The first stage of developing the national operating system in Uzbekistan on the basis of the open source software has finished the other day. The project has been initiated by the Uzbek agency on informatization and communication and the Center for training and supporting young programmers.

The first stage involved development and localization of the national OS distributive on the basis of the open source software. The given event happened on the eve of Linus Torvalds’ birthday, who is the ’father’ of the open source software (one of the developers reported anonymously CNews.KZ the coincidence happened totally at random). The system has been called Doppix OS.

The Uzbek agency on informatization and communication (AIC) and the Center for training and supporting young programmers (CTSYP) started developing the project in September 2007. The first results have been already achieved. OS is focused on education, however the product’s status is not quite clear: either OS will be used nationwide and implemented in the public sector, or it will be only used at schools and universities.

According to CTSYP, the distributive submitted for public testing is being developed on the basis of Mandriva 2007.1 (Spring). ’Meanwhile, the main aim is to develop OS for educational institutions. Currently the second stage of the distributive development, i.e. graphic server, has started. Localization and recompilation of KDE will follow’, - Akrom Obidov, the project coordinator and CTSYP manager, says. At present the distributive is offered in Uzbek, the letters spelled in Latin. In the future the full-fledge support of the Uzbek and Russian languages is to be developed. Besides, other languages foreseen by Mandriva Linux will be available.

The project ’EnRuUz Glossary’, i.e. the Russian-English-Uzbek explanatory dictionary of OS terms, has been simultaneously launched.

The project organizers have received the model of CD with DoppixBase OS. The model’s capacity is 202 Mb and it is a startup disk. When installed a user is provided with a multiuser, multifunctional OS with a minimum set of programs: programs to work with files and catalogues (open, copy, delete), simple test editor (ViM), tools for network connection diagnostics, setup OS.

The Uzbek agency on informatization and communication believes ’Doppix is a sufficient base to be installed with additional packages and hence to become a modern OS’.

CNews.KZ managed to learn the opinion of Alexey Smirnov, Director General of the Russian company ALT Linux: ’The essence of creating the given OS is important. The question is either of simple localization of the distributive and insignificant changes, then the development is practically senseless if not to count the local language support. But if the developers plan to dramatically rearrange the distributive, then that is an important event as it is related to improvements in the country’s IT-culture resulting in the positive influence on the whole republic development’.

According to the CTSYP representative, the given project is not simple localization of Mandriva Linux, which is sufficiently translated into the Uzbek language. OS is mainly focused on education, all packages reassembled from the initial ones. Besides, the package configuration is being changed, i.e. unstable versions are replaced by more reliable, and education programs are added. Currently the project is open for Uzbekistan Linux-community.

CNews.KZ correspondent talked to Alexander Uskov, CTO of the Kazakhstani company Neolabs, who is one of the main initiators of Linux development in Kazakhstan.

Mr. Uskov believes the given projects are very important especially for the state to reduce expenses and provide for the information security: ’It is more profitable for the state to operate on the open source software. First of all, a work place with Windows costs about $500-700, while with Linux it is much cheaper. Secondly, using such OS as Windows means dependence on a certain US company, which complies with another country’s legislation and becomes a monopolist in the given case, which is forbidden by the law’.

According to Aleksei Smirnov, in many CIS countries such projects are at various stages of implementation. ’One can name Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and, of course, Russia, which have several promising ideas regarding developments in the given sphere. For example, if we recollect the school distributive Junior, it is practically ready and approved by the customer, so we can say that the school OS meets the necessary requirements. In 2008 the system implementation is planned to be launched, but as pilot projects in three regions: Perm Territory, Tomsk Region and Tatarstan’.

Alexander Uskov is skeptic regarding the national OS development, in particular in Kazakhstan: ’Some statements regarding the national OS projects are made from time to time. But nothing goes beyond the statements and expenses. At least, not a single project has been presented even in the form of a distributive for public testing, like in Uzbekistan. What we have is several people engaged in Debian localization, so the Kazakhstani installer is practically ready’.

The Uzbek national Linux developers refused to give any comments regarding the first stage to have been finished and their plans for the future.