Aryabhatt Linux

After several years of

being around, it seems that India is finally beginning to take Linux

a little more seriously. Although, PC Quest for the last few

years, has been providing Linux to its readers, what’s put on the CD

is not really a PCQ distribution, but basic Red Hat

Linux.

However, the first Indian

distribution is now on the scene–Aryabhatt Linux.

When the installation was

started, an all too familiar-looking installation process of Red Hat

is what seemed to pop up on the screen. But there were some subtle

differences. First of all, the only language available for the

install was English. Then, on selecting a full installation, it

didn’t bother to ask any more questions, and quietly went ahead and

installed all of the OS–a whopping 1,600 MB, but a very complete

installation indeed. Lots of applications were bundled in, including

an office suite, called KOffice.

The little box on the side

where help information is available during the installation has the

address and contact information of Linux Technologies, and

appropriate help as well.

For the installation, we

used a completely fresh hard disk, so there were no issues regarding

partition, etc. But, I do believe that partitioning has become

easier, and if there were an existing OS, it wouldn’t have been

disturbed in any way.

Now where are those SiS

6215 cards when you need them the most? At PCQ Labs, we weren’t able

to lay our hands on any SiS cards, so we were unable to test

Aryabhatt’s ability in detecting and correctly installing

these.

Overall, the installation

was quite smooth, with no surprises or problems at all. During the

install process, a message did pop up about being able to play a

game on one of the virtual consoles. But when we tried it, we got an

error message and the game didn’t start up. All the same,

installation was quite a breeze.

Once the installation was

complete, using the system wasn’t difficult at all. The default X

Windows interface selected is KDE, and as we’d installed everything,

there were tons of applications and goodies that we could try

out.

KOffice was the office

suite installed, which is quite good. It has all the standard

applications–like a spreadsheet, a word processor, an image editor,

and a presentation package. It’s capable of reading documents from

MS Office as well. However, it’s in beta version.

Apart from an office suite,

a host of other programs are bundled in. Some of the extras include

ICQ, KSendFax, Kjukebox, Knetmon, etc.

Also, when compared to a

standard Red Hat 6.1 install, this contains all updated packages and

even a newer, stable kernel.

The package comes at a

price of Rs 2,100, inclusive of all taxes. There’s no mention of

support or anything else that’s included in that price. It does come

packaged with a thin "Step By Step Guide", but as with most Linux

distributions, the main documentation is mainly on the CD itself and

can be installed anytime Now, some things that are not quite right about it.....

Now, some things that are

not quite right about it. First of all, the fact that it’s based on

Red Hat 6.1 has been hidden for some reason, and there’s only a very

brief mention of that on the side of the box. I thought that was a

bit unfair. Since the overall look and feel is still the same as Red

Hat, a little more credit should have been given to them.

Secondly, having the latest

and the greatest is always good, but not at the expense of crashes

or instability. Shipping software which is beta is not a good idea.

There are people out there who may go and use this as their

production servers and those should definitely only run with stable

and known software.

The box screams about

"Customized for the Indian user", but I didn’t find anything that

made the distribution India-specific. Yes, during the installation,

when it selects the time zone, it does automatically come up with

Asia/Calcutta, even though our time zone defaults to Allahabad. But

apart from that, I found nothing. Even setting up a PPP connection

lists other countries and ISPs, but nothing Indian there. So, I

haven’t quite figured out what the company really means by their

slogan.

Finally, who is "Peggy"?

The box has a picture of Tux with "Peggy" written across his

stomach, and it’s been trademarked. A little unfair–you can’t just

take the official logo, write a new name on it, and then trademark

it, can you?

But all things aside, at

least we have the first official distribution from the country and

maybe we shall see more of them. Hopefully, with a little more

Indianization, things like language support, etc, would be a great

boost.

href="mailto:kishore@pobox.com">Kishore Bhargava