Kororaa

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Kororaa
Image:Kororaa.gif
Website www.kororaa.org
Company/
developer		 Christopher Smart and Matthew Oliver
OS family Linux
Source model Open source
Latest stable release 2005-beta2-r1, Live CD 0.3 / December 12, 2005 April 6, 2006
Supported platforms i686, AMD64
Kernel type Monolithic kernel
Default user interface GNOME, KDE
License Various
Working state Current

Kororaa is a binary installation method for Gentoo Linux which aims for easy installation of a Gentoo system by using install scripts instead of manual configuration. The name is an alternate spelling for the Māori word, "kororā" - the Little Penguin. Kororaa is pre-configured for SSE capable processors.

Contents

[edit] History

Kororaa was started by Christopher Smart as a method to quickly reproduce a Gentoo Linux installation on multiple desktop machines. Chris also intended that Kororaa be used to quickly demonstrate the power of Gentoo Linux to users critical of 'compile times.' On November 7, 2007, Chris announced that he was discontinuing his work on the project, and that there would be no new versions of Kororaa.

The introduction of the Kororaa XGL Live CD was intended to demonstrate the capabilities of Novell's Xgl and Compiz.

[edit] Kororaa XGL Live CD

Screenshot of the Xgl abilities of the Kororaa Live CD
Screenshot of the Xgl abilities of the Kororaa Live CD

Kororaa gained attention in March 2006 when a Kororaa based Live CD was released, preconfigured with Xgl capabilities. The live CD supports NVIDIA, ATI and Intel graphics cards, and the latest version (0.3) comes with both KDE and GNOME.

[edit] Kororaa XGL Live CD and the GPL

In May 2006 an unnamed kernel developer sent an email to Christopher Smart, Kororaa's leader, suggesting that packaging the proprietary NVIDIA and fglrx drivers was a violation of the GPL as they take GPL code from the kernel and build it into a non-GPL kernel module, qualifying as a derived work. This caused Smart to temporarily remove the CD image from his website in August 2006 [1].

Two months later, version (0.3) was released, and all proprietary drivers were removed by request. Because of this, only limited ATI and NVIDIA graphics card support was included. Intel graphic chips were unaffected[citation needed] because they use an open source driver.

[edit] Development ended

On November 7, 2007, Smart announced that development on Kororaa would be ended, and no further versions would be released;[1] reasons given were that

  • Sabayon Linux already serves a purpose as a binary Gentoo distribution
  • Gentoo already comes with a GUI installer
  • Compiz is already installed on most desktop distributions by default
  • Kororaa couldn't compete with other distributions which include non-free drivers by default.
  • the weight of the project was too much for a single developer.

[edit] Version History

[edit] References

  1. ^ No more Kororaa, by Christopher Smart, kororaa.org

[edit] External links

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