Pixart

infobox company
company_name = Pixart SRL.
company_type = SRL
company_slogan = "Soluciones Nacionales a Nivel Internacional (National Solutions at International level)."
foundation = 1998
location_city = Capital Federal
location_country = Argentina
key_people = 4
num_employees = 40
industry = Software Development
revenue = 500.000 USS
products = Rxart family
homepage = http://www.pixartargentina.com.ar/

Pixart SRL is a company dedicated to the development of free software, particularly the Rxart computer operating system family, based on Debian GNU/Linux.

History

In 1998 Corel left the commercial area of Latin America in the hands of Pixart or its regional development. Corel decides to discontinue the product, Pixart retakes the possibility as much of continuing with the project receiving of Corel support technically as legally. Corel gives the Operating system to Xandros for the version in English and derives in Pixart the agreement for the development in Spanish and Portuguese. Pixart signs an agreement of cooperation and development to generate the product in Hispanic speech with know how and knowledge of the market of Latin America.

Rxart

Rxart is a Linux distribution developed in Argentina, based on Debian GNU/Linux. Rxart is the most popular Spanish language distribution in Latin America, reaching an installed base of 350,000 units in 2005. [ cite web
url = http://www.linukx.com/rxart-32-desktop-linux-first-impressions/ | title = First impressions of Rxart on Linukx ]

Its origins date back to 1999, when the founder and CEO of Pixart, Gabriel Ortiz, decided to develop a friendly and easy-to-use distribution intended mainly for hardware assemblers.Fact|date=March 2008 After an agreement in 2007 between Lenovo and Pixart, Rxart version 3.2 was made available pre-installed on desktop PCs in Argentina. [ cite web
url = http://quilombo.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/rxart-32-desktop-linux-first-impressions/ | title = First impressions of Rxart on Quilombo ]

The distribution is available in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Development

Pixart begin commercializing in Argentina, in the more important wholesale channels: Garbarino, Fravega, Carrefour, Jumbo, Megatone, Sicsa, Pcarts, New Tree, Compumundo, among others. Basing the distribution on Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 ("Sarge"), the company added proprietary software components.

Pixart has contacts with Sun Microsystems, IBM, Intel, AMD, PChips, Smartlink and Biostar, among other companies.

In August 2006, Rxart was chosen as the operating system for the Intel Classmate PC in a pilot scheme by the government of Venezuela [ cite web
url = http://www.vivalinux.com.ar/biz/rxart-en-las-classmate-de-venezuela.html | title = Classmate on Vivalinux (spanish) ] . From June 2007, AMD started distributing components to various countries around the world with Rxart preloaded for their demonstrations. Also in June, Pixart signed an agreement with Sun Microsystem to bundle StarOffice with Rxart.

In Pixart laboratories, several companies collaborated by sending hardware for the development of device drivers. Among them were Lexmark, Epson, Intel, AMD, PCtel, Miro, HP and Dell.

Rxart is named after one of the collaborators for the MANCOOSI project in the European Union. [ cite web
url = http://www.mancoosi.org/participants.html | title = MANCOOSI oficial Homepage ]

See also

* List of Linux distributions

References

External links

* [http://www.pixartargentina.com.ar/ Official Home Page]
* [http://www.mancoosi.org/participants.html About Rxart and others participants on MANCOOSI Project]
* [http://sidcc.a.wiki-site.com/index.php/Utach/Pixart_lenovo_english About Lenovo-Pixart pact (On SIDCC Wiki) (English)]