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Booyo is a Linux distribution and a Korean standard Linux reference platform being developed with the purpose of promoting free software in Korea. It is being developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Korea and six other Korean companies and supported by the Korean government.
Purpose
In late '90s, there had been an explosive boom of Linux in Korea. Since the emergence of the initial Korean localized Linux distribution named AlzzaWare in 1996, there had been developed many localized distributions developed and by the year 2000, more than 100 companies involved in the Linux business in Korea. But from the lack of business model and profits from the Linux business, those interests subsided and the many developed distributions left non-standardized and incompatible software environments, making it difficult to introduce Linux platform in Korea.
To promote software industry in Korea where foreign commercial software dominates, Korea government employed free software promotion support policy since 2003. As a part of the policy, a project to develop a standardized, free, open software computing platform named Booyo. Seeing that the problem with open software is the difficulty of choosing right software from the excessive diversity, the incompatibilities from the solutions combined from diverse applications, and lack of support and warranty of open software, the project aims to make a national standard and develop a standard open software platform which confirms to the standard.
Features
Desktop Environment
Booyo aims to provide a friendly and easy environment to the users who are accustomed to Microsoft Windows which is dominant in Korea. Booyo makes compatible environment by providing icons, colors, and menu trees corresponding to that of the Microsoft Windows. Also, the position of start button, task bar, quickstart bar is similar.
Booyo provides find and clear Korean text by using bitmap fonts. Default character set is set to ko_KR, and character encoding is set to UTF-8.
Booyo provides standard Korean environment by defining standard names of menus, applications, and messages. Firebox is also localized.
Performance
Instead of the server-oriented Linux distribution, Booyo aims to provide suitable environment for desktop users. Booyo uses boot splash patch to provide user-friendly booting screen. Boot delay is minimized below one minute by starting multiple service daemons concurrently. Number of packages and daemons are reduced to half, providing users fast environment.
Processor and I/O
Booyo provides HT (HyperThreading)-aware scheduler which solves the problem of load concentration on one processor resulting from distributing loads on logical CPUs which are physically same processor. Also, process affinity can be specified to run a process on the specified processor. Memory access is improved by solving the problem of searching every page tables. To improve I/O management, an interrupt-polling hybrid NAPI interface is provided to the driver developers to minimize processor interference of interrupt scheme. Integrate ethernet link is developed to combine separate network interfaces into one interface while having one IP address and MAC address. Maximum of 9000 byte MTU is supported.
Other features
Forced unmount is developed to unmount a filesystem when it is being used or there is another filesystem mounted to that filesystem. Persistent device naming is provided to maintain same device name across sessions. System image backup is provided for recovering from critical failure. USB driver management is provided. For USB memory device, Korean filename, large memory device, and password protected or write-protected memory device is supported.
Availability
As of September 2005, Booyo is under development and it is distributed only to the companies involved in the development. One of the collaborating companies, Linux Business Center, commercialized the reference platform and you can download Booyo at that company website including source rpm ISO as well as Booyo derived distros. The Booyo logo is copyrighted and a license will be required to use the logo.
Origin of the name
Booyo is a Korean onomatopoeia yelled at during pheasant hunting to make the birds take wing, hence meaning the new soaring of the Linux platform in Korea. The Booyo logo shows a penguin taking off the ground. A homonym of Booyo means being rich.
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