Cuba Launches Nova Linux

Filed in archive OS on February 16, 2009

The Cuban government this week launched its own Linux distribution, called Nova.

"The Cuban government, under the auspices of the Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas (UCI), created Nova by spinning its own rev on the Gentoo variant of Linux," writes The Register's Timothy Prickett Morgan.

"Linux has become increasingly popular in South America, Africa and Eastern Europe, where companies and citizens aren't able to afford all of the latest Microsoft software," writes DailyTech's Michael Barkoviak. "Furthermore, the open source software can be freely distributed among friends and colleagues in these nations, which helps it spread faster than Microsoft can."

"The Cuban government feels that Windows is not only a symbol of U.S. hegemonic rule, but they think the U.S. government has access to Windows' source code, and could use it against the Caribbean island," writes Gizmodo's Adrian Covert. "And it's difficult for Cubans to obtain and update their Windows software since there's like, you know, that whole trade embargo nonsense makes it really, really difficult to BUY it..."

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