Distro Friday: GALPon MiniNo

I got the idea when writing up that article about Distrowatch: they cover so many distros and so many of them are so obscure; I decided to check some of them out. Conveniently - as though they're tempting me - there's a "Random Distribution" button on the front page of Distrowatch, which makes it easy. Every Friday I propose a roll of the dice, and a quick look at some distro you've probably never heard of. I'll try to give equal coverage to the BSDs too.

If this is annoying or not interesting to you, quick! Flame me to a cinder in the comments. Otherwise, enjoy what will hopefully be a weekly feature that will lead to interesting commentary and comparison. I'll be skipping the big guys (RedHat, openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc.) since the purpose is to give some exposure to the obscure/niche stuff. These aren't reviews since I don't have time to install and try each one.

Today's distro is GALPon MiniNo, which gets my vote for the "least memorable name for a distro, ever." But it can be explained: GALPon is the Linux User's Group of Pontevedra, Spain, in the region of Galicia. And they're actively working to get Linux in schools, especially where equipment is old or low-powered and often recycled. No surprise then that GALPon MiniNo emphasizes low system requirements: it installs on machines with 128M of RAM and 4GB hard drives, and uses IceWM or Openbox, RoxFiler, and the like to stay light. It also supports Galician and Catalan - regional languages of Spain - out of the box. Looks like it will install nicely on a netbook or liveCD.

I'm a big fan of lightweight distros to counter the otherwise endless bloat of the big guns. I might have to try this one out and give Puppy a run for its money. Read more (in Spanish) at their homepage, their help and documentation (also Spanish/Galician), or their Google group forum.