Pardus 2011- End of Life

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On Friday, 27 January 2011, Semen Cirit sent an announcement to Pardus-Devel mailing list. The post was about the end of life of Pardus 2011 series.

Hello,

Pardus 2011 family, that has made the first stable release on 21 January
2011, followed by 2011.1 and 2011.2 releases, has reached end of life. From
now on, any future software updates won’t be made for Pardus 2011.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this version and use,

–
Semen Cirit

This was an unexpected thing. After this announcement, Turkish Pardus community Özgürlükİçin.com immediately asked five questions about this decision via the Turkish community list. Here is the questions and answers:

> 1 – Who was this decision given by?

By Pardus Managment, after the overall changes process TÜBİTAK and recently experienced a large loss of work force.

> 2 – Has it been be projected such a date to eol, in a release calendar which was unfollowed?

In general, versions of Pardus x.2 versions look about 6 months for sec-only and after such date, 1 or 2 months EOL happens. In this view, x.2 released at the beginning of November, for two main reasons was killed 4 months ago.

> 3 – Is this decision means that the home-user versions are at the end and no longer will be developed?

No, it does not, unfortunately, we have no  positive or negative conclusion about this.

> 4 – How can you expect such a decision to be explained to the community?

We have explained  it in the developer and announcement lists.

> 5 – How could you be persuaded to such a decision, while we are working for to increase public opinion, and to leave us in the lurch

This should not be seen as leaving you in the lurch, this is the natural result of the situation, it was obvious that 2011 is about to die, the commit lists were silent for the last 3-4 months of 2011,  we have only made ​​official with the announcement.

As you may see, this decision is quite unclear. Pardus has also a Corporate 2 verision, which is the important part for the government. After many of the developers resign, the work force is now a big problem for the project. maintaining 2 major releases seems not possible right now. Remaining devs are working for corporate projects.

Pardus users was not expecting updates or small bugfixes right now, they only expect the future of Pardus will be safe after this storm.

The previous post, we have shared the news, Ekin Meroğlu’s annouuncement about the Future of Pardus Workshop. The workshop seems to be made at the end of March. Nothing is clear at the moment, but we hoope that the workshop will be a hope for the future of Pardus.

After the EOL announcement on Friday, bad news travels fast… International and national communities of Pardus started to discuss about the future of Pardus, a fork for individual version is started to be spoken seriously.

You may see the discussions in the Worldforum. Also there is important posts about Pardus project int the Devel list, which we strongly recommend you to read.

Also there is discussions in international sites:

We really want to share good news with you. But living in free software is not easy right?

“Future of Pardus” Workshop

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Today, Ekin Meroğlu sent a statement  to Announce maling lists about the future of Pardus.

You may read the complete statement here:

Hi,

As there has been several discussions on the future of Pardus Linux, I
wanted to clear things up a bit.

Firstly, Pardus project is alive – despite the word on the forums and
mailing lists, the project is not closing it’s doors. But it is fair to say
that we are reorganizing.

As most of you know, Pardus is a project funded and supported by the The
Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). As a part
of this reorganization process, TÜBİTAK plans to arrange a workshop entitled
“Future of Pardus”. This workshop’s aim is to determine the future of Pardus
and work on the the technical roadmap of the distribution. Following this
workshop, the new roadmap will be planned and announced.

As we all know, reorganization of an ongoing project is a slow process – at
least, it is not as fast as we all want. We kindly request our fellow users
and contributors to be patient as this is an interim period.

All the best,
Ekin Meroğlu

Original post: http://lists.pardus.org.tr/pardus-announce/2012-January/000146.html

As more information will be available about the workshop and decisions, we will do our best to keep you updated about the news.

Project Fatih And Pardus

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Last year Turkish government announced the project “Eğitimde Fatih(Fırsatları Artırma Teknolojiyi İyileştirme Hareketi) (Eng: Increasing Opportunuties and Improving Technology in Education)“.

With this project, a serious improvements in Turkish education system is designed. The project aims to increase the technological support to the education in every classroom in Turkey.

With this project, 620.000 classrooms in first and middle level education will have smart LCD boards, laptops, multifunctional printer/copiers and high speed internet infrastructure. Also an important component of the project is “a tablet computer for each student” this means millions of tablets will be demanded for this project.

The project will be applied in two phases; in first phase, the smart LCD boards and laptops for each teacher will be supplied, in second phase tablet computers will be supplied for the students.

The project will cost around 8 Billion US Dollars. And it will be completed in 5 years.

After this short brief about project. Lets talk about the Pardus side of the project.

We, Turkish Pardus community followed the proced with our deep concern, as the first draft of the Tender Documents for the 1st phase’s first tender for the Smart LCD Boards, we figured that it writes that Pardus will be used as operation system of the Smart LCD Boards. This was wonderful news, and it was the greatest achievement for Pardus.

