Kilinux (klnX), the Open Swahili Localization Project, is a project by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the

University of Dar es Salaam The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) (Swahili: ''Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam'') is a public university located in Ubungo District, Dar es Salaam Region, Tanzania. It was established in 1961 as an affiliate college of the University of London. ...

(UDSM), and IT+46 for localizing major applications to the

Swahili language Swahili, also known as as it is referred to endonym and exonym, in the Swahili language, is a Bantu languages, Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique (along the East Af ...

. It is based in

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

and run on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, and aims to create an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language officially used in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes. * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa. * Swahili culture, the culture of the Swahili p ...

, which is spoken by an estimated 100 million people. The project was started as a joint effort between the

and Swedish company IT +46.

Background

Swahili is a

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

language spoken by about 100 million people in

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

and other areas in or near the

African Great Lakes The African Great Lakes (; ) are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift. The series includes Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world by area; Lake Tangan ...

region. Most users are using

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

, but since that is not available in Swahili, they have to use English or French. Kilinux tried to reduce the threshold by localizing Open Office. In June 2004 Microsoft announced a Swahili version of Windows.

History

The Kilinux project began in 2003 with the development of a glossary and a

spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic ...

for OpenOffice.org. The Kilinux Project received an award in May 2006 as the best ICT project in the category

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

of the 2006 Stockholm challenge.

Swahili IT Glossary

In October 2004 Kilinux released a ''Swahili IT Glossary'' under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

ShareAlike license containing over 1500 "computer related terms in English and their Swahili equivalents", because the Swahili language did not contain any computer terminology.

Jambo OpenOffice

The first major release by the project — Jambo OpenOffice (''Hello OpenOffice'') — was a localised version of

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

, an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

office suite, and was aimed primarily at schools and colleges.

Jambo Firefox

On 15 June 2006 the project announced they had localised the

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

References

{{Linux-distro Language-specific Linux distributions Swahili language Linux distributions