Kiwi is a free operating system based on Ubuntu Linux primarily targeted at users in Romania. The project comes on a single CD that can be used both as a live CD and for installing on the hard drive.

Why include proprietary software and non-open multimedia codecs?

We believe that while free data formats and free software are preferable to closed ones, compromises are acceptable when the alternative means even less freedom. We'd rather have our users run a combination of free operating system and proprietary codecs than only proprietary operating systems and software.

What is the relation to Ubuntu?

We plan on releasing versions keeping up with the latest Ubuntu. Features that are deemed appropriate for Ubuntu will be proposed for inclusion as we try to keep the differences contained to the packages that for various reasons are not included in Ubuntu.

Who develops Kiwi?

Most of the development work on Kiwi is supported by Startx SRL. Obviously the vast majority of what is on the CD is the work of the free software community of volunteers and paid developers who make Ubuntu, Debian, GNOME, Xorg, GNU/Linux and the rest of the free software ecosystem. The translations are the work of the Romanian and Hungarian free software localization teams and individual translators.


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Here are some key features of "Kiwi Linux":

· Localization and spell-checkers for Romanian and Hungarian
· Better support for connecting to local ADSL providers (Romtelecom and RDS)
· NTFS write support via ntfs-3g on both the liveCD and on the installed system
· Adobe Flash 9 web-plugin
· Support for proprietary audio and video codecs
· Support for DVD playback using totem-xine (including encrypted DVDs)
· Miscellaneous apps (Inkscape for vector drawing, mc, vim)
· Customized artwork based on the original Ubuntu one
· Windows applications and language packs for languages not mentioned above were removed to make space

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Chromium instead of Firefox because it is snappier, more stable, has built-in page translations, and has a cleaner albeit at first non-intuitive UI. HTML5 video codecs included.
· Shotwell instead of F-Spot - a nice fast tool, it is happening in Ubuntu 10.10 as well.
· Pidgin instead of Empathy - while I am sure that Empathy and the Telepathy stack is the way in the future, Pidgin is more mature at this point.
· VLC 1.1.3 along with Totem . VLC just handles better regular movies, DVDs, and subtitles. Totem is kept because Chromium annoyingly (but wisely) does not support Mozilla browser plugins that don't use XEmbed and are written instead in the old way using X Intrinsics.
· Adobe Flashplugin and the gstreamer ungood bunch for mp3 and various other codecs.
· Libdvdcss2 for encrypted DVD support
· Evolution removed as most home users are on webmail. The nice desktop-webmail helper app included
· p7zip and rar tools added to help file-roller deal with archives sent by Windows users.
· Gnote instead of Tomboy - more or less equivalent
· Compiz extra settings config
· Firmware to support the Speedtouch 330 USB modem driver - the initial reason to create this derivative is still shipped on the CD, but now fewer people need it having migrated to saner ISP connection equipment.
· Removed Mono, Erlang + CouchDB, Telepathy, Gwibber - as space needed to be freed for the above software the ones that were removed are those I considered stuff for more savvy users and less used by beginners.