Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 23:37:42 +0200 From: Michele Martiradonna <mmartiradonna@madeinlinux.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: New Italian GNU/Linux Distribution Announcing a New Italian Linux Distribution. Madeinlinux breaks new ground in Italy with new GNU/Linux distribution. Milan, October 15, 2000. Founded by a group of GNU/Linux enthusiasts, MLX s.r.l. has set from the very start an ambitious project: become a reference point for Linux and Open Source technologies in Italy. Thus, Madeinlinux 4.0, a Linux distro with a wholly Italian flavour, is the first product of the Milan based company. Even though it's the first release of this distro, we have decided to name it Madeinlinux 4.0 in honour of the fact that a lot of the components included, for the first time ever even for other popular distros, have the number 4 as a release or version number. We've included Xfree 4.0, but also the new kernel 2.4 (we include also 2.2.17 for the faint of heart), as well as the new RPM 4.0. Among the features we think we have done a particularly good job in these areas: - security: we have dedicated a study to italian laws and regulations, so that our distribution is not only secure in the IT sense, but also according to the standards of italian law. - ease of use: this does not mean fancy GUIs or animated icons, but mostly boils down to having a simple set of applications and programs to meet all common computing needs. If someone wants to install the latest release of a tool that can forecast soccer scores, and at the same time make coffee, they can always download and install it, but we thought it would make things less clear to include something like it in the standard package suite (although we had a very heated debate about it, especially since we all love coffee and soccer alike). - Italian localization: when it comes down to localization, we think the italian user deserves a little more than a translation of the menu options in Gnome, or the translation of the man pages. Although english is very widely known, it's still not the official language in Italy (at least for some time) and so we thought we could make life easier for italian users by translating such fundamental items like the shell, or the boot and error messages. Our aim is to have an operating system that has the italian user in mind from the very start. In addition to this we have made some innovative choices: we give users the choice of mounting Reiser-FS partitions; we decided to use tcsh as the default shell, and we have included all the standard documentation in italian, plus some other very useful manuals and guides, not usually included in other distros, written by Italian experts, like Appunti Linux from Daniele Giacomini, and Linux Facile from Daniele Medri. One of our objectives was to clean a lot of the mess that comes with other distros: the typical user will need probably 5 or 10 applications, plus the supporting tools and libraries, but nowadays when you install Linux you will get dozens of programs and applications you will probably never use. Choice is a great thing, but in this case there is a risk of information overload. Too much choice ends up in confusing users, especially new users who don't know which of the 10 email clients available they should use. We've thus made some choices, which may not satisfy all linux users, but we thought it was necessary to give users a Linux distro that had the basic tools and applications to be immediately productive, but just one copy of each program. Madeinlinux comes with two install options: a client version named Linux Facile (or Easy Linux), and a server version called Internet Sicuro (Safe Internet). - In the client version, Linux Facile, we have decided to include StarOffice and Netscape, and this gives users the basic set of programs they will most likely need in their daily work: a professional word processor, a spreadsheet, a browser, an email and newsgroup client, plus a few other programs. - In Internet Sicuro, our server option, on the other hand, since choice is always an option for expert linux users, we have provided a solid server suite, again devoid of all the software we thought was not so important for the common user, but which constitutes a good base upon which a good SysAdmin can buil his or her own tuned up version. In this way everything fits onto one CD only, and this includes popular software like the Apache server, as well as the Gimp, in addition to the aforementioned Netscape Communicator and StarOffice Suite. Madeinlinux is available for download at www.madeinlinux.com <http://www.madeinlinux.com/> (although at the time of this writing work on the web site is stil underway) where you will also find useful info on Linux in italian. For more information contact MLX s.r.l. via Farini 70 Milano 20159 Italy tel +39 02 6931 1931 fax +39 02 603 932 info@madeinlinux.com