Piumalinux For Linux

Piumalinux is an open source and completely free operating system based on the world’s most popular free distribution of Linux, Ubuntu, featuring the MATE desktop environment and designed especially for Italian-speaking users.

The OS can be downloaded via Softpedia or directly from its official website as two Live DVD ISO images, one for each of the supported architectures, 32-bit and 64-bit, which must be deployed to either DVD discs or USB thumb drives in order to boot them from the BIOS of a PC.

It features a standard boot screen, yet customized with a Precise Pangoling background, for an Ubuntu-based distribution. The users will be able to start the live environment with default boot options or in safe graphics mode, start the installer directly, run a memory test or boot an existing OS from the first disk drive.

As mentioned, the "Traditional Desktop Environment" is powered by MATE, a GNOME 2 fork, customized with a special theme called Matembiance, which is very similar to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)'s default theme. It features a two-panel layout. Keep in mind though, that you must log in using the “piuma” username and no password.

Default applications include the Synaptic Package Manager, Chromium web browser, Lubuntu Sofware Center, VLC Media Player, Transmission BitTorrent client, Xfburn CD/DVD burning software, Pinta digital painting tool, TED RTF text processor, UXTerm and XTerm terminal emulators, Zim desktop wiki, and many MATE-specific utilities.

Being powered by Linux kernel 3.2, the current version of Piumalinux is based on the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, which means that it is supported with security patches, bug fixes and software updates for  for a long time.