Red Hat launches Linux in Gujarati

Red Hat India Pvt Ltd has launched the Gujarati version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL), a Linux-based operating system.

Red Hat aims at a wider reach in the country through a strategy that involves providing software at affordable prices. The company also is in talks with several state governments to implement its softwares in different departments.

Prior to launching of the Gujarati version, RHEL has been launched in the Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil.

"We have taken up a major exercise in localisation of the RHEL in Pune for the last year and a half. By 2006, we will present the Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 13 more languages," said Amit Bhoraskar, head - alliances of Red Hat.

The RHEL 4 Gujarati has appllications such as office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool as well as a web browser and an e-mail client.

With the availability of these applications users can share digitised text in Gujarati across platforms. The installation guide will also be in Gujarati.

"Desktops is one segment where afordability plays a key role. The Gujarati RHEL 4 for desktops will be priced at Rs 1,950," Bhoraskar said.

Red Hat India is a joint venture between Red Hat Inc, USA and Clover Technologies, and was set up in 2000.

The official said that Red Hat is perhaps the only solutions provider where support is guaranteed for a period of seven years across all three versions of the RHEL, which was introduced in 2002.

He added that the RHEL version 5 will be launched in 2006-07 and the RHEL version 6 will be launched by 2007-08.