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As part of our continuing look at some Debian-based Linux distributions, this month we review Pardus. This is a distribution that has been around since 2005, and has the backing of the Government of Turkey. In fact it was intended from the start as a distribution for use by Turkish government departments, its military, schools, and other institutions. The good news is that it is a good, general use, desktop distribution, which anyone can download and use for free.
Developed by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and the National Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBİM), the first installable release was on 4 February, 2005 and was based on Gentoo Linux. Early versions featured the KDE desktop. Later on, many more desktops were added, including Gnome, Cinnamon, Deepin and Xfce.
Pardus has since moved to a Debian Stable base, and today offers the Gnome and Xfce desktops. There are also versions for server, education and ETAP, which is designed for “interactive boards in educational institutions”. Being Debian-based, the initialization system is systemd.
At one time, there was also a community-developed version of Pardus, called Pardus Topluluk (which is Turkish for “community”), but it has not seen a release in five years and is listed on DistroWatch as “dormant”.
To evaluate one of the desktop releases, I had a look at the 21.4 Gnome version which was released on 27 December, 2022.
Naturally, Pardus is mostly developed for use in the Turkish language, but it does offer other languages. The live session can be done in either Turkish or English.
The distribution gets its name from the Latin term for leopard, which is Panthera Pardus. The logo for Pardus features a very droll-looking leopard, and there is, of course, leopard theming throughout.
Getting Pardus
I downloaded the Pardus 21.4 Gnome ISO file from the official website via HTTP, as there is no BitTorrent option.
The download is 2.5 GB in size, which compares to 3.8 GB for Ubuntu 22.10, which uses a similar desktop.
The website download page provides a simple text file with the MD5 sum for testing the download to make sure it is uncorrupted. Hidden away in the release notes are also SHA256 and SHA512 sums, which are much more secure than MD5 sums and thus preferable for use.
Installing
As usual, I did not install Pardus for evaluation, but dropped the ISO file onto a stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.87, and booted it up from there.
Pardus is listed as a tested and supported distribution on Ventoy, and it worked as advertised, booting to a live session featuring a leopard-themed wallpaper.
System requirements
Pardus has different minimum system requirements for each version. The Gnome version lists: 64-bit 2.0 GHz processor 2048 MB of RAM (2 GB) 15 GB of hard disk space Graphics processor capable of supporting 1366×768 resolution with 16 MB of VRAM
The Xfce version is lighter in requirements, needing only: 64-bit 1.0 GHz processor 1048 MB of RAM (2 GB) 8 GB of hard disk space Graphics processor capable of supporting 1024×768 resolution with 16 MB of VRAM
All Pardus versions are 64-bit, as 32-bit was retired some years ago.
Trying out Pardus
Pardus 21.4 Gnome uses the Gnome desktop, but it is not strictly stock.
The first thing you notice on boot-up is that it has a desktop dock on the left side of the screen, similar to Ubuntu. This is the Dash to Dock extension, which is also found by default on SpiralLinux. This extension takes the dash menu page launcher and moves it to the desktop. It also provides controls for dock transparency, icon size, and “intelligent” hiding when a window touches the dock, or it can be turned off entirely, reverting to the default Gnome behavior. The extension is configurable from the Included Gnome Tweaks interface.
Looking though the main Gnome menu shows that Pardus comes with a collection of custom utilities. These include the Pardus Greeter, which allows setup changes, Pardus Boot Repair, Pardus Image Writer (for ISOs), Pardus Java Installer, Pardus Package installer (similar to Gdebi, for installing .deb files), Pardus Power Manager, and the Pardus USB Formatter for changing the file system on a USB stick. There is also a very “Windows-like” Pardus My Computer application which includes access to networking. The Pardus Software Center is a replacement for Gnome Software, although it lacks some functionality, like showing the software which is installed. These custom utilities are all useful things to have, although none provide any unique functions that are not available elsewhere within Gnome. They seem to be included mostly to make it easier for users to transition from Windows.
