The 22years old Ghanaian got my attention again with his new Anansi OS. Raindolf Owusu is a 3rd level University Student of Methodist University Ghana. He runs OasisWebSoft a software developing Start-up which finally gave birth to Anansi Browser and OS.
Anasi Operating System is an openSUSE 12.1 clone OS that was developed on Linux kernel which redefines the Unix desktop user experience. The Anansi OS experienced 3000 downloads within 2 weeks of launch. The OS is an open source software so it attract no fee for download.
It was no surprise as I knew Raindolf as an Open Source lover when I met him in Abuja at IDLEO5, an open source event organized by FOSSFA where he was endowed with Guido Sohne Fellowship by the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA).
He had many things to say about the success of the OS. Do find some part of the interview he had with BTA:
Q: Can you describe the software, what it does and the target user?
Raindolf: Anansi Operating System we developed on top of the linux kernel to redefine the unix desktop user experience. It is a general purpose operating system from enterprise to entertainment purpose. It is free and you don’t have to buy Office (Word, Power-point, Excel etc.) separately. It comes with Libre Office preinstalled. (Saved ~ $200) You are free from Viruses so you don’t have to buy another upgrade of Norton or any other Antivirus software. (Saved ~ $75)
Q: Who are the people behind design or was it a solo project?
Raindolf: I built it with my colleagues from my university, Aaron Nii Adom Nathan and Jeffery Aboagye-Asare. We are now third year university students studying Information technology. We are open source software developers with proven track record of successful projects, like Anansi Web Browser.
We are capable of working independently and also do well with a distributed team. We possess the ability to work on all the states of software development process from requirements to final deployment. We write code in so many programming languages including Java,C++,C,python,php and many more. The other software we embedded in the OS are from open source developers from around the world.
Q. What were your biggest challenges on the way to achieving the Anansi OS?
Raindolf: Funding. We spent so much money trying to secure an unlimited server to host the OS for downloads. Most of our programming skills are self-taught but our biggest obstacle we faced was not having an expert to physically train us with some of the technologies we were working with.
We did a lot of learning online but it would have been even better if we had a technical person do that in front of us so that we could have a Q & A session.
You can check the full interview out on Source page. Interview credit: Biz Tech Africa. Feel free to connect with Raindolf Owusu on Facebook, Twitter and his blog.
