ArcheOS 4.0 – “Caesar”: novità e aspetti della distribuzione GNU/Linux dedicata all'archeologia

This article illustrates the fourth release of ArcheOS, the first GNU/Linux distribution developed for archaeological aims and released under GPL. Since the first version in 2005, this free operating system has attempted to satisfy all the needs of an archaeological project, covering every single step of the operating workflow, from data collection and storage to elaboration, publication and sharing. The main target of the project is to spread the use of Free and Open Source software and to apply the ideology of the “Free Software” movement to archaeology itself (a central postulation of the Free Software Foundation is the free circulation of data and ideas ). The new release “Caesar”, based on Debian Squeeze 6.0, has some important changes in the organization of the structure of the entire project. In fact, the developer team focused more on the stability of the operating system and an on-line service to keep the different programs (APT deb-repository) up to date. “Caesar” ensures a better hardware integration and a more accurate selection of software. The research of new technological solutions is one of the most important aspects of the project, which, from this aspect, is strongly connected with innovation in archaeological methodology.