Sharif Linux: The Day Iran Had Its Own Linux Distro

The Day Iran Had Its Own Linux Distro

Here's something most people don't know: before "Persian open source" became a familiar phrase, a small team at Sharif University of Technology was sitting down trying to make GNOME right-to-left, translate Firefox into Persian, and build a proper Jalali calendar into Linux. What came out of that work was Sharif Linux — a distro that even had an edition made specifically for the schools of Bam, though today most old-school Iranian geeks have only heard the name, never actually seen it.

What was Sharif Linux?

Sharif Linux was a bilingual (Persian/English) Linux distribution designed by Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. with Iranian users' localization needs in mind. The roots of the work trace back to the FarsiWeb group's activities starting in 1998 (1377 SH), and were pursued seriously once Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. was officially founded in October 2003 (Mehr 1382 SH).

Two versions, two stories

Version 1, with an English UI but full Persian text processing, was handed over to Shell Development Iran in June 2005 (Khordad 1384 SH) and was installed on that company's servers, desktops, and laptops from that date on.

Version 2, released on May 28, 2006 (7 Khordad 1385 SH), was the first version to have a genuinely bilingual (Persian and English) user interface. This was the version officially unveiled at Sharif University of Technology, and it's the one that gained the most recognition.

Building version 2: the numbers behind the effort

According to FarsiWeb Inc.'s own documentation, producing version 2 was the result of 9 months of continuous work by the technical, translation, and QA teams:

To put these numbers in perspective: a small team, over 9 months, translated close to 45,000 text strings into Persian, modified more than 100 software packages, and fixed 349 bugs. For a local team, that's no small amount of work.

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Interestingly, this wasn't a one-way effort. According to the official features of version 2, the FarsiWeb team also collaborated with upstream maintainers of international software so that bugs discovered in Sharif Linux would get fixed in later versions of the original software too.

The "firsts" Sharif Linux achieved

According to the officially announced features of version 2, these were firsts in Iran — and in some cases, firsts in the Linux world as a whole:

• The first ongoing security support and bug-fixing for a Linux distribution in Iran.
• The first fully Persian installer for Linux.
• The first release of OpenOffice with a Persian user interface.
• The first release of Firefox with a Persian user interface, anywhere in the Linux world.
• The first fully Persian GNOME desktop environment.

Alongside these, the FarsiWeb team provided full support for Persian numerals across most applications for the first time, and brought right-to-left support in packages like the GNOME panel, gdm, Evolution, OpenOffice, and Nautilus to an acceptable level.

Why GNOME, not KDE?

This question apparently came up often enough that the official FAQ had a detailed answer for it. FarsiWeb's short version: more than 80% of GNOME was already localized into Persian, the FarsiWeb team had more expertise in GNOME and the C language, and major companies like Red Hat and Sun Microsystems had also chosen GNOME as their default. In other words, it wasn't a matter of taste — it came down to making the most of limited resources.

The people behind the project

Sharif Linux wasn't the product of some faceless company; several familiar names from the Persian open-source world were behind it.

Roozbeh Pournader was the technical director of the Sharif Linux project — the same person who, a few years later, became the founder and first administrator of Persian Wikipedia, and who spent years as Iran's representative to the Unicode Consortium.

Behdad Esfahbod was also one of the founders of Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. — someone who later joined the GNOME Foundation's board of directors and built the well-known HarfBuzz project (a text-shaping engine now used in nearly every browser and operating system).

Version 2 technical specifications

The server edition also included a built-in kernel firewall and router, plus other services like NIS, DHCP, and Kerberos. Official technical documentation for this edition was also published as a PDF.

Hardware requirements

Both editions also ran on 64-bit AMD processors in 32-bit mode. One interesting detail: Sharif Linux did not work with WinModems, so users had to use external modems — the same issue noted in the IranTux review.

Pricing, packaging, and the user club

The Sharif Linux desktop package, priced at 185,000 rials (the 18,500 tomans mentioned in the IranTux review), included two installation CDs, a user guide, one-time web support for installation, and membership in the Sharif Linux Club.

FarsiWeb defined three different purchase tiers:

The package was available through several online stores and dozens of physical stores in Tehran, including Reza Computer Bazaar and Alaeddin Passage. The Sharif Linux Club was an official community for members, offering news, guides, and access to a programming-tools CD.

Why was the software "free" but you still had to "buy" it?

