Local Linux version outshines big boys

By RICHARD WOOD

A New Zealand version of the Linux operating system aimed at supplanting Windows on desktop PCs is outpacing major versions such as Red Hat Linux and Mandrake on a download rating site.

Yoper, from an Auckland Linux consultancy of the same name, became number one on Linux download monitoring site DistroWatch.com over the weekend, two weeks before the commercial release of the product.

The first pre-release of Yoper was on December 6.

It is the brainchild of former Telecom Xtra systems administrator Andreas Girardet, who has spent a year creating the software by selecting choice Linux bits and pieces from other distributions. Yoper stands for Your Operating System and is optimised for modern PC hardware specifications.

Girardet's business is a one-man band using a few subcontractors for services work. But he expects it to expand rapidly.

He said revenue would come from contracting services around Yoper, converting PCs from Microsoft Windows, running training sessions, and selling CDs with Yoper on them.

A Linux distributor might expect to sell one CD per 12 free downloads, and he already has pre-orders.

Girardet said Yoper had been downloaded 15,000 times so far and the first franchise operation was being planned for Germany.

Interest in his version has caught him by surprise.

"Being number one is nice and is good for the ego, and it is also good that I managed to do that on my own without the budget that Red Hat and Mandrake have. So from that perspective I'm very optimistic for the future."

Yoper and Linux are open-source products where the source code is contributed to by thousands of people worldwide and is freely available on the condition that modified versions must also be offered for free.

"It's a whole community," said Girardet. "All I do is take the latest code, basically, and convert it into something people can run on their Machines."