The system, launched earlier this month, was built by the Bhutanese Department of Information Technology and consists of a CD which can be either installed or used as a live CD. The installation system uses Morphix rather than the standard Debian Installer which was not ready at the time of release

The CD includes a complete set of Dzongkha-localized applications, namely the Gnome environment, the OpenOffice suite, the Mozilla Web browser, the Evolution mail reader and GAIM as instant messaging application.

Debian developer Christian Perrier was invited by the Bhutanese government to give a keynote speech at the launch.

Perrier said it is important that users have computers that work in their own language, and that free software leads the way over proprietary software in allowing this to happen.

"They [the Bhutanese people] were very responsive to the idea that the main challenge of free software is for countries to keep the knowledge and develop it in their own country for the benefit of themselves and their culture," he said.