This question came up often enough that it got its own dedicated spot in the official FAQ. FarsiWeb's answer was exactly this: you didn't have to pay anything — you could borrow or copy a friend's CDs. What was actually being sold was the user guide and technical support — exactly the same model Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu used for their commercial editions.

On the licensing side, Sharif Linux wasn't just GPL either; it used a mix of GPL, LGPL, the Mozilla license, BSD, X11, and the Python Software Foundation license — just like any other Linux distribution. Source code for the packages was also available on written request, for the cost of postage only.

The School Edition — for the students of Bam

Perhaps the most interesting and least-known part of this project is the Sharif Linux School Edition. This edition was commissioned by UNICEF and supported by the Knowledge and Art Foundation, originally intended for use in the schools of Bam — the same city that had endured the devastating 2003 (1382 SH) earthquake a few years earlier.

This edition was built on the same core as version 2, but had a different design: background images, icons, and fonts were chosen to create a cheerful, child-friendly environment. It also came with two computer-education booklets, one for elementary and one for middle-school level.

The software bundle was also completely different:

• GCompris: more than 100 educational activities in game form, covering math, science, and reading skills.
• Dr. Geo: an interactive environment for teaching geometry.
• TuxPaint: a simple drawing program for children aged 3 to 12.

The first real users of this edition were the students and teachers of the schools in Bam.

The problem that got lost in the shuffle: inconsistent translation

Despite all this effort, the only detailed technical review that survives from that era (written by the IranTux magazine) pointed to one serious flaw: excessive, inconsistent Persian translation. For example, the Ctrl key had been translated as "mehar" (مهار), while right next to it, F11 was left untouched; meanwhile "Cookie" was left as "cookie" while plenty of other things had been needlessly translated. The result was that users ended up guessing what a menu item meant based on its icon rather than reading the text.

Why isn't there a "Sharif Linux" anymore?

Development and support for Sharif Linux eventually stopped. That said, this ending wasn't a complete failure; a lot of this team's work on right-to-left support, Persian Unicode fonts, and language support made it into international projects like GNOME, Fedora, OpenOffice, Mozilla, and even Wikipedia and MediaWiki, in patch form. In other words, even after the distro itself shut down, its impact lives on in the everyday experience of Persian-speaking Linux users today — from the Jalali calendar to standard Persian fonts still used on many systems.

FAQ

What year was Sharif Linux unveiled?

Version 1 was delivered to Shell in June 2005 (Khordad 1384 SH), but the official public unveiling of version 2 (the first fully bilingual version) happened on May 28, 2006 (7 Khordad 1385 SH) at Sharif University of Technology.

Who was behind Sharif Linux?

Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. built the project. Roozbeh Pournader (later the founder of Persian Wikipedia) was the project's technical director, and Behdad Esfahbod (later the creator of HarfBuzz and a GNOME Foundation board member) was one of the company's founders.

Was Sharif Linux free, or did you have to buy it?

The software itself was essentially free and could be copied from a friend; what was actually sold was the boxed package with the user guide and technical support, priced at 185,000 rials.

Did Sharif Linux have a school edition?

Yes. The School Edition was commissioned by UNICEF for the schools of Bam, and included child-focused educational software like GCompris and TuxPaint.

Does Sharif Linux's legacy still exist today?

Yes. A large part of this project's localization work made its way, in patch form, into GNOME, Fedora, OpenOffice, Firefox, and even Persian Wikipedia.

Conclusion

Sharif Linux can be seen as one of the first serious examples of "being an Iranian geek": a group of people who, without any particular expectation of reward, spent their time and knowledge making a global technology fit their own language and culture — from the servers of a multinational oil company to the classrooms of an earthquake-stricken school in Bam. The distro itself didn't survive, but its people, and part of their code, are still alive in the open-source world.

Installation screenshots:

A few lower-quality images of the actual version (found in the archives):

Sources

• Sharif Linux — Persian Wikipedia
• Roozbeh Pournader — Persian Wikipedia
• Behdad Esfahbod — Persian Wikipedia
• Sharif Linux — LWN.net
• Sharif Linux review — IranTux magazine
• FarsiWeb Sharif official site archive
• FarsiWeb wiki archive (Wayback Machine)
• "Open Source Software: Perspectives for Development" — uploaded PDF
• "Sharif Linux, Server Edition — System Administrator's Guide" — uploaded PDF
• PersianTools and P30World forum archives
• "The HarfBuzz Man" interview with Behdad Esfahbod, Salam Donya