The picture is a screenshot from a Facebook Fanpage called Ubuntu Freaks! The Administrator asked the fan about their favorite desktop environment. While mine is KDE and Gnome Shell, this guy is shockingly said that his favorite is Manokwari.
Well, Manokwari indeed is a Desktop Environment. It’s a new DE based on Gnome Shell and looks like the Classic Gnome on Gnome 2. It’s made by Indonesian developers assembled as Indonesian Linux Movement Foundation and Blankon Developer as default DE for Blankon Linux. Yep, the name of the distro is Blankon. The release with Manokwari DE is the newest one called Rote, released on August, 17th 2012. It’s Indonesia’s Independence Day celebration.
Rote is the name of an island located on the southest part of Indonesia while Manokwari is the name of a city located in Irian Island, a big island located in eastern part of Indonesia.
I was shocked because a foreigner likes and appreciate the works of Indonesian developers of Blankon. But locally, Indonesian government doesn’t really support the community. But thanks to the strong community of Linux, we can learn a lot of new technologies and the appliance and the giving back to the community. This means Indonesia definitely has a place in the universe of Linux and Free and Open Source Software. We, Indonesians really got the skill. Keep the spirit up, guys!
Notes of Belthsazar 