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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

#111

Post by pcr910303 »

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’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”.

First of all, QuarkXPress had shitty, really shitty language support. You might be surprised when you know that most pro apps have really, really poor CJK support — apps like Photoshop currently has really hacky input support bolted on later, and frequently a problem. Even big, user facing apps like Microsoft Excel still has lots of problems with input. So back in the days where the word processor market was more diverse, QuarkXPress was not an option.

Then also, there is the popularity problem where people have not used or even heard about DTD software like this, and it’s not really a friendly interface for users to create and modify documents.

This is a side story but... publishers that needed DTD software used QuarkXPress back in the day. The company backing the software had frequent conflicts with the local publishers with license pricing, and the publishers decided to protest by not upgrading to the latest version — and AFAIK lots of small publishers that didn’t have the manpower to convert all of it’s files to InDesign still buys used PowerMacs to run the version(I’m not sure but something like 3.3 — released in 1996!) that they use.

> 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?)

> presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”.

Yeah, pretty much true too.

Having lots of templates in HWP is one of the reason why HWP isn’t disappearing; there is vendor lock-in due to custom file formats, and people don’t feel any reason to move to another one.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#112

Post by Qu3tzal »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #109

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…

Well, why do banks don't port all their code to recent and efficient languages? Pretty much the same here. All the code currently in use is written in English and it will take decades to completely transit from English to French computing (let's take the example of France, since I'm French). Add to that that all classes resources are for English programming languages and that to share knowledge between French, German and Russian programmers English is the only way to go.

But don't be fooled, in most companies all the comments and documentation are written in French. Variables are in English because it's the only language that only use the ASCII charset. Only recent languages have the support for Unicode identifiers names.

English reading comprehension (at the very least) is a mandatory skill to have in our modern world.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#113

Post by AdrianB1 »

detaro wrote: post #101
AdrianB1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

TLDR: there are only 2 Windows versions with large market share, Linux on desktop is much more fragmented.

No, the government is mandating nothing, users can pick from the most popular OS and that are now Windows 10 and Windows 7. If you let users pick a Linux, any Linux, they will pick them all, unless the government really forces everyone to pick a single version - probably that is the point of the the version in the spotlight.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#114

Post by AdrianB1 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #100
AdrianB1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

This can be done only if the government enforces the choice, but that is almost impossible: everybody will believe they are special and need something else as an exception. Some will even be justified.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#115

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

Yeah, I think it only started to work for the USA globally after WW2 ?

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#116

Post by ThatGeoGuy »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #104
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.

The point seems to be about finding a computer at all. Suppose you want to do some banking and all you have is your Android phone? According to what I'm reading from other comments, you may just need to find a Windows PC rather than handle things with your own device.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#117

Post by qilo »

stirlo wrote: post #103
Jedd wrote: post #97

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. 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...

I guess the parent poster meant that despite doing the same in Australia, this didn't produce global companies like Samsung, Hyundai, LG, etc.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#118

Post by detaro »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #113
detaro wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

TLDR: there are only 2 Windows versions with large market share, Linux on desktop is much more fragmented. No, the government is mandating nothing, users can pick from the most popular OS and that are now Windows 10 and Windows 7. If you let users pick a Linux, any Linux, they will pick them all, unless the government really forces everyone to pick a single version - probably that is the point of the the version in t…

Government workers pick the OS on their work PCs, really? I'm quite sure "this is your PC, IT has installed Windows X on it" is the common case. It doesn't become suddenly bad if that instead is "... has installed Ubuntu 18.04 on it".

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#119

Post by pcr910303 »

dmix wrote: post #69
pcr910303 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, nice to meet another Korean (still wake at 4AM) on HN! :-) > The result was criticism that is was just a pathetic clone of MintOS(linux distro). I’m pretty sure you’re mixing up Harmonica with Tmax — Harmonica is based on Linux Mint (and is a pretty well operated open source project) while Tmax uses the Linux kernel, some BSD components and a custom desktop environment that features a rip-off interface of Wind…

Found a page with some information + a screenshot of Harmonica: https://linuxreviews.org/HamoniKR There wasn't any english stuff for Tmax distro that I could find... idk why they don't just adopt Debian + Gnome for their desktop stuff with some Korean development work on top of that. It's a great looking UI/UX and would be perfect especially if most of the software is via the browser/SaaS anyway. Or some occasional w…

> dk why they don't just adopt Debian + Gnome for their desktop stuff with some Korean development work on top of that. It's a great looking UI/UX and would be perfect especially if most of the software is via the browser/SaaS anyway. Or some occasional wine translations where needed.

Well, (as you mentioned in the edit) it doesn’t create something totally new — AFAIK it uses the cinnamon DE. Also, you mentioned about being ‘perfect’... but you will be surprised in the level of CJK support on any open source software. Even the big ones don’t support CJK well, unless the software uses the OS toolkit & operating system gives you for free — and Linux doesn’t. Software like Firefox’s CJK input is frequently broken in macOS (they don’t use Cocoa), and on most Linux distributions everything is just terrible (including Ubuntu). That’s the reason for using a local distribution.

> This isn't something to shame them for, this is how it should be done.

It could be great if we could just use Linux Mint or Ubuntu and call it a day; Linux people, please stop considering input managers and other UTF-8 stuff as bloat... or you will never get meaningful adoption to ordinary users in the CJK.

Re: South Korea switching their 3.3M PCs to Linux

#120

Post by pcr910303 »

meeebooo wrote: post #108
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…

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.

> But how will learn how to deal with the UX terribleness that is most of Linux?

They learnt to deal with the terrible UX in Windows, no reason they can’t on Linux. :-)

> it might not be much better but she's used to it.

It’s her work, she better get used to it too keep working; That’s a pretty compelling reason to get used to Linux, right?

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