Kurumin

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Kurumin
Kurumin 7.0r3
Website	www.guiadohardware.net/kurumin/
Company/ developer	Carlos Morimoto
OS family	Linux
Source model	Open source
Latest stable release	7.0 / February 2007
Kernel type	Monolithic kernel
License	Various
Working state	Current

Kurumin Linux is a Live CD Linux distribution based on Debian via Knoppix and Kanotix. Its main features are the advanced hardware auto-detection (inherited from Knoppix), Brazilian Portuguese language and content and ease of use. The first releases of Kurumin were small enough to fit on a mini-CD, but that goal was abandoned with the release of Kurumin 4.0, when larger packages such as OpenOffice.org and a Java Virtual Machine were included. As of release 7.0, the size of the disk image is approximately 603 MB. According to DistroWatch, Kurumin is the most popular Linux distribution in Brazil .

Version 7.0, based on Debian "Etch", was released February 22, 2007.

The distribution boasts a proprietary control center named ClicaAki (roughly: "ClickHere"), which features a series of "magic icons" that install software not included in the live CD (including games and proprietary video drivers) and configure a wide range of networking options. It also provides access to the Synaptic package manager.

The name comes from the Tupi word "kurumi", which means boy. The usage of the letter K, instead of the usual Portuguese spelling ("curumi" or "curumim"), brings it in line with KDE (Kurumin's default desktop environment), as well as with Knoppix.

Kurumin has a very good documentation in Brazilian portuguese, with tips popping in the screen related with the task of the user, very intuitive and eyecandy. Kurumin control panel( AKA ClicaAki ), which had shortcuts to scripts made by him that performed very useful tasks like downloading and installing free games, apps divided into category and a short description of how they work and their differences, which is very useful for novice users in the linux world. This control panel also had scripts for downloading and automatic configuring 3d video cards( ATI and Nvidia ) a very daring task for novice users which now could do it with just one click. Another very good aspect of the distro is that it had support for many "winmodens", some that had no official packages of drivers in the Debian repository, and also with scripts that automatized the whole task of compiling and configuring the module. With this aspects, Kurumin spread the Gnu/Linux operating system in Brazil in a level never seen before. Within the years of 2004~2006 Kurumin had many users and a very good reputation, but later with the popularization of Ubuntu and the ease of use of Mandriva and Fedora, it rapidly decreased in popularity. In the late of 2007 Morimoto said that the project would be halted or have its scope reduced. Hopefully Leandro Santos joined the project and it was born again.

Even though Kurumin was one of the most popular distros in Brazil for end-users, many advanced users and developers criticized it for not sending its patches upstream to the Debian tree, and calling it self a distribution, which some disagree saying it was a CDD, Custom Debian Disk, an install disk with some addons and configurations changes. Kurumin often had problems with stability, some changes made by Morimoto often breaked the system making it unusable after an upgrade, because Morimoto's work wasn't coordinated with Debian's developers. That happen mostly because Kurumin used Debian unstable repositories, as Kurumin didn't have any repo for packages. Another drawback of the distro is that it has a too close approach from Windows, having icons like "My computer", "My music" and others, literally copying folder names and other aspects. Bringing a lot of end-users with low technical skills to linux world is very good, but keeping them in a "windows-like" system, and keeping them "end-users" forever is not so good for the community.