The PAN Localization Project, Nepal Component started its work from January 2004. A major component our work included developing a Linux Distribution in Nepali. The work in itself was technically challenging from all aspects as everything was being done for the first time in the Nepali Language in Nepal. The first results of our work came out in December 2005 within a time span of around 11 months with the release of the NepaLinux 1.0, a localized Linux Distribution in Nepali. This was a major breakthrough in the history of software localization of Nepal and a big revolution in the field of Information Technology in Nepal, as for the first time end-users were being facilitated to use the desktop environment and other important applications in the Nepali language, thus paving ways for eliminating the digital divide caused by the language barrier "English". In addition to this, the localized operating system also has the facility for the input and manipulation of Nepali data in an easy and a reliable manner. One of the other fascinating features included in the distribution is the Spell-Checker and Thesaurus utility for Nepali, something that has been taken up with great enthusiasm by the Nepali users.

The impacts of the PAN Localization Project in Nepal has been very positive in terms of the development of computing capacity in the local language, yet another broader objective of the Project. Since the launching of the Project, substantial amount of expertise has been gained especially in localization and the technical and linguistic issues related to it. Two new versions of NepaLinux, i.e. NepaLinux 1.1 and NepaLinux 2.0  got released respectively in October 2006 and June 2007. Special care was taken to make them relatively bug-free and as less technical as possible. There are plans of releasing NepaLinux 3.0 in  March 2008. Future versions of NepaLinux would concentrate on added up technical features and better stability. Simultaneously, we are working on the Natural Language Processing(NLP) for Nepali. The Spell-Checker and the Thesaurus have been considerably enhanced in their performance in the recent releases, featuring a word coverage of 2 million words in the Spell-Checker and 6,000 entries in the Thesaurus respectively.