Impi Linux 2 to be launched at open source Installfest (ITWeb) [LWN.net]

Impi Linux 2 to be launched at open source Installfest (ITWeb)

Posted Sep 3, 2004 19:57 UTC (Fri) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104)
In reply to: Impi Linux 2 to be launched at open source Installfest (ITWeb) by ranger
Parent article: Impi Linux 2 to be launched at open source Installfest (ITWeb)

There is a wide range of hardware is use, much of it much older than you will find in Europe and the US where the most popular distributions come from.

Most distro's don't have problems with old hardware, but rather with new hardware.

Most modern distro's don't run well on Pentiums with 64 MBs of RAM...

Simple things like having the modem config pre-configured with the local ISPs and the default browser web page have ZA links.

Most distros already provide means to do this (for the other 100-odd countries who have the same requirements).

The means yes, but not pre-configured.

Provide a O/S for South Africans to build local support businesses around.

There are already lots of South African businesses that provide services on existing linux distributions (such as the one I work for). Impi won't get into the majority of institutions we really need to penetrate to get corporate acceptance (which will lead to more adoption than advocacy normally does).

Presumably these businesses are built around commercial distributions like Redhat, SUSE or Mandrake. Since these all come from overseas, that is a lot of foreign currency going out of the door. I don't know if Impi is the answer - I'm not involved with it at all. But, I do think that South Africa (and perhaps Africa in general) needs their own commercial distribution. Wouldn't the company you work for make more profit if their business was built around a commercial distribution that cost Rands instead of US dollars or Euros?

I don't really see the need for Impi to be totally different ... but then for example I note that Mandrakelinux is already translated into Afrikaans (the whole installer), and it will include the latest translate.org.za translations for OpenOffice.

As I replied before, I missed the point the original poster was making. I agree that new distributions should not be different just for the sake of it.

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