Canaima GNU/Linux is a free and open-source Linux distribution that is based on the architecture of Debian. It was created 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 and open source technologies in the public administration. On 14 March 2011, Canaima was officially established as the default operating system for the Venezuelan public administration.
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).
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 some of its components are nonfree software, in particular some firmware needed for graphic cards, sound cards, printers, etc. Canaima creators opted to include these nonfree drivers in order to support as many computers being used by the Venezuelan government as possible, and to facilitate the migration from a closed source operating system to an open-source one (although including nonfree software). It is expected that Canaima, in its upcoming releases, offers an option in the installation process for non-free 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 KDE Plasma and 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 GNU / Linux has a development model based on Debian but with some modifications to adapt it to the specific needs of Venezuela; In this sense, a development cycle has been defined as follows:
The rolling release development model is used.
1.- The socio-productive Community, APN and Universities: They provide packages, proposals or, failing that, the corrections of some flaws (bugs), in order to raise the community requirements for the next version of the distribution.
2.- Building your own packages: For building packages, the debmake and debuild tools native to Debian are used.
3.- Alpha Version: It is built and subjected to tests where the correct interaction between the Canaima repository and the distribution is evaluated. The theming of the new version is displayed, performance tests are carried out on high, medium and low-end machines, the performance and management of the most used applications in the National Public Administration (APN) are evaluated.
4.- Evaluation: The Alpha version is evaluated by a group of workers from Venezuelan public institutions, related to the area of Science and Technology and some members of the Venezuelan Free Software Community. In parallel, the socio-productive community will carry out the packaging of its own packages to be added within the Beta 1 version.
5.- Beta version 1: The previously selected packages are added to the system directly or to the repository together with the project packages. At this stage of the development cycle, the distribution is published for Project users.