We tried to keep pressure on the subject, but as you may guess, Microsoft did its best and the administration changed the related condition of the tender file as:

“2.39.6 – As operation system, the latest versions of Microsoft Office and Pardus should be installed”

This item in the document of instructions to tenderers was a real disappointed for us. In CeBIT Eurasia 2011, an interactive Smart LCD board was running over Pardus. The attendants were really impressed. You may see the video below

This was a bad thing we had been expecting for, and it happened. This article created a duality for the operation systems. Windows and Pardus will be both installed.

Anyway, the projects process continued the first tender was made on 23.11.2011 for 3.657 schools for the supply of 84.921 interactive smart LCD Boards. Vestel A.Ş. has been awarded for the tender.

The otherside of the project was the tablet computers. Pardus project was also a pretender for the OS of the tablets, and Pardus developers installed Pardus to a tablet computer which is also presented in the CeBIT exhibition,

You may see its picture below.

Pardus installed tablet

Pardus installed tablet

It was a great deal to decide Pardus in the tablets. But Google Android’s success as a mobie operation system, Anroid has been decided as the OS for the tablets.

For pilot implementations, a tender has been made and General Mobile has been awarded for the tender with its product 8.9” Anroid tablet General Mobile e-Tab. The demand for the pilot implementations was about 8.500, the tender was made for the acquisition of 4.500 tablets.

Today, Binali Yıldırım, the minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications(The Ministry which leads the Fatih Project)gave an interview about the status of the Fatih Project.

A journalist asked that, “There is no mention of the name Microsoft in the Project” he replied that:

”There are various companies, and they have operation systems. Microsoft is the most known one, most common one. In Fatih project there is no obstacle or blocking for Microsoft. There shall be two operation systems optional. Microsoft may be used if it’s preffered by, or there is an operation system called Pardus which is developed by TÜBİTAK, Pardus will be used if it’s preffered by. It is a matter of choice. Microsoft is not excluded with a low profit”

This news are not very promising. But the thing is certain that Pardus will be installed on the interactive Smart LCD Boards together Microsoft Windows.

We hoped that Pardus will be the only OS for this big project, however it is already decided.

The good thing is that the minister pronounced the name Pardus, that is good for its reputation. We try to keep pressure on the subject but as you may understand this things go a bit usual everywhere in this tenders.

Another good thing is for LibreOffice. The item for the office software states with its final amendment as:

2.39.7. The open sourced LibreOffice latest version (Turkish) shall be installed to the computers.

This means, LibreOffice will be shipped in Microsoft Windows and Pardus(which already ships it as the default Office and productivity suite) In 5 years, LibreOffice will be used in 620.000 classrooms -which means nearly every classroom in the primary and secondary education. Unless Microsoft makes an intervention and gifts Microsoft Office.

We will keep our eyes on this important project, and watch for Pardus’s interest.

We’ve wrote all this to share this iformation with you.

Sources:(In Turkish, you may use Google Translate, but not wait much performance)

See you soon!

Recent News About Pardus

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Dear Pardus users,

As you know, Pardus is being developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey. The Council has been restructuring for more than three months. This process affected all the projects developed by the Council, including Pardus Project.

To be honest, the restructuring period brought a lot of changes to Pardus project, which we actually don’t know but we see its affects. A remarkable number of developers had left the project, the working wheels of the project are about to stop etc.

We actually do not have a satisfactory official information. There is limited information from the project

1- Ozan Çağlayan’s mail, which you may also read in DistroWatch’s weekly. Also ote that, Ozan Çağlayan resigned at the beginning of the new year due to his unwanted designation to another project in Ankara

2-Nihan Katipoğlu’s blog in the Official Community Coordinator’s Blog:

Nihan wrote:

“The ongoing restructrurring process has not finished yet. As the process is in operation we postpointed the release of the Corporate 2.1 version. Please note that the words “Pardus Project is closing etc” are just rumours. The project is not closing, but changing and transforming. We will see the changes together. As the decisions taken we will write them and share with you.”

3- Erkan Tekman’s Farewell Letter, summarily the project is not ending however, it is somehow transforming.

4-An officer’s declaration from the Council that Pardus is not closing.

5-A reply to a question asked under the Law of Right Of Information Acquirement from the Council. Which states that the project is in operation for the moment.

Those were the official/semi-official intel which we can share with you at the moment. As you know there are lots of rumours around. And we know that you really wonder what’s going around.

Please be patient, at the moment we do not like to share the rumours with you, which will make you sad, even if they are not true.

We will share the serious info, which are confirmed, and we will share with you the official announcements which are made in Turkish.

We, Turkish speaking Pardus community would like you to be a part of this. So we will post any remarkable intel in a short brief to www.pardusworld.com. We also opened a twitter account https://twitter.com/PardusWorld which you may follow.

See you soon.

Best regards,

Sources:
1-http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20120102
2-http://developer.pardus.org.tr/people/topluluk/blog/2011/12/her-yeni-yil-baska-guzel/
3-http://blog.erkantekman.org/?p=474
4-http://www.pardus-linux.org/haberler/2011/12/pkd-plo-ve-pardus
5-http://www.ozgurlukicin.com/forum/gonullu-calismalar/23865/?page=1