Pixart SRL is a company based in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

dedicated to the development of

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

, particularly the Rxart computer

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

, which is based on Debian.

History

Pixart started in 1998 as a regional representative of

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviatio ...

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

. When Corel discontinued their operating system product, Pixart decided to continue the project, receiving technical and legal support from Corel. Corel gave the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

version of their operating system to

Xandros Xandros, Inc. was a software company which sold Xandros Desktop, a Linux distribution. The name Xandros was derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros. Xandros was founded in May 2001 by Linux Global Partners (Will Roseman a ...

, and agreed to give the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

and

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

versions to Pixart. These products, coupled with many sales agreements, have made Pixart one of the largest Linux-related companies in Latin America.

Rxart

Rxart is a Linux distribution developed in

and based on Debian. Owing to the number of computers sold with Rxart pre-installed, Rxart has become a very popular

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in th ...

distribution in Latin America, reaching an installed base of 350,000 units in 2005. Its origins date back to 1999, when the founder and CEO of Pixart, Gabriel Ortiz, decided to develop a user-friendly distribution intended mainly for hardware assemblers. After an agreement in 2007 between Lenovo and Pixart, Rxart version 3.2 was made available pre-installed on desktop PCs in Argentina. The distribution is available in

and

Development

Pixart began being sold as pre-installed in Argentina, in numerous wholesale channels, including Garbarino, Fravega,

Carrefour Carrefour () is a French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation headquartered in Massy, France. The eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue, it operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries stores and convenience stores, whic ...

Jumbo Jumbo (about December 25, 1860 – September 15, 1885), also known as Jumbo the Elephant and Jumbo the Circus Elephant, was a 19th-century male African bush elephant born in Sudan. Jumbo was exported to Jardin des Plantes, a zoo in Paris, and t ...

, Megatone, Sicsa, Pcarts, New Tree, and Compumundo. Basing the distribution on Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (''Sarge''), the company added

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...

components. Pixart has contacts with Sun Microsystems, IBM,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

, PChips, Smartlink and

Biostar Biostar Microtech International Corp. () is a Taiwanese company which designs and manufactures computer hardware products such as motherboards, video cards, expansion cards, thermal grease, headphones, home theater PCs, remote controls, deskt ...

, among other companies. In August 2006, Rxart was chosen as the operating system for the Intel Classmate PC in a

pilot scheme An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

by the government of

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. From June 2007,

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 StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary office suite, intended to compete with the marketing-leading Microsoft Office. It served as the basis for open-source suites OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. StarOffice supported the OpenOffice.org XML f ...

with Rxart. In Pixart laboratories, several companies collaborated by sending hardware for the development of device drivers. Among them were

Lexmark Lexmark International, Inc. is a privately held American company that manufactures laser printers and imaging products. The company is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2016 it has been jointly owned by a consortium of three multination ...

Epson Seiko Epson Corporation, or simply known as Epson, is a Japanese multinational electronics company and one of the world's largest manufacturers of computer printers and information- and imaging-related equipment. Headquartered in Suwa, Nagano ...

, PCtel, Miro, HP and Dell. Rxart is named after one of the collaborators for the MANCOOSI project in the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

References

External links

Official Pixart website

Official Rxart website
{{Linux distributions Software companies of Argentina

History

Rxart

Development

See also

References

External links