JEDDAH, 11 June — Arabic speakers now have a “cheap, user-friendly” alternative to Microsoft Windows and Office, according to a Korean claim. The Fakhir Arabic edition of Hancom Linux is a powerful and complete native Linux-based desktop bundle that includes both an operating system and an office productivity suite, explained Thomas Sanghyun Park, CEO and president, Hancom Linux, Inc. “Two hundred million Arabic speakers finally have an affordable, high-quality alternative to Microsoft and can save 90 percent in the process,” said Park in his presentation held at Jeddah Inter.Continental Hotel on Saturday night.
Hancom Linux is not well known in the Saudi market. Founded in December 1999, Hancom Linux’s core business is software development and distribution. The Seoul-based company has branches in the US and Japan and liaison offices in Beijing and Taipei. Its mission: To be a leading provider of productivity solutions leveraging its experience in developing Linux-based, multilingual software applications.
Hancom Linux OS 3.0 Arabic edition is a Linux-based desktop OS fine-tuned for Arab users. It is the first Linux OS that fully supports Arabic language input and output. It includes the most recent 2.4-series kernel and Hancom KDE 3.0 Arabic edition, providing a user-interface that is very user-friendly and similar to Microsoft Windows. Because Hancom Linux is based on Red Hat Linux, all Linux applications will run on Hancom Linux.
Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linux is based on the UNIX system. The current full-featured version of Linux is 2.4, which was released in January 2001, and development continues. Due to the very nature of Linux’s functionality and availability, it has become quite popular worldwide and a vast number of software programmers have taken Linux’s source code and adapted it to meet their individual needs.
Linux is considered to be great for 10 reasons. A Linux distribution has thousands of dollars worth of software for no cost.
It is a complete operating system and comes with a complete development environment. It has excellent networking facilities and is an ideal environment to run servers such as web or FTP servers. A wide variety of commercial software is available for the operating system that is easily upgradeable.
Linux supports multiple processors as standard and has the ability to run more than one program at the same time. It has an excellent window system called X — the equivalent of Windows but much more flexible.
According to Park, Hancom Office 2.0 Arabic edition is a powerful, Microsoft Office-compatible office productivity suite for Linux that includes word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. “It’s the first complete Linux-based office suite that’s fully localized for the Arabic language. It’s easy and has a convenient user interface, and is similar to that of other popular office suites allowing users to be productive and quicker; no special training is needed,” Park commented. “Couple that with the best inter-application compatibility in a Linux-based office suite, and there is no better choice.”
This new product has come at a time when the United States and countries in the European Union are conducting studies to explore the adoption of open source technologies. Other nations, such as Korea and China, are placing major orders for open source desktop solutions. Still others, such as Brazil, are passing legislation ordering official purchasers to first consider open source alternatives. The interest in Linux from various countries is prompted by concerns about being overly reliant on a single monopolistic provider. There is also a desire to create a level playing field for the local software industry by using open standards and of course, in these difficult economic times, a need to reduce software expenditure.
With a desire to enable the Arab-speaking world to join the Linux revolution, Hancom has invested heavily in the new software. Hancom believes that the Arab world is sure to be highly interested in an open standards-based alternative that will provide them with major cost savings.
“Until today, only Microsoft’s products fully supported the Arabic language. Many Arab countries like the Kingdom have been waiting for a low-cost, high-quality alternative to Microsoft products for years, and this new product is in response to this demand,” Park remarked.
As a result of these developments, industry analyst IDC recently revised its forecast for Linux desktop adoption, and is now predicting that by 2006, some 25 million people will be using Linux-based desktops.
“With our sale of 120,000 desktops to the Korean government, Hancom Linux closed the biggest single government purchase of Linux systems,” Park said. “Now we’re eager to share that experience by working with our partners and governments in the Middle East and elsewhere to deliver the freedom, flexibility and cost-saving that only Linux can provide. All of our products are now both double-byte and bi-directional, which means that, working with partners, we can easily localize our software for virtually any country in the world.”
