVD ROM

Latest Version

Hanthana Developer team has announced the release of Hanthana Linux 17, a Fedora-based distribution on a 3.5 GB live DVD with a large number of applications, media codecs and custom artwork: "Hanthana Linux 17 (Sithija) is released.

Hanthana Linux 17, the latest release of Hanthana was published on the 3rd anniversary of the Hanthana Linux project. In addition to the host of applications, the new release has the official LibreOffice guide provided by The Document Foundation added as well.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hanthana Official Website.
  2. ↑ Hanthana's default software list.
  3. ↑ Hanthana Community.
  4. ↑ Hanthana Linux Blog » Blog Archive » Hanthana Linux Launched
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 14, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.