Two of the reasons for the project are cited as not being dependent on the USA in case of embargos, and they don't trust Winders not to have US government backdoors in it.
Could be fun as my Spanish is very rusty
Well, it finally downloaded and I burnt the ISO. It was 696MB, so it will just fit on a CD (I think............I used a DVD)
It boots as a live CD/DVD and puts up a wallpaper, some icons and a taskbar.
There is a Nova tab down the bottom left corner where "Start" is in Windows and that is the "Menu Principal" which takes you into all sorts of goodies.
I need to do a lot more research, but it sure as hell doesn't look like any Gentoo distro I have seen.
I would say it was someone's first pass at developing a Windows Killer?
EDIT:I found this from a year ago that seems to support my suggestion of political motivation:
Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, an old comrade-in-arms of President Fidel Castro, raised suspicions about Microsoft's cooperation with U.S. military and intelligence agencies as he opened a technology conference this week. He called the world's information systems a "battlefield" where Cuba is fighting against imperialism. He also noted that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once described copyright reformers _ including people who want to do away with proprietary software _ as "some new modern-day sort of communists" _ which is a badge of honor from the Cuban perspective.
And:
Cuba also has trouble keeping proprietary software current. Its sluggish satellite link to the outside world makes downloads of updates agonizingly slow. And U.S. companies, apparently worried about American laws restricting trade with Cuba, are increasingly blocking downloads to the island.
I can certainly vouch for that, it took about 2.5hours to download!
Last edited by nihil; February 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 AM.
He also noted that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once described copyright reformers _ including people who want to do away with proprietary software _ as "some new modern-day sort of communists"
If Billygoat Gates said it, then we know it must be true?
I have had another look at the live CD version and here are a few of the things it has:
Calculator
Photocapture
Dictionary (Spanish I think )
Notepad
Character Map
Command Line Interface
Open Office Draw
Open Office Writer/Web
Other Open Office stuff (spreadsheet, presentations, database etc.)
Document Viewer
Image Viewer
Avahi Zeroconf Browser
Pilot Sync
Bon Echo
Pidgin Internet Client
Network Manager
GParted
Gnome
Samba
E-mail,address book & calendar
Audacious
CD/DVD Ripper
CD/DVD Cloner
VLC Media Player
CD/DVD Burner
Integration with M$ Active Directory
Power Management
Desktop Management
User & Authorities Management
Performance Monitor
Archive (file) Explorer
And a load of other stuff.
I will try it on an Pentium PIII/512Mb PC2100 and a Duron 1.3 GHz/512Mb PC2100.