Pardus is a Linux distribution developed by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an arm of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). Unlike most distributions, it is not based on another; an original, in the same sense that Debian is an original Linux distribution.

This article presents a review of Pardus 2011.2, the latest stable version, which was released on September 19 2011. It is the third release this year and judging from the distribution’s release history, Cervus elaphus, as it is also known, should be the last for the year.

Pardus 2011.2 is available for 32- and 64-bit architectures in DVD-sized ISO images. There are separate installation and Live DVD ISO images for both architectures. The Live DVD images are not installable. Test installations, on real hardware and in virtual environments, used for this review, were all made using a 32-bit DVD image. The boot menu is shown below.