It's hard to miss the ads sporting the tough-looking penguins crossing their flippers. In a seeming deluge of ads, the until-now almost unknown Kondara project has made a big splash in Linux publications. Kondara's main product is a Linux distribution called MNU/Linux.

Kondara MNU/Linux provides a distribution based on Red Hat Linux, Red Hat 6.x in this case, precompiled for Pentium or Alpha systems. It's clear that Red Hat provides the highest-visibility Linux distribution. Basing Kondara on Red Hat therefore makes a lot of sense. Quite a lot of other Linux distributions have followed the route of building new features on top of an existing distribution.

But this is not just any old staid Linux distribution, as you'd guess from the ads. For one thing, it seems like the developers have a lot of fun, starting with the name of the product. The MNU part of the name MNU/Linux comes from the sound made when you touch a penguin (no kidding). The Japanese symbols look more like munyuu to me, but I could be reading the Hiragana incorrectly. MNU also stands for "Mount is not Umount," according to the Web site, in what seems to be a play on the GNU acronym, GNU's not Unix.

The name Kondara also has a fun background, as quoted from the Kondara.org Web site:

The word "Kondara" is not a proper Japanese [word] but a wordplay from an old Japanese TV animation, and indicates their resolution to devote to this distribution.

The products sport very simple requirements, but clearly aren't intended for low-end machines. On the Intel side, you need a Pentium or better CPU, at least 64 MB of RAM and 1.2 GB disk. You need a video card supported by XFree86 3.3.6 and an ATAPI or SCSI CD-ROM (or 1.44 MB floppy for booting).

While Kondara states you need at least 64 MB of RAM, I suspect you can get away with less, since this is based on Red Hat Linux.

On the Alpha side, the only listed requirement is for a Compaq Linux-Ready Alpha server.

The main focus of Kondara MNU/Linux seems to be on creating an open source distribution that supports Japanese and places a heavy emphasis on graphics.

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