Pardus (official home page: Pardus.org.tr) is a Linux distribution developed by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an arm of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
It is an original Linux distribution, that is, unlike most Linux distributions, it is not based on another distribution. It is a desktop-oriented distribution based on KDE, the K Desktop Environment.
Installation Program and Installation Process: YALI, Yet Another Linux Installer, is the installation program on Pardus. It sports a modern, point-and-click interface, with Web 2.0 features. It supports LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, and RAID, with LVM as the default disk partitioning scheme. Disk encryption is not supported. GRUB Legacy (version 0.97) is the default boot loader and ext4 is the default file system.
Shown here is the user account and root password configuration page.
Desktop Environments: Pardus is a KDE distribution, and the latest stable version is powered by KDE 4.6.5, with all the good and not so good features of that version of KDE.
Unlike majority of Linux desktop distributions, Pardus has a “welcome” application, Kaptan, run on first boot, that you may use to customize certain aspects of the desktop. With Kaptan, you can choose from one of three menu styles available for KDE.
The menu-style view of Kaptan.
Installed Applications and Software Management: Pardus ships with both free and non-free applications. The latest stable editions of most popular applications, including the Firefox Web browser, Java JRE, Flash plugin and libdvdcss (for playing encrypted video DVD’s), are installed.
Pisi, is the software management framework on Pardus, and the graphical interface is simply called the Package Manager. The pool of applications available from Pardus’ repository is not as extensive as you will find on other Linux distributions. Shown below is the Installed Packages view of Package Manager.
Graphical Administrative Applications: Apart from the Package Manager, the Firewall Manager, and one or two other, custom Pardus applications, most of the graphical administrative tools on Pardus, are the same ones available on other KDE-based distributions. By default, the popular, LVM graphical management application (shown below), is installed.
Physical and Network Security Posture: Encrypting a hard drive and protecting an operating system’s boot loader with a password, are two very important security features that you may use to boost the physical security posture of any operating system. YALI, the Pardus installer, does not have support for disk encryption and boot loader password protection. Its out-of-the-box physical security posture is, therefore, weak. Because the boot loader on the latest edition is GRUB Legacy (GRUB 0.97), you can enable a password for it after installation.
On the network security front, Pardus, benefits, like all Linux distributions, from the firewall built into the Linux kernel, and it has a graphical firewall client that is easy to manage. The firewall is, however, disabled by default. Plus, there are no other network security features in place.
This is a screenshot of the Firewall Manager in its default state.
Hardware Requirements and Resources: Pardus is available for 32- and 64-bit Intel-compatible systems, and since it is a KDE distribution, memory and graphics requirements are in line with those of a KDE desktop, which translates into a minimum of 1GB or more of RAM for better computing.
Visit the Pardus home page at Pardus.org.tr. Download the latest edition of Pardus here. Support questions (in Turkish) may be posted here. English support questions may be posted on Questions and Answers.
Recent Reviews and Tutorials: The most recent reviews and tutorials on Pardus published on this website are listed below. You may read the full list of reviews and tutorials from the Pardus category:
[catlist name=pardus numberposts=10 excerpt=yes]
Screenshots: More screenshots from the latest edition of Pardus.
The Lancelot menu configured to show subcategories in popups. It is an experimental features, but it seems to work quite well.
Desktop showing the Network Manager applet.
Default games installed on Pardus 2011.1 as seen from the KDE Plasma Netbook interface. KDE’s Netbook interface is one of several small-screen-optimized interfaces for Linux and BSD desktop distributions
