古巴通訊（154）古巴推出本土版Linux

「台灣古巴後援會籌備中」，第154期通訊，2009年2月14日。

一，古巴推出本土版Linux

二，會友清大社會所博士生Ilya李士林傑補充

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古巴推出本土版Linux

http://news.sina.com 2009年02月12日 鳳凰衛視

新華社專電

古巴政府本周推出本土版Linux個人電腦操作系統，以逐步取代國內使用的微軟視窗（Windows）操作系統，防止美國通過視窗源代碼危害古巴利益。

路透社11日報道，這款古巴版Linux名為"諾瓦（Nova）"，由古巴政府在首都哈瓦那舉行的"技術主權"主題會議上發布。

除操作系統本身外，"諾瓦"還提供含有多個Linux應用軟件的程序包。

與視窗系統不同，Linux屬于免費軟件且對用戶開放源代碼，允許用戶根據自身需要進行修改。

路透社說，古巴政府將美國微軟公司開發的視窗系統視為潛在威脅，因為美國安全機構能夠獲得視窗源代碼。另一方面，由于美國長期制裁古巴，古巴民眾無法獲得正版微軟軟件或軟件更新。

會友清華大學社會所博士生李士傑補充：

        英國 TheRegister 報導[1]，古巴在哈瓦那舉行的國際傳播科技研討會中，推出自己發行版本的 Nova Linux。

 

繼去年自由軟體基金會 Richard Stallman 在古巴鼓勵大家不要只把自由軟體放在心裡，也要把自由軟體帶到電腦裡面，古巴政府透過 Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (UCI) 推出了這個架構在 Gentoo Linux 上，自己規劃版本的 Linux。基本上應該可以預期的是，這個版本的語言是西班牙文、並且將從古巴軟體發行者的觀點來整理重要的必備套件與程式庫。

        除了告訴大家 Nova 這個名稱有很多故事之外（No va 意思是 Not go!）[2]，TheRegister 還開了軟體命名的ㄧ些玩笑，例如可以叫做 GNU/Fidelix 來跟 Richard Stallman 「嗆聲」。該作者連不上 UCI 的網站（因為人潮太多了），所以看不到、沒有辦法秤秤這個發行版本的「牛肉」有多少。所以作者就有點在酸古巴，倒是可以來經營 server 主機代管的生意。（因為他們的基礎建設實在有很多問題）

我們的國際組織 Culturemondo 2007 年拜訪古巴在哈瓦那召開圓桌會議，其中我就與當地的自由軟體社群朋友一起討論了一些古巴網路發展的現況。由於被美國政府禁運、自己政府也管制言論，所以頻寬速度與安全都狀況非常不好。人民透過 https 加密的 web 端應用程式來即時通訊，避開這些軟體正常使用時的瓶頸與不便。現在看到這個新聞，我也正在與古巴的朋友確認這些自由軟體的進展，是否有落實到其他文化工作者的數位環境中。 

1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/cuba_does_linux/

Cuba crafts extra-communist Linux distro Down with the Microsoft bourgeoisie
By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author
Posted in Operating Systems, 12th February 2009 01:13 GMT
Cuba has launched its own Linux variant, dubbed Nova.

The Nova project has been cooking away for the past year, and it was formally unveiled this week at the annual International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana. At last year's conference - a Microsoft-bash-fest - open source luminary Richard Stallman convinced attendees to take open source software not only to their heart, but to their computers.

The Cuban government, under the auspices of the Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (UCI), created Nova by spinning its own rev on the Gentoo variant of Linux. English speakers will no doubt have fun with that catchy Nova name, which has turned up in urban mythology involves other products in Spanish speaking countries, including a Chevy sedan and some Mexican gasoline.

The country missed the perfect opportunity to call it Fidelix, and if they wanted to be technically correct and give a bow to Stallman - the founder of the Free Software Foundation - they could have called it GNU/Fidelix. A forward thinking Cuban IT industry might have opted for Raulix as well. But open source projects don't seem to be any better at naming products than the marketeering departments at corporations.

Linux and the free and open source applications that run on it would seem to be a natural fit for a communist country, and considering that commercial-grade open source operating systems and applications have been available for decades, it is more than a little surprising that Cuba hasn't long since abandoned Windows on its PCs and servers. But despite trade embargoes, Windows still runs on most of the computers on the island nation, according to a report from Reuters.

That report says that Cuban citizens have only been able to buy PCs for the past year (before then, they had access to them in PC clubs, akin to Internet cafes but apparently without the coffee). And in that time, according to Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software, about 20 per cent of the computers shipped in the country are running Linux. The hope is that the advent of Nova will boost the share Linux holds. "I would like to think that in five years our country will have more than 50 percent migrated," Rodriguez told Reuters.

Cuba is also jumpy about the potential security issues that Microsoft's Windows and other operating systems pose - and not the kind of security issues that most of us think as we use our PCs and systems in our day-to-day work and home lives.

"Private software can have black holes and malicious codes that one doesn't know about," Rodriguez said. "That doesn't happen with free software."

The Cuban Nova Linux is not to be confused with the Linux variant of the same name that Palm is developing for PDAs and other mobile devices.

It is not clear where to get Nova or what packages it has. It is also not clear how the Cuban government plans to offer tech support for the product. Presumably, it will be done through free community support. And they appear to need some tech support fast. The UCI Web site, which appears to be running on Nova and which is where you can get Nova (if my reading of Google cached pages is correct), is down as we go to press because it is being barraged by too much traffic.

Maybe Cuba should start an indigenous server business. ®


2. http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp (無法複製)