Working state Current | ||
 | ||
Initial release 18 October 2007; 9 years ago (2007-10-18) Latest release 5.0 Chimantá / 19 December 2016; 2 months ago (2016-12-19) | ||
Canaima GNU/Linux is a computer operating system based on Debian. It originated as a solution to cover the needs of the Venezuelan Government as a response to presidential decree 3,390 that prioritizes the use of free technologies in the public administration. On March 14, 2011, Canaima was officially established as the default operating system for the Venezuelan public administration.
Contents
- Features
- Included Software
- Releases
- Development Cycle
- Cayapa Canaima
- OEMs
- Use of Canaima
- Canaima Educativo
- CANTV
- Variants
- References
The operating system has gained a strong foothold and is one of the most used Linux distributions in Venezuela, largely because of its incorporation in public schools. It is being used in large scale projects as "Canaima Educativo", a project aimed at providing school children with a basic laptop computer with educational software. nicknamed Magallanes. Use of Canaima has been presented on international congresses about the use of open standards, Despite being a young development, it has been used on the Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (FLISOL).
In February 2013 DistroWatch ranked it the 185th most popular Linux distribution among 319 for the last 12 months. Official Venezuelan news outlets report several installations, but the majority of computers in the country still run pirated versions of Microsoft Windows, unless Windows is preinstalled with new computers.
Features
Some of the major features of Canaima GNU/Linux are:
- Easy installation
- Software license cost is free.
- Free distribution and use.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) states that Canaima GNU/Linux is not 100% free software. This is because of the fact that some of its components are closed-source proprietary software, in particular some hardware drivers needed for graphic cards, sound cards, printers, etc. Canaima creators opted to include these proprietary drivers in order to support as many computers being used by the Venezuelan government as possible, and to facilitate the migration from a closed-sourced operating system to an open-source one. It is expected that Canaima, in its upcoming releases, offers an option in the installation process for proprietary drivers to be optional, being able to install a 100% free software image of the distribution if the user choose to.
Included Software
Canaima includes applications for training, development and system configuration. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) and desktop environment by default is GNOME. There are other desktop environments and GUIs maintained by the community for the system, like Xfce.
Productivity: The office software suite LibreOffice, with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, it includes other more specific programs like project management software Planner and a HTML editor.
Internet: Includes the Cunaguaro browser, a web browser based on Iceweasel and adapted especially for Canaima 3.0 and onwards. Canaima Curiara, is a light web browser based on Cunaguaro, developed in python-webkit for specific applications on the distribution.
Graphics: Includes Gimp, Inkscape, desktop publishing software Scribus and gLabels labels designer.
The full list of included software can be found at here.
Releases
Canaima has been releasing stable versions periodically since the last couple of years.
Development Cycle
Canaima uses a development model based on Debian, but some modifications were made to adapt it to Venezuelan needs. Therefore, the development cycle has the following components:
Cayapa Canaima
One of the community activities that has been generated around Canaima is the Cayapa. Cayapa is a Venezuelan term that stands as a form of cooperative work made by several people to reach one goal. On these meetings, free software developers get together to propose upgrades and fix bugs among other things; this activity is called a Bug Squash Party in other projects. The last Cayapa was conducted from May 14 until May 15, 2012 in the city of Barinas.
OEMs
Being a distribution promoted by the Venezuelan Government, a certain number of strategic agreements have been generated with several countries and manufacturing hardware companies:
Use of Canaima
The most successful instances of the use and adoption of Canaima:
Canaima Educativo
It is a project initiated in 2009 by the Venezuelan Ministry of Education (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Educación) that provides students in primary education with a laptop computer, known as Canaimitas, with free software, using the Canaima operating system and a series of educational content created by the Ministry of Education.
In 2011, 1,314,091 laptops were acknowledged as being delivered.
CANTV
The national telephone company, CANTV, uses the operating system to a certain extent according to their Equipped Internet Plan.
Variants
There are a number of Canaima editions, maintained and recognized by community activists, that are not released at the same time as the official distribution and do not take part in the project schedule. The most significant ones are: