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South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

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Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#11

Post by yingw787 »

As someone who very much uses and likes FOSS, I'm not sure I'd actually recommend people use Linux in end-user, day to day work. I can definitely see BSD or Linux in core infrastructure, but end users don't really care too much about which OS to use, they care about driver compatibility, UX usability, and app availability, among other things like security and what-not. Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, it has auto-update and nice GUIs and all that. Linux doesn't.

I use Ubuntu 19.10 eoan for my daily driver replacing Windows 10 Professional for Workstations, and I can tell you that the drivers are _definitely_ worse, updates are manual, apps are updated last of the major OSes, and if I wasn't a SWE but I needed to use a computer for my job it wouldn't be as pleasant as Windows.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#12

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

tasogare wrote: post #9
Fronzie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently Cern is having a go at replacing all microsoft products, due to high cost. https://home.cern/news/news/computing/migrating-open-source-... The institute is big enough that it might be a source of inspiration or knowledge for local governments in Europe.

The average CERN user is way more tech savvy than random government workers.

Government workers in South Korea are actually some of the brightest in the country. The jobs are extremely competitive and you have to score very highly on a set of standardize tests to qualify.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#13

Post by pcr910303 »

hsivonen wrote: post #8
microcolonel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time they trusted Microsoft, they got their entire country stuck with ActiveX; that said, possibly a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

That was more South Korea’s own bad crypto policy’s fault than Microsoft’s fault, though.

> That was more South Korea’s own bad crypto policy’s fault

South Korean here, I wouldn’t say it was the government’s fault to enforce better security/crypto tech on the web when banking, right? To be strict, everything really started because of the US’s IMO useless export restrictions. Then it became a legacy that couldn’t be third of for ~20 yrs. I don’t think the policy was great, but it was reasonable at the time.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#14

Post by mjevans »

Fronzie wrote: post #5
newnewpdro wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Munich successfully pivoted to Linux for over a decade, then Microsoft Germany moved their HQ to Munich no doubt greasing many wheels in the process and Munich switched back to Windows a year later IIRC.

Currently Cern is having a go at replacing all microsoft products, due to high cost. https://home.cern/news/news/computing/migrating-open-source-... The institute is big enough that it might be a source of inspiration or knowledge for local governments in Europe.

From my own small slice of experience, it seems likely related to a handful of issues:

End Users: Who are addicted to using Outlook being their job.

End Users: Who still need to inter-operate with others using MS products.

MS Access possibly being the 'best' CRUD interface. (I think it even comes with an expense database template? I think it might also connect to ODBC setups, which are their own nightmare but at least multi-user.)

Various literal corner cases that break workflows. Such as the RTF support LibreOffice lacking the ability to understand feature Y which other file formats can handle (E.G. repeat header row on new pages), or those same import/exports not looking exactly the same in other 'office' software.

==

As a suggestion, even though I'm not familiar with the LibreOffice XML formats offhand, it would be nice if we took a modern, big computer, look at digital typesetting, text area layouts and flow rules. With documents containing multiple types of data and multiple presentation modes (for one document), with a required 'generic' mode that matches traditional web pages, layouts specific to paper sizes / screen sizes, and layout support for anchoring / positioning within those layouts. There also wouldn't be a strong differentiation between 4th dimensional content (moving screens/pages), tables, charts/drawings, or any other type of elements. That might be 'better enough' that MS has to adopt it too.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#15

Post by pedrocr »

yingw787 wrote: post #11

As someone who very much uses and likes FOSS, I'm not sure I'd actually recommend people use Linux in end-user, day to day work. I can definitely see BSD or Linux in core infrastructure, but end users don't really care too much about which OS to use, they care about driver compatibility, UX usability, and app availability, among other things like security and what-not. Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, i…

A lot of your specific claims are dubious at best but more importantly this isn't someone installing Linux on their own random laptop. Doing Linux deployments across a set of machines whose hardware and installed applications you control is a completely different situation.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#16

Post by scarejunba »

microcolonel wrote: post #6
dmurray wrote: post #2

Is this actually likely to happen, or a negotiating manoeuvre with Microsoft?

Last time they trusted Microsoft, they got their entire country stuck with ActiveX; that said, possibly a bit of column A, a bit of column B.

Actually, what's the net rate of money lost and people who've lost money as a result of that?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#17

Post by pitaj »

pcr910303 wrote: post #13
hsivonen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was more South Korea’s own bad crypto policy’s fault than Microsoft’s fault, though.

> That was more South Korea’s own bad crypto policy’s fault South Korean here, I wouldn’t say it was the government’s fault to enforce better security/crypto tech on the web when banking, right? To be strict, everything really started because of the US’s IMO useless export restrictions. Then it became a legacy that couldn’t be third of for ~20 yrs. I don’t think the policy was great, but it was reasonable at the time…

I think the point is that it wasn't better security. And nowadays it likely has no improvement or actually decreases security.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#18

Post by Ronll »

yingw787 wrote: post #11

As someone who very much uses and likes FOSS, I'm not sure I'd actually recommend people use Linux in end-user, day to day work. I can definitely see BSD or Linux in core infrastructure, but end users don't really care too much about which OS to use, they care about driver compatibility, UX usability, and app availability, among other things like security and what-not. Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, i…

Agreed, I'm also an SWE, pro FOSS and all but the Linux Desktop is just not there.

also these days my first suggestion for most users would be chromeOS or similar.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#19

Post by rdiddly »

newnewpdro wrote: post #4
RoutinePlayer wrote: post #3

Did Germany try this unsuccessfully a few years back?

Munich successfully pivoted to Linux for over a decade, then Microsoft Germany moved their HQ to Munich no doubt greasing many wheels in the process and Munich switched back to Windows a year later IIRC.

No mention of it in the English Wikipedia Munich article, but there's one about LiMux, their custom distro:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

German Wikipedia's München article does mention it:

(Deutsch) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_M%C3%BCnchens

(English) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...

Edit: Sorry, actually my trail was

1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchen

2) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchen#Geschichte

3) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_M%C3%BCnchens

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#20

Post by totorovirus »

South korean developer here. I am quite aware of government plans for software since I've done my service as a software developer for army.

There is a company called TmaxSoft which advertises itfself as only builders to the 'Korean OS'. Fueled by relatively high patriotism shared by average koreans, the government had been subsidizing this firm for more than 10 years. Despite the effort to liberate the nation from a private US firm this wasn't successful so far: first they tried to build their own kernel which froze at the public demo. After realizing it was dumb to write kernel from scratch, they began focusing on tuning the visual interface. The result was criticism that is was just a pathetic clone of MintOS(linux distro).

Due to bureaucratic debt over 10+ years, I think those government officials are desparately trying to meet an end to this mad project. The money and time they've spent well deserves a spot in governmental future plan in converting all american OS: Windows into Homemade korean government friendly OS.

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