Johannesburg, 26 Oct 2004
Impi Linux, the local open source distribution project, has released Impi Linux 2, the first wholly South African Linux distribution designed and supported by South Africans to meet specific local business and user requirements.
The distribution is boosted with immediate access to local support via the telephone or e-mail. Significantly, support is provided by the developers of this distribution themselves. In terms of specifically South African services, Impi Linux 2 now fully supports Sentech`s MyWireless offering, the only Linux flavour to do so out-of-the-box.
"The Impi project is geared towards providing South Africans with open source software that suits their needs and works well in their environment, and for which they can get support immediately," says Ross Addis, technology consultant at MIP Holdings, chairman of the Gauteng Linux User Group (GLUG), and spokesperson for the project. "The release of Impi Linux 2 offers South Africans a viable local alternative in the Linux market."
Unlike Impi Linux 1, which borrowed from several existing distributions, Impi Linux 2 is not based on Red Hat, SuSE, SlackWare, Debian or any other Linux distribution. A key feature is support for Sentech`s MyWireless, while improvements have been made to the server components; anti-spam technology and virus filters have been integrated into the mail transfer agents; and firewalling and security have been included as standard.
As a binary-based Linux distribution, Impi Linux 2 runs at high speed with an average install time of 15 minutes for 2.2GB worth of software. It also has a wide variety of applications, all glued together and supported by South African developers. Impi Linux 2 has been released onto 10 FTP servers globally, including servers in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, the US, and two servers in SA. In the first few hours of release, on 7 October on the SAIX (South African Internet Exchange) FTP server, there were 180 downloads.
"The inspiration for a uniquely South African distribution came from the ideal of providing an integrated, multilingual, professional and innovative open source solution to the local and international markets," Addis says.
"Members of the various open source user groups across the country also wanted to prove to the open source world that SA has the technological skills and capabilities to contribute positively to the open source movement."
Impi Linux 2 is stable, virus-free and anyone can download and use it for free. As a multi-purpose distribution it includes the most common server type applications and a vast array of desktop applications and utilities.
Due to popular demand, KDE has been used as the window manager instead of Gnome. Impi Linux is also offering pre-compiled downloadable packages on the Web site and extra application CDs. This latest Impi release comes bundled with:
* KDE, which provides the graphic user interface
* Gaming, CD burning and multimedia components
* Support for many local and international languages
* E-mail and Web browsing capabilities
* The full office suite OpenOffice, with its word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software
* The latest version of Cubit Accounting, the South African-developed financial application
"The reaction of technical users and open source gurus to this latest release has been positive," Addis concludes. "One of the biggest benefits of creating a local distribution is the local support that backs it up. If someone wants a special feature, or support for a specific device, they simply contact us, and we get to work on finding a solution. There are no calls to contact centres that link you to someone in Spain, where your call is simply logged but nothing gets done to solve the problem or enhance the distribution. South Africans are responsible for their own Linux distribution."
The Impi Linux Web site, www.impilinux.org, contains links to download Impi Linux 2, and presents visitors and users with integrated support forums and user forums.
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