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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

#101

Post by detaro »

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".

Why is the government mandating one or two versions of Windows for government computers fine, but requiring one or two selected versions of Linux distros "North Korea"?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#102

Post by deaddodo »

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…

> first they tried to build their own kernel which froze at the public demo

Do you have a video of this? I found mention of it, and many videos of TmaxDay and the like; but without more context or speaking Korean, I'm finding it hard to locate.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#103

Post by stirlo »

Jedd wrote: post #97
hkmurakami wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stron…

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

Examples? We have some of the most open markets in the world. We’re one of the only countries the US has a trade surplus with...

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#104

Post by Hydraulix989 »

AYBABTME wrote: post #39

As a foreigner who's spending a lot of time in South Korea and had to deal/saw people deal with the inability to do anything online without the use of a Windows client, I applaud this. Every time we need to interact with the government or a bank, we need to search around for a Windows laptop or try from a VM (doesn't always work). This makes it very hard for anyone to learn a non-Windows OS. Next step: remove the sil…

I had no issues with running Windows 7 in a VM for everything.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#105

Post by pcr910303 »

oblio wrote: post #94
pcr910303 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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

Of course not! :-) I don’t run Linux myself for these reasons... but the government agency PCs has no requirement to run these. The officials shouldn’t run useless programs on work, right? :-)

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#106

Post by xbmcuser »

totorovirus wrote: post #45
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…

More on TMaxSoft. This software firm builds many 'hard' softwares like OS, DBMS or even MapReduce data processing cluster(like hadoop and spark). One might naturally ask 'why build a wheel while there are plenty already built by open source developers?' and economically aware person might also ask 'how are selling their products while competing against ubuntu, postgresql, spark?' Cloning something from scratch and le…

This is not something unique to Korea most governments do this. Subsidise or promote a homegrown product so that the homegrown product becomes competitive in the future. NASA supporting private rocket firms is an example of this.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#107

Post by atq2119 »

dmix wrote: post #88
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The linked headline from the OPs post about the switch: > Linux in Munich: 'No compelling technical reason to return to Windows,' says city's IT chief https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-comp... The reason was probably a shift in IT management who wanted to keep things "simple" with some vague thing about keeping one platform since they had kept previous windows machines around which were apparent…

It was absolutely a political decision. Microsoft even moved their offices there from slightly outside of Munich to inside of Munich.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#108

Post by meeebooo »

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…

But how will Martha in Accounting (or whatever the Korean equivalent of Martha in Accounting is) learn how to deal with the UX terribleness that is most of Linux? Windows she's been using all of her life, it might not be much better but she's used to it.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#109

Post by dntbnmpls »

I commend their effort, but I believe it should be done on an entire ecosystem level. From assembly to libraries to documents to frameworks. All of it should be turned into Korean, French, Mandarin, Russian, etc. If the governments of major nations decided to do it in a systematic manner along with corporate and university help, it shouldn't be that difficult a task. Create it once and then your entire citizenry can use it. It's rather surprising that there isn't much effort to port "computing" to people's native language. Why should the french or arabs have to learn english to code? Imagine having to learn russian to study physics or learn korean to watch Parasite. By making english the default language of computing, every non-anglo nation disadvantages their own citizens by placing an unnecessary hurdle in front of them.

How many people around the world are simply discouraged from programming because of added burden of having to learn english? How much are we losing out because of that?

This might be difficult for smaller and poorer nations, but what is the excuse for germany, france, spain, japan, brazil, etc with large enough populations to justify porting "computing" for their people?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#110

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

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.

Smelled like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project#History

Remains to be seen what happens now, though only vauguely comparable situation, whith much of Linux in the hands of US-based corporations.

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