Pardus 2007.2 – A Review

by Margaret Wilson on

The latest installment of Pardus, version 2007.2, was officially released on, July 12, 2007. Pardus is a relatively new distribution based on GNU/Linux. Worried this review has been rushed due to the recency of the release? Do not worry, I had been using the release candidate for a while now and installed the official release before authoring this review. The distribution comes from Turkey, but is available in a vast number of languages. Lets head over to DistroWatch for the short, but sweet, overview of the distribution.

“Pardus is a GNU/Linux distribution funded and developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey. Pardus has a range of unique features, such as Mudur, a start-up framework of Pardus to speed up the boot process, and PiSi, an efficient package management system with a user-friendly graphical interface.”

While some readers may argue that looking at the DistroWatch rankings is useless, I feel that it offers a general idea of the popularity of many distributions. Pardus is currently ranked 46th overall, making it the lowest ranked distribution I have reviewed, but that being said, I have received a dozen or so emails asking for an overall look at this latest edition. I have installed Pardus 2007.2 on my desktop (AMD 3700+, ATI X800XL) for the purpose of this review. Please note that this review is quite short, therefore I invite any Pardus users to write about their experience in the comments below.

Please follow the link for the rest of the review!

Installation

The image file for Pardus 2007.2 comes in at around 700MB, but is also available in a 700MB live CD flavour. Please note that the live CD is NOT capable of installing the system onto your hard drive like you can with most live CDs . The installer was by no means difficult to use – asking for the usual information regarding partition details. This is followed by the installation of the system and a few final questions before asking the user to reboot and start using Pardus. The whole process took approximately 30 minutes, approximately double the time that I have been noticing with other distributions (although much faster than Windows).

While the installer was nothing to brag about, it was simple to use and offered the ability to read release notes and other information while the system files were copied. This is where it was clear that the documentation is not natively written in English, but it was definitely readable.

Visuals

This section will be quite brief as the overall feel is just like any other distribution using the KDE desktop environment. The default look, including background, theme, icons, and menus, was very clean – offering a professional appeal. Below is a screenshot of the default desktop (click for full-screen).

In conclusion of the visuals, I would like to say that there is definitely a sense of polish and while Pardus is not attempting to be the best looking distribution available, everything just seems to ‘jive’ well with each other. Kudos on an excellent icon theme!

Other Impressions

This is definitely where Pardus 2007.2 shines! To begin, Pardus played both MP3 and DivX files out-of-the-box, meaning no additional installs needed. Additionally, Java and Flash also both worked with no intervention when used with the provided Firefox browser. Unfortunately, I was not able to access my NTFS partitions from Pardus; however, this should not deter any would-be users as there are many applications available that can do this. TASMA, the Pardus Configuration Center, is used to customize various aspects of the system including appearance, network, users, and others. I have no complaints about TASMA as it was a breeze to use. Below is a screenshot of the TAMSA interface.

In other articles about Pardus, the authors did not fully appreciate the PiSi package manager as it does not offer the same function of that in the widely-used Synaptic. However, I found PiSi great to use and while the repositories may not contain as many packages as those of Ubuntu and other massive distributions, I found it very adequate for my needs. Below are two screenshots, the first of the PiSi GUI and the second showing the use of PiSi with the command line (I very much prefer the command line when it comes to installations).

When it comes to applications installed, Pardus ships with great software such as Amarok, Firefox, OpenOffice, The GIMP and the usual suite of KDE applications. Fortunately, PiSi makes installation of other applications (Thunderbird and Nvu specifically) as simple as could be. What else impressed me? This is one of the very few Linux distributions that actually recognized my Bluetooth mouse without the need to reconnect the receiver each time the system loads! Also, Pardus 2007.2 is possibly the fastest distribution I have installed on my desktop. The response is fantastic and applications load very quickly.

Conclusion

Pardus 2007.2 is a very clean and speedy operating system. KDE users will feel comfortable using the entire system, while GNOME and other environment users will have to get used to the KDE-look and applications (of course, this would apply to any KDE-based release). While the visuals are mostly on-par with most other distributions, they blow the pants of the default look of Ubuntu (sorry about the Ubuntu reference, just had to do it!) and openSUSE. What really separates Pardus for me, are the customizations and control offered by using TASMA and PiSi. Yes, many distros do offer their own flavour of these system applications, but I found the Pardus implementation to be far above average.

I hope that with the recent release, Pardus will continue to climb the ranks and get closer to the top where it deserves to be. For those looking for a great out-of-the-box KDE-based distribution, I highly recommend giving Pardus a shot, you will not be disappointed. Unfortunately, as I have a few distributions lined up to review, I will be replacing Pardus with something new tomorrow! For those that can advocate further, regarding their use with Pardus, please post comments so other readers can see what you have experienced.

Written by: Margaret Wilson

Hi, my name is Margaret Wilson and I am an engineering student. This is my personal blog and I try to solve different problems regarding mobile phones and PCs. Stay tuned!