PearOS just won't die...

"A new start" on this Pear OS 8 poster from several years ago seems very apropos. (Click to enlarge)

On January 21st, 2014, I wrote an article as a fond farewell and a sad melancholy goodbye to a beautiful and well rounded Linux distro, Pear OS.

Information from a Softpedia article shows someone is giving new life into this old but popular distribution.

Softpedia wrote:

"Remember Pear OS? Yes, the popular GNU/Linux distribution that looked like a Mac OS X operating system! Well, you won't believe this, but some people will not let go of the past, so a Portuguese developer just cloned the OS.

Rodrigo Marques uploaded a Live DVD ISO image of a new Pear OS-inspired computer operating system on the SourceForge website, claiming that he used the real thing until now and that he wanted to have an updated version for his personal use.

So, he took the concept of the Pear OS distribution, modified an Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system with all sort of desktop and icon themes to make it look like a Mac OS X desktop, added various modern applications, and published the final result under the name PearOS.

Among the pre-installed apps, we can notice the LibreOffice office suite, Chromium web browser, BleachBit system cleaner, Spotify Client, Mozilla Firefox web browser, Gedit text editor, Shotwell image viewer and organizer, Transmission torrent downloader, VLC Media Player, and several of the apps from the GNOME Stack.

Legal problems? Let's hope not!

Now, considering the fact that Pear OS was bought by a big and powerful company whose name we don't know, even to this day, we do hope that the developer won't get in any legal trouble because of the name, which you can see that it's a little modified e.g. Pear OS vs PearOS.

Until then, those of you who wish to take the PearOS distro for a test drive can download the Live ISO image right now from the project's SourceForge page, where the developer invites anyone to contribute with suggestions or ask questions. Please note that the default languge of the OS is Portuguese, but you can easily change it to English."

Rumors some time ago persisted that Apple bought the original Pear OS. If that's the case, we can almost certainly expect some fireworks over this...

-Denny