Other than these customizations, Pardus runs and works just like any other Gnome desktop distribution. Its smaller ISO size does seem to translate into it running quickly. You never feel like you are waiting for things to happen.
The look is a serious enterprise desktop, with no rough edges, which is pretty much what you would expect in a government-sponsored distribution that has an 18 year history behind it and was mostly developed for internal government use. It runs well and works right.
Perhaps the weakest part of the Pardus experience is the official website, which is slow to load each page, and contains very little information anyway.
Settings
Pardus is provided with both the usual Gnome Settings interface and also with Gnome Tweaks, which does tend to spread out the settings between the two. For instance, Settings is where you find the wallpaper choices and 52 of them are provided. The assortment includes some leopard themed ones, of course, plus some scenery and some abstract designs.
Tweaks is where you find the window themes, and six of those are provided, two of which are dark themes. The default theme is called “Pardus”; it’s a light theme, very similar to Adwaita light.
Overall, there should be enough setting choices to keep most Gnome users happy.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Pardus 21.4 are: Archive Manager (file-roller) 3.38.1 archiver Brasero 3.12.2 CD/DVD burner CUPS 2.3.3 printing system Document Viewer (evince) 3.38.1 PDF viewer Document Scanner (simple-scan) 3.38.1 optical scanner Evolution 3.38.1 email client Files (nautilus) 3.38.2 file manager Firefox 102.6.0-esr web browser Gnome Disks 3.38.2 disk manager GIMP 2.10.22 image editor Gnome Drawing 1.0.1 image editor Gnome Screenshot 3.38.0 screenshot tool Gnome System Monitor 3.38.0 system monitor Gnome Terminal 3.38.3 terminal emulator Gnome Tweaks 3.34.0 settings manager Gnome Videos 3.38.0 video player Gparted 1.2.0 partition editor Image Viewer (Eye of Gnome) 3.38.2 image viewer LibreOffice 7.0.4 office suite PulseAudio 14.2 audio controller Text Editor (gedit) 3.38.1 text editor Synaptic 0.90 package manager Systemd 247.3 init system Wget 1.21 command line webpage downloader VLC 3.0.18 media player
This set of applications comes from Debian Stable, so these are not the most recent versions of most applications. Debian Stable’s collection of applications are intended to be well-tested and stable, rather than cutting edge. Again, in an enterprise environment this is desirable.
All of the packages provided are .deb files, which is why you get Firefox-ESR (Extended Support Release), rather than the regular Firefox package, which would require a Snap package or other solution. In fact, there are no Snaps here at all.
The mix of applications provided is quite good, and includes some useful ones which are often not provided by default in other distributions, such as the GIMP image editor. Missing is a BitTorrent client, and perhaps an IRC client. An anachronistic inclusion is the Brasero CD & DVD writer, but perhaps these are still used in Turkey these days?
LibreOffice is included, lacking only the LibreOffice Base (database) and Math (math formula writer) components, neither of which are commonly used. Both can be installed from the repositories if needed.
Package management is done via the Pardus Software Center, a modern style “software store”, which looks very similar to Gnome Software. Also provided is Synaptic, which, unlike the Pardus Software Center, has more tools – like a list of software installed. Because the underlying system is APT, it can also be managed from the command-line, as on any Debian-based system.
The Pardus software repositories include most of the expected free software packages and also a few surprises, like Google Chrome for Linux, for example, which is non-free software. I can note that it is not installed by default, though. There is even the Ventoy2Disk application for testing out new distributions!
Conclusions
Pardus is a very mature project and, with government sponsorship and development by some large institutions for their own use, what you get is a very solid distribution, with no rough edges. In Turkey, a large number of government departments, educational institutes, and segments of the military are already using this as their daily work desktop, so it has to be good, and easy to use.
For the home Linux user Pardus offers a pre-configured and customized Debian distribution that is ready to work right from installation, and with some tools and utilities that make life a bit easier. As a bonus, for a Gnome desktop, it is smooth and responsive.
External links
Official website: https://www.pardus.org.tr/en/home/