Review: Pardus 2007.3

DO you know what I love so much about Linux?
It's the feeling you get when you stumble upon a distribution that's pure computing gold.
True, you have to wade through a lot of dross to achieve this - there are far too many distributions all trying to do minor variations of the same thing, in my view.
But it's a worthwhile quest when you find something as good as Pardus (http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/index.html).
In an earlier review of Pardus 2007.1 (March 21, 2007) I mentioned my trepidation at testing an OS which did not have English as its primary language (the Pardus developers are Turkish).
That fear has long fallen by the wayside and its primarily due to the excellence of the Pardus team's work.
Pardus 2007.3 is available in two versions, the LiveCD codenamed 'Calisan' and the installation disk codenamed 'Kurulan'.
It's not possible to install to your hard drive from the LiveCD so choose carefully.
This is a distribution built from the ground up.
True, it uses KDE as its desktop environment, but it's a polished, customised KDE 3.5.8, and is all the better for it.
Anyway, let's start at the beginning.
For version 2007.3 Pardus have streamlined the YALI installation program so you get asked key questions before you install, rather than after.
I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation of the installation process, partly because it's so straightforward and beautifully simple, and partly because, well, I never read those bits in other people's review!
On first run you're dropped into the KDE desktop and up pops one of Pardus's unique features, Kaptan, which guides you through some basic configuration such as mouse controls and networking (I'll come back to this latter point).
Kaptan certainly offers so comfort and guidance for new users, though what it achieves can easily done elsewhere by experienced users.
I should point out here that Pardus also uses a custom-built init process - or boot process, if you prefer - called Mudur, which gets things up and running in just a little less time than the lightning-quick PCLinuxOS.
Back on the desktop, there are a couple more unique features which give Pardus the edge over so many competitors, and I'm talking primarily about its package management system.
PiSi was written from scratch by the Pardus team and it's absolutely superb.
It handles installing, uninstalling and searching for applications through a simple but elegant graphical utility, which also works as an update manager sitting in the system tray.
The Pardus repositories cannot compete with Ubuntu for depth but they're right up there in the quality stakes - and anyway, the default install comes with so many excellent applications you'll have little need for many more.
One thing that particularly impressed me about PiSi's update function is that it retrieves only those parts of the program that have changed since the previous version, rather than the entire new version.
This saves time and conserves your download capacity, and adds to the overall feeling of a well thought-out program.
Another unique Pardus feature is Tasma, which does pretty much what the KDE control centre does, only in a nicer, more unified environment.


Here you can tweak to your heart's content, with options for Appearance, Desktop, Internet & Networking, peripherals, Language, Sound, System and User Accounts.
I'd like to return now to that point about networking.
Pardus 2007.3 introduces for the first time a Network Manager into the system tools, and rarely have I seen such a utility work so simply and so well.
As I said, part of the inital Kaptan run-through gives you the option to choose your network card, whether wireless, wi-fi or dial-up.
I tried Pardus 2007.3 on three different machines, all wireless, all with different makes of NIC - and all three were detected, configured and connected within a minute.
Linux fans will probably appreciate how rare it is to have such a simple, successful wi-fi networking experience (incidentally, the cards were a USB Sitecom, a Netgear PCI card and an Intel Pro/Wireless integrated NIC).
In the past wi-fi has been a distro deal-breaker for me, so you can imagine my delight at encountering not one single problem with it in Pardus 2007.3.
I suspect that Pardus is already a major force in its own country but it really deserves much wider support.
Obviously, the language issue will have put many people off - but it really shouldn't because you get the option to use the English language at install and it's superbly implemented throughout the distribution.
Plus, there's a small but friendly English language forum at http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/.
I urge you all to give Pardus a try - if you're wary, try the LiveCD version first, it will give you an idea how your hardware works with Pardus.
I'd be amazed if you're not as impressed by it as I am.