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Linux in Brazil

February 25, 2004

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

Few countries have taken to Linux with as much enthusiasm as Brazil. The sheer number of Open Source Software developers, community projects, commercial Linux companies and users coming from Brazil is unparalleled by any other middle-income country. Indeed, Brazil's programming talent is an important contributor to the success of Linux and Linux software not only within its borders, but also internationally. Let's take a look at some of the more interesting projects developed recently in the largest South American country. (Note: unless stated otherwise, links in this article lead to web sites with content in Portuguese.)

Probably the best known Linux effort coming from Brazil is Conectiva Linux. In development since 1997, Conectiva is a privately held commercial company providing a localized distribution, training and other services for the Latin American market. It is best known for developing a port of Debian's apt for RPM-based distributions, as well as a graphical package management tool called Synaptic. During the course of the last few years, Conectiva provided employment to a number of well-known Linux developers, including Marcelo Tosatti, the current maintainer of the 2.4 kernel series, Alfredo Kojima, the creator of the WindowMaker window manager, and Esveraldo Coelho, the designer of the popular Conectiva Crystal icon sets for KDE. It is interesting to note that all code developed by Conectiva has been released under GPL. The Conectiva Linux distribution is in active development and the upcoming version 10, currently in beta testing and scheduled for release in the 2nd quarter of 2004, will incorporate the latest kernel 2.6, KDE 3.2 and GNOME 2.6.

Compared to Conectiva, Kurumin Linux is a much younger distribution, a community-driven project led by Carlos Morimoto and Flavio Moreira. Based on Knoppix, but stripped down to fit on a mini CD and with support for installation on hard disk, Kurumin has converted a substantial number of computer users to Linux. The two main reason for its dramatic success are great looks and a wealth of documentation written in Portuguese. Kurumin Linux is a well-designed distribution with plenty of eye-candy, logical menu structures, a custom control panel for common configuration tasks and a feature called "magic icons" (see screenshot). Perhaps even more importantly, the Kurumin developers have contributed an enormous amount of quality documentation for novice Linux users, in an easy-to-understand language. No wonder that its forums are buzzing with interest and new versions are released on a regular basis. Kurumin Linux is one of the most influential Linux community projects created anywhere in the world!

The success of Kurumin is evidenced by a number of other projects that use Kurumin Linux as a base. One of the more ambitious among them is Kalango Linux, which attempts to expand the original small set of applications to include some of the often requested ones, thus creating a more complete distribution for desktops. Another Kurumin-based distribution is the newly launched Tupiserver Linux, which as the name suggests, is specifically designed for servers and excludes desktop software. Yet another project with Kurumin as its immediate parent is Dizinha Linux, a distribution designed for old computers, where all resource-intensive applications are substituted with smaller and lighter alternatives.

Brazil's commercial Linux companies face the same challenges as their counterparts in other parts of the world and several attempts at creating commercial Linux distributions for the local market appear to have failed. Tech Linux and LuminuX are two RPM-based distributions which have not produced new releases for nearly two years, while the Slackware-based Definity Linux is a commercial Linux distribution with a comparatively small user base.

One of the most unique projects developed in Brazil is GoboLinux (web site in English). GoboLinux is a Linux distribution which attempts to redefine the UNIX file system hierarchy and replace it with a more intuitive one; see our recent coverage here. GoboLinux's latest release, version 010, was included as a cover disk in the January 2004 edition of Brazil's most influential Linux magazine - Revista do Linux. Other projects from Brazil include MURIX (web site in English), a fairly quiet source-based distribution for advanced users, CEMF Linux, a Slackware-based distribution that can be installed on a FAT32 partition and Litrix, another Slackware-based project, a live CD derived from SLAX and fully localized into Brazilian Portuguese. Also based on Slackware is Projecto JoLinux, one of the first distributions shipping with kernel 2.6 earlier this year.

The wealth of locally developed open source projects has not gone unnoticed by Brazil's authorities. In October 2003, the country's government signed a letter of intent with IBM pledging to develop initiatives that will promote the use of Linux in Brazil. Some of these initiatives include Linux training for government officials and programs to encourage deployments of Linux-based systems in small and medium-sized businesses. The implementation of these programs will be monitored by a small team comprising of government experts and IBM employees. Earlier last year, Brazil launched a program to migrate 80% of public sector computers from Windows to Linux, starting with a 3-year pilot migration in one ministry.

Brazil is often referred to by the general population as a "country of football and samba" (pun not intended). As for the computer enthusiasts among us, it is safe to call it a "country of Linux and Free Software".

Comments (2 posted)

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