On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Chin Wong wrote:
> I have noted the heated discussions about Bluepoint's upcoming Linux
> distribution. It is now apparent to us that Buhawi is not the first local
> distribution. The error in the story is ours, not Bluepoint's. In fairness
> to Engels and Bluepoint, they made no such claim to being the first local
> distribution.
The first Filipino Linux distribution is most probably
AdmuLinux from Ateneo de Manila University. Its website is
http://www.admulinux.org/.
I have kept silent throughout the PLUG debates since I did not
want to add more heat to the fire.
But now I have to clarify certain issues. So here are the facts:
There are two versions of AdmuLinux--one that you can install
on your hard disk like a normal distribution, and one that
boots directly from CD and WORKS from there without installing
to hard disk. This latter is not a lame version but is a full
blown development system with gcc, perl, java, haskell/hugs, etc.
Installing the former is not very easy--Admulinux lacks the
convenience of a friendly graphical install environment. You have
to install AdmuLinux the old-fashioned manual way: Boot the ramdisk
installer filesystem, manually partition the hard disk, format it
(mkfs), extract the distribution files from the CD, run fstabconfig,
netconfig, and then optionally install lilo. The reason
why AdmuLinux does not have a fancy install environment is that
I do not have time to make fancy install scripts, and my target
audience are the Ateneo system administration students who must
know what is going on behind the install scripts anyway.
The first release of AdmuLinux was over three years ago. It was based on
glibc-2.0.7, and there was a version for intel and a version for
DEC alpha. The DEC alpha host, sinigang.admu.edu.ph, which was Ateneo's
mail backup system, used to run the earliest version of AdmuLinux.
Sinigang has now been taken down.
The second release came over two years ago, and was based on glibc-2.1.3.
Several Ateneo sites are running this version: mail.ateneo.net,
curry.ateneo.net, and alumni.ateneo.edu. I think even Vince Cagud's
notebook with slightly failing hard disk is running AdmuLinux.
AdmuLinuxGo!, the version that runs from CD and provides a full
development environment, was designed for my students who have found
the usual "install-to-hd" distributions a bit dangerous to use.
Some newbie students have tried installing RedHat 6.2 and failed,
and so did not want to touch Linux again. AdmuLinuxGo! is the
solution in their case. AdmuLinuxGo came out last year. The latest
version 1.0K allows for assignment of IP address so that AdmuLinuxGo!
can be used in a network. William Yu has given me specs for a Beowolf
version of AdmuLinuxGo! and work is being done on it.
The website has the third release of AdmuLinux, which is based
on kernel-2.4.2pre3, and glibc-2.2.2. Many of the basic utilities
are now linked to this new library, but some of the bigger packages
still need to be upgraded. Additional packages like KDE and Gnome
will need to be added. My students are helping me do this
upgrade. Thus we now have 32bit uids, support for large memory
(1GB to 64GB ram), support for large disk files (64bit file pointers),
better multi-processing, posix shared memory, etc.
We are trying hard to keep AdmuLinux up to date. But since things
move so fast in the Linux world, we have our hands full.
I hope this little history clarifies the issues.
Pablo Manalastas
======
PhD Mathematics and Associate Professor, Computer Science
Ateneo de Manila University
Maintainer: AdmuLinux distribution
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