Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

fosslinux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 209 posts

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#91

Post by smabie »

coldtea wrote: post #64
totorovirus wrote: post #20

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…

> 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. So? Linux, Windows, Mac OS, have all frozen during all kinds of public demos. > After realizing it was dumb to write kernel from scratch Is it? A nation state, especially one the size of Korea, should have no problem finding resources for writing…

But, like, why?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#92

Post by hrktb »

boulos wrote: post #51
pcr910303 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just fine. Hangul support was a key feature in the 80s where everything was MS-DOS; and it wasn’t prevalent then where a lot of hangul-supporting word processors were on the market. The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control…

Interesting! I’m curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn’t this a case of having lots of templates?)

I get the feeling that a viable program produced locally was in itself a user feature.

While other global programs could be shoehorned into their use case, it still means poor customizability for specific Korean issues. In particular being optimized for the most common Korean use case vs western designers use cases.

There’s a lot of these local brew word processor in the CJK world, and it’s often more than just language support: there will be hooks for common legal formatting, better handling of common transformations, sometimes a dedicated IME working better for long form writing. It also means more culturally useful templates from first party source, which is surprisingly nice to have IMO.

It’s also interesting that local companies/gov. can pay for additional features or adaptations, have the talent move to other entities in the local economy, etc. which is a way higher hurdle for an Adobe or Microsoft.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#93

Post by smabie »

rvz wrote: post #56
est31 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows has apps, it has vendor-built drivers, it has auto-update and nice GUIs and all that. Linux doesn't. Linux has tons of auto update solutions. E.g. on Debian you can configure the unattended-upgrades package to do it for you. There are plenty of nice GUIs for most tasks if you use the right distro. Ultimately, it's up to the admins of the deployments to take care of updates, not up to the end users. As for t…

> Linux has tons of auto update solutions. E.g. on Debian you can configure the unattended-upgrades package to do it for you. There are plenty of nice GUIs for most tasks if you use the right distro. These suggestions are still problems for many Linux distros these days and for general users there should be one sane default solution for 'auto-updating', just like Windows and macOS. No user should have to configure pa…

> Windows and macOS come in one recognisable desktop form

Like Win10 home, pro, server, or enterprise?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#94

Post by oblio »

pcr910303 wrote: post #41
oblio wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government thought that this was a good time to remove much of the legacy that enforces Windows, and is considering Linux for one of its options. Microsoft will just offer Windows for free and Office at a steep discount and nothing will change. Mark my words :-)

> Microsoft will just offer Windows for free Which... doesn’t have a really incentive now in because all of the legacy components that required Windows in the first place are all broken on Win10... > Office at a steep discount ... and we don’t really rely on Microsoft Office that much (compared to other countries). The dominant word processor is from a local company (side note: Word is just awful... seriously. Maybe…

Are you telling me no one in South Korea uses Photoshop, InDesign, professional video editing software or generally any kind of pro software that doesn't run on Linux?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#95

Post by AdrianB1 »

hrjd wrote: post #68
remir wrote: post #62

I said this 10 years ago: if government from many developed nations pool their resources together, we could have a serious alternative to Windows and Windows Server. Most of the base elements are already there.

We already have a better alternative to Windows Server. It's Linux.

For server, definitely. For desktops, no: you have a thousand Linux variations that are a nightmare to support on large scale. It is hard enough to support 2-3 Windows versions in the same time, it is impossible to have an entire country on the same Linux distro and version unless you make it mandatory as in "North Korea mandatory".

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#96

Post by AdrianB1 »

smabie wrote: post #93
rvz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux has tons of auto update solutions. E.g. on Debian you can configure the unattended-upgrades package to do it for you. There are plenty of nice GUIs for most tasks if you use the right distro. These suggestions are still problems for many Linux distros these days and for general users there should be one sane default solution for 'auto-updating', just like Windows and macOS. No user should have to configure pa…

> Windows and macOS come in one recognisable desktop form Like Win10 home, pro, server, or enterprise?

The difference for the end user is zero.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#97

Post by Jedd »

hkmurakami wrote: post #83
Jedd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enforcing home grown products to average customers, subsidizing one specific firm to take all domestic market share is how Samsung and Hyundai made its way to top global firms. I can see how this would ensure domestic success, but how does that translate to 'top global firm' status unless the products / features & pricing are significantly superior?

It basically gives domestic firms breathing room to survive and grow, versus being suffocated by the currently superior products or foreign firms. The hope then is that in the future, with a stronger financial footing, these firms' products will improve to be truly competitive with those of the global competitors. At least in hardware/manufacturing, both South Korea and China have done this with great success thus fa…

> It basically gives domestic firms breathing room to survive and grow, versus being suffocated by the currently superior products or foreign firms.

Yes, I get that. It's basic tariff protectionism. Many countries have done, and continue to, do this.

Here in Australia we've done it for decades, but with no global success.

> The hope then is that in the future ...

I hope that isn't the official strategy. ; |

The stronger financial footing (also achievable via vanilla domestic success sans tarrifs) doesn't necessarily guarantee global success, especially if other nation states are adopting similar fiscal & trade policies ... which it's fair to say they are.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#98

Post by renw0rp »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #72
OrgNet wrote: post #55

Windows 10 was the last nail in the coffin for Windows....

Perhaps. But if Linux went mainstream it would probably undermine Apple more than Microsoft. A colleague, who is far more technical than I am, recently said, "I use Apple because it smooths out the bumps. Otherwise, I'd using Linux locally."

I use Linux over Mac at home for this exact reason. What they call "Full screen mode" on Mac is a joke. Plus it's always fun to watch people trying to get external display to work with their Macs during the meetings at work...

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#99

Post by rrdharan »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63
danso wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant well-known case: when Munich switched to Linux and then switched back to Windows 10 https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/26/linux-pioneer-munich-swi...

Which is, of course, the canonical example of why all governments should do it. The project didn't fail, it was on pace to succeed, which made Microsoft swoop in and basically bribe them to switch back. The lesson being, switch to Linux. Either you'll switch and save money, or Microsoft will bribe you not to and you'll save money.

That only makes sense if the total bribe outweighs the investment in building the credible alternative.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#100

Post by 8bitsrule »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #95
hrjd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a better alternative to Windows Server. It's Linux.

For server, definitely. For desktops, no: you have a thousand Linux variations that are a nightmare to support on large scale. It is hard enough to support 2-3 Windows versions in the same time, it is impossible to have an entire country on the same Linux distro and version unless you make it mandatory as in "North Korea mandatory".

>a thousand Linux variations that are a nightmare to support on large scale.

So, why not pick -one- major distro (Debian family, Ubuntu say) and support it? win-win. (In everyday use,'thousand' doesn't mean much. 'Handful' is closer to the ground.)

Post reply on HN