about paldo (operating system)

paldo ("pure adaptable linux distribution") is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and

using the GNU utilities. It was originally developed by Jürg Billeter and Raffaele Sandrini and released in 2004, mainly under the GNU GPL.

paldo was developed primarily for desktop computers using the IA-32 (i686) and x86-64 architectures to utilize applications that remain as close to their upstream source as possible. It has a history of frequent stable releases starting in 2004 (generally every 3 months) and a "rolling release" style of continual updating of the system and application packages. paldo has typically been offered in stable and unstable versions and is one of the relatively few independent distributions listed on DistroWatch.

A stated intent of the paldo project is to only use selected programs in the distribution that satisfy a "just works" principle, with limited intervention needed by the user to compile or update, and minimal duplication of applications designed to accomplish the same task. Another principle is to minimize patching of paldo application packages, preserving adaptability for the end user to make changes or customize the system. Minimal customization of applications may also allow any required patches to be more easily available to the maintainers of the original packages. A customized installer application was developed, however, to simplify installation of live CD releases to the user's computer.

paldo has primarily used the GNOME desktop in release snapshots available on the Live/Install CD. The default web browser is Epiphany, the default for the GNOME desktop, although other browsers are available or can be built using UPKG.

Typical applications found on the paldo Live/Install CD and in the repository have included:

• Epiphany
• Tomboy
• OpenOffice.org
• Totem
• Pidgin
• Gedit

Subsequent to the 1.22 stable release, paldo adopted a rolling release format and in April 2011 made GNOME 3.0 available, using a Linux 2.6.38.3 kernel, and moved to systemd v24.

Selected packages in paldo (stable) as of January 2014 included:

• GNOME 3.10
• Firefox 26
• Linux 3.12
• GCC 4.8.3
• glibc 2.18
• X.Org Server 1.15.0
• LibreOffice 4.1.3

In 2009, the version 7 release of the Swedish-based ExTiX Linux distribution was based on paldo version 1.18(stable), using Linux kernel 2.6.30 and Gnome desktop environment 2.26.1.

Package management system

paldo uses the UPKG package manager to upgrade the system and install applications. Using UPKG makes paldo a mix of a source and a binary distribution. Based on Mono software, UPKG builds packages from source or installs pre-built binaries, using XML scripts that can be customized by the user. It relies on the command-line interface rather than a graphics-based user interface implementation commonly found in many desktop-oriented Linux distributions. UPKG provides dependency resolution, package indexing and automatic menu additions, although installation of even binary packages has been found to take a relatively long time.