Punny Name, Serious Distro
There's a new distro in town, but is its name misleading? On November 7 Fuduntu was announced. If one didn't look closely, they might think it was just another Ubuntu derivative. Even with the "d"ifference noticed, it still leads one to think that. But Fuduntu is actually a Fedora-based remix designed primarily for netbooks and notebooks, although it makes for a nice light-weight desktop alternative as well.
The Website says Fuduntu "earns its name by its design to fit somewhere in-between Fedora and Ubuntu. It is a Fedora remix optimized for Netbook and other portable computers." It takes it name from both Fedora and Ubuntu in a light-hearted manner. Fewt, the blogger who develops Fuduntu, says the name is a pun and meant to be fun.
Fuduntu 14.7 features GNOME 2.32.0 as distributed by Red Hat (Fedora), a 2.6.35 kernel, Xorg X Server 1.9.1, GCC 4.5.1, and RPM 4.8.1. It ships with The GIMP, Firefox, Empathy, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Brasero, Cheese, VLC media player, Rhythmbox music player, and Deja Dup backup software. It comes with a graphical package manager and update manager. The Website provides this further information:
Some of the tweaks found in Fuduntu:
A few of the default packages found in Fuduntu:
Several updated images have been released since last November with the most recent, 14.8, on January 7, 2011 with an updated 2.6.37 kernel, the removal of BFS, and the addition of Dropbox, among other things.
Some may say, "this is just a remix" and they wouldn't be incorrect. But these remixes provided by individuals highlight one of the greatest strengths of Linux distributions - the power of creation. If one doesn't find a distribution they like or thinks they have a better idea, all the tools to create a new one is available to do so. Some may not realize that several of the most popular distributions today started out exactly the same way, it's just a little easier these days. You never know where the next PCLinuxOS or Linux Mint might turn up - maybe right here with Fuduntu.