Conectiva Linux is a distribution released by a company
of the same name from Brazil. They are very focused on the South,
Central and North American markets, which is clearly demonstrated
by the fact that the distribution offers language choices of only
Spanish, Portuguese, and U.S. English.
Conectiva is very popular in South America, however; this is
changing, as their market expands north. One of the attractions of
Conectiva is APT. APT is the highly venerated Debian package
management tool that has long been a favorite of the Debian crowd.
It excels at installing software and in the same step accounting
for all dependencies that a particular package may have. If you
have ever used it you will know what a blessing it is and how much
time it can save when installing any package, particularly complex
ones.
Conectiva pioneered, and help develop APT (Advanced Package
Tool) as an addition to RPM, the Red Hat Package Manager. This is a
big step forward for RPM-based distributions. A limitation of RPM
is the lack of ability to fetch and install dependencies that are
needed when installing a given package. It can be frustrating to
try and install some software only to be held back by unmet
dependencies. This usually leads to time-loss as one has to track
down these dependencies, install them, and then install the package
you wanted to install in the first place. By adding APT to their
distribution Conectiva has added some serious value. Now Conectiva
is one of two APT-enabled distributions that are RPM based. The
other is Mandrake, which doesn't rely on APT as much as it does its
own tools.
Conectiva also shares much in common with several other
distributions, such as Red Hat, which it is based upon. Still, with
version 7.0 we are starting to see the emergence of a unique
distribution that has its own characteristics, strengths, and
weaknesses. With this release Conectiva is definitely poised to
stand on their own.
Another interesting fact about Conectiva is that they employ
Alfredo Kojima, the author of Window Maker, a popular and very
friendly window manager. This is very much represented by the fact
that when you install Conectiva you are given a choice of GUI's to
install and work with: KDE, GNOME and Window Maker. Three excellent
choices.
