Hanthana 14.5 |
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| Company / developer | Hanthana Community |
| OS family | Unix-like |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Free and open source software |
| Initial release | 19 September 2009 |
| Latest stable release | 14.15 (Gagana) / 10 January 2011 |
| Available language(s) | Multilingual |
| Update method | Yum (PackageKit) |
| Package manager | RPM Package Manager |
| Supported platforms | i386, amd64 |
| Kernel type | Linux (Monolithic-based Hybrid) |
| Userland | GNU |
| Default user interface | GNOME |
| License | GNU GPL & Various others. |
| Official website | hanthana.org |
Hanthana Linux is a computer operating system based on the Fedora (operating system) distribution, distributed as free and open source software.[1]
It is specially designed to cater to the needs of Sri Lankan computer users who are unable to access Internet frequently, with many most-wanted applications built in.[2]
Hanthana is developed by the Sri Lanka-based Hanthana Community.[3]
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Hanthana is a remix of the Fedora Operating System. The original aim of the Hanthana team was to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop with as many useful applications preloaded, as downloading applications through Internet is not possible for many rural areas of Sri Lanka.
Hanthana's first release was on 19 September 2009.[4] Since then, Hanthana community has released new versions of Hanthana every six months with commitment to support each release for eighteen months by providing security fixes, patches to critical bugs and minor updates to programs.
Hanthana packages are based on packages from Fedora's: both distributions use RedHat's rpm package format and package management tools Yum (PackageKit).
Hanthana is composed of many software packages, of which the majority are distributed under a free software license, making an exception only for some proprietary hardware drivers. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Hanthana. Hanthana focuses on usability, security and stability. Hanthana also emphasizes accessibility and internationalization to reach as many people as possible. From the start UTF-8 is the default character encoding, which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts.
Hanthana comes installed with a wide range of software that includes OpenOffice, Firefox, Pidgin, Transmission, GIMP, and several lightweight games (such as Sudoku and chess).
Installation of Hanthana is generally performed with the Live CD. Hanthana can be run directly from the CD (albeit with a significant performance loss), allowing a user to "test-drive" the OS for hardware compatibility and driver support.
Users can download a disk image (.iso) of the CD, which can then either be written to a physical medium (CD or DVD), or optionally run directly from a hard drive (via UNetbootin or GRUB).
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