TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Like many of you this side of the pond, I generally don't pay attention to Linux distributions that are meant to be specific to a particular geographic region.

There are many international communities that take it upon themselves to fashion a custom OS that works for the needs of their corner of the world, and I applaud them.

Generally, though, I stay away from these projects because let's face it: they know their target audience and since I don't live in Kazakhstan or Djibouti, I'm not it (much as it may amuse me to say "Djibouti").

Now that I've established that little guideline, I'm going to immediately discard it. I was exposed to MoLinux via DistroWatch.com and having nothing better to do at the moment I decided to be the first English-speaking person I'm aware of to publish a rant on it.

Based on Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10), MoLinux is put out by the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha in Spain. The name is derived from the Spanish word "molino." Their icon is a windmill. Yes, it's that La Mancha.

Due to a particularly good professor of Spanish History in college (the class was also taught in Spanish) I have a certain fascination with this region of Spain, and when I read that the desktop artwork was meant to reflect things unique to the region, I was sold.

On a side note, apparently the code names for releases are based on characters from that novel I'm sure no one has heard of. You know, since it's one of the first modern novels and whatnot. Kind of a low-key release.

Install:

I came in expecting a boilerplate Ubuntu LiveCD, so I was a bit surprised at what I got. The boot and loading splash screens had been modified to reflect the windmill theme. The number of visual changes were pretty impressive.

The welcome screen pops up the first time you run the LiveCD and offers some basic usability hints. I find this interesting, and I'm surprised Ubuntu proper hasn't thought of doing this for the main distribution. It would certainly help acclimate new users to the OS.

The installer itself was pretty standard Ubuntu, with the introduction of a cartoon mascot who for lack of a better name I'm going to call "Milly."

When installing in a VM (as I do most of the time to get screenshots) the screen was too small to display the entire install window, so I had to TAB and kind of guess where my cursor was to get through the screens. Luckily the installer was pretty much the same as regular Ubuntu so I could navigate blindly.

You've also no doubt seen that everything is in Spanish. There's a language selection screen at login that lets you choose various permutations of Spanish. Since this is a regional distribution from Spain, I wouldn't expect them to support English. I figured if nothing else I could install English support after the fact.

There was at least an option for American Spanish (US), so I was able to stumble about what they were saying. Of course, since I've installed Ubuntu a number of times it probably wouldn't matter if it were in Russian.

The first thing I wanted to check out on the desktop were the background images (or "fondos") I could choose. There were about a dozen available. Most were landscapes or far-off shots of cities, but there were a couple of abstract desktops as well.

It almost made me want to take some pictures of the Houston area and make desktops out of them. Perhaps I could distribute it as HoLinux. On second thought, maybe not.

Although most of the text in the console was in English, I did run into some issues with the keyboard layout. I wasn't aware that the dash is located somewhere else on Spanish-style keyboards. It was easily enough fixed in the "Teclado" (Keyboard) settings screen.

Software Selection:

Firefox, OpenOffice, Pidgin and GIMP were present. The only things different from a standard Ubuntu install that I noticed were a program for connecting to a Vodafone and a backup utility called Back In Time.

Neither GCC nor Java were installed, nor was MP3 playback. Again, this is consistent with a standard Ubuntu setup. My wireless card worked fine, as I expected.

Conclusion:

I like the idea of regional governments offering a personlized, free operating system based on a well-established distribution. MoLinux doesn't dilute the Ubuntu pool so much as uses it as a base upon which to improve.

The introductory window is something I'd like to see in Ubuntu proper, and I'm pretty sure the idea has been suggested before. That's the beauty of open-source. Nothing is stopping someone from translating that tutorial and tossing it back upstream.

Is MoLinux something I'd use? Not really, but I'm not their target audience. If I'm ever in the mood to brush up on my admittedly spotty Spanish though, I could think of less attractive ways to do it.