Linux from Africa
First we had Impi, then we had Ubuntu. Now a group of South African developers have released Kongoni, a new Linux distribution.
Named after the Shona word for GNU – the mascot of the Free Software Foundation – Kongoni is built on a base of Slackware Linux but is meant to emulate BSD-Unix with its package management.
The makers of Kongoni, led by well-known SA open source developer AJ Venter, say they making a "truly free" Linux operating system that will be well-suited to low bandwidth in Africa as well as being usable by international users.
Technically, says Venter, Kongoni adopts a BSD ports-like approach to package management. "Ports represent a powerful way to distribute software as a set of tools that automatically fetch the sources of the program and then compile it locally," he says. "This is more bandwidth friendly for users as source code is usually smaller than prebuilt packages. This benefit is particularly useful in Africa where bandwidth is expensive, and since Kongoni came from Africa this was a major concern."
Ports also allow power-users to manage the compilation of applications, allowing them greater control over the performance and capabilities of the software, he says.
Unlike Ubuntu’s preference for the Gnome desktop interface, Kongoni ships by default with the KDE 4.2 desktop. But, says Venter, the system is intended to be easy to remaster so users can easily build and replicate the system with their own preferred setups and desktops.
The Kongoni baseline release is available as both an installable disk image or as a live CD. Using the Live CD users can run the software directly from the disk without installing it to the hard disk.
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