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The Ongoing Saga of Linux in China

Posted by Hemos on from the reports-from-the-front dept.

Dan Gillmor, who's currently on the road in China, has sent a report about the role of Linux in China. We've talked about this before. Dan hits on some of the high points for *why* the Chinese are interested, which makes for interesting reading.

15 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Taiwan by Moridineas · · Score: 4, Interesting


    I don't know anyone from China who lived there after about age 9 or 10 (all the families of my friend moved here [the US] at about that time) but I do know a good number of Taiwanese who went through higher schooling in Taiwan.

    In Taiwan (at least from what I hear), FreeBSD seems to have become very popular, and to have a better reputation than Linux. One of my friends still connects to Taiwanese BBS type systems many of which are running FreeBSD.

    So I'm not exactly clear why Linux making in-roads (which I'm not sure is really justified in the article--it seems a lot of if's, maybes, and predictions) in China is so important. Free software is in the Chinese speaking world and has been making in-roads for years--that is what seems important to me.

    Scott

    1. Re:Taiwan by tt2k1 · · Score: 3, Funny
      Free software is in the Chinese speaking world and has been making in-roads for years--that is what seems important to me.
      Yes, if by "free sofware" you mean pirated copies of Windows.
      --

      Troll Tuesday 2001.

      --The Mess

  2. Paradoxical antipiracy reaction by cigarky · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In many countries in the past, it has been easier and faster to obtain and use a pirated copy of Microsoft software than bother with another OS, such as Linux. This still appears to be the case. However, ever tightening anti-piracy methods by Microsoft may decrease the former ease of pirating MS software and lead to a [somewhat ;)] higher chance of people utilizing Linux.

    --
    You shank my Jengaship!
  3. My chinese labmates use Windows because by sam_handelman · · Score: 5, Informative

    They don't like the Linux Chinese language support. None of the Linux boxes in the lab have chinese installed on them, in any case.

    I don't know exactly what they find wrong with it, but Chinese readers who don't use Linux should take a look here; which btw is actually hosted from here and then give comments to people on sourceforge who will, given the attention this is getting, help to develop tools that better fit whatever people's needs are.

    The Chinese language is very different from English and features that are hugely convenient for English users can seem irrelevant while things that it would never occur to English users to want, or which are downright inconvenient, are very helpful when you're typing Chinese. This is a situation where Linux needs.... marketing (dum dum dum) and in a terrible way.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
    1. Re:My chinese labmates use Windows because by mizhi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's a nightmare getting linux to use chinese. But I have done it, at least partially... you can install language packs for mozilla/netscape to read websites, and also hack your .emacs file to make emacs able to handle chinese.

      Those of us for which chinese is a second language would like to see better support for multi-language platforms. That said, I have gotten java to do Chinese using unicode. The biggest weakness tho, is input. Chinese has like 2 or 3 different ways to input characters. The only method I know how to use effectively is the pinyin method, however from what I've seen, none of the methods are supported very well. It's the same old story though, software is written in english and then translated, usually through a serious of ugly hacks. :-)

      One thing I'd really like to see is something for latex that would allow me to do typesetting and printing of characters...

      I'm rambling, I'll stop.

      --
      Humorless sig goes here.
  4. Nice balanced, realistic article by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Informative

    In anticipation of the site being /.'d, or you lot being too lazy to read it, a few quotes:

    • More than 10 percent -- possibly as many as 15 percent -- of the desktop computers sold in China this year will come pre-loaded with Linux [...] In a nation that is paying somewhat more attention to anti-piracy campaigns, PC vendors have more incentive to sell legal systems. [...] But she and Liu agree that most of the pre-loaded Linux computers don't stay in that condition once buyers take them home or to the office. It's only slightly more difficult than it used to be to buy an inexpensive, unauthorized copy of Windows, which tends to make its way onto many of the hard disks that housed Linux when they left the store.

    This is very pragmatic stuff. The basic message is that users want Windows, and vendors will give then Linux only if they have to for budget reasons. But the important point is the 10-15% figure, and the following:

    • Red Flag's Liu thinks even this is progress. If end users even touch Linux briefly, he argues, some of them will stick with it. [...] Sun Microsystems will soon release [Star Office 6.0] localized for the Chinese character set [that] will sufficiently close the gap with Microsoft Office

    Bingo. If you haven't tried the Star Office 6 beta, try it now. It's the killer app. For Harry Homeowner or Cathy Cubeville, a KDE/Gnome/GNU/Linux distro with Star Office 6 will do everything they need, for a fraction of the (retail) cost of a Microsoft solution. And if it's pre-loaded, why would you pay even a few dollars extra to replace that with a pirated Redmond solution?

    I say this not as a long time Linux afficionado, but as a recent convert. Red Hat 6.2 and Star Office 5.2 came off my drive after a week, but SuSE 7.3 and Star Office 6 beta 3 do everything that I need. There's no way I'd pay £444 (UK retail prices) for WinXP + Word 2002, but I will pay £60 for boxed sets of SuSE + Star Office (assuming 6.0 ships for the same price as 5.2).

    And maybe that's the point in China too. You can afford to bundle real versions of non-M$ software, but the M$ stuff is just too damn expensive. The choice for OEM's and purchasers is to use open source, or to pirate Microsoft. Right now, many of them are still choosing the latter, but at least they're being given the choice. I really think that when Star Office 6.0 ships, they'll find to their surprise that there's just no need to do that any more.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  5. Red Flag sponsorships by thorsen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In various hacker circles we have often discussed the China market for one reason: Why don't we see more stuff coming out of China?

    Red Flag Linux is one of the biggest (maybe biggest of us all) Linux distributors, but you still see nothing coming back to the society. Try to think of the last time you saw a patch from a chinese developer - it's very rare.

    I would really like to see the chinese hackers contributing to the environment in the future. Then it would be really interesting how Linux is doing in China.

    Bo Thorsen,
    SuSE Labs.

    1. Re:Red Flag sponsorships by saka_yu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most of patches from chinese hackers are specialize in chinese support or i18n. At the same time, unfortunately most of them don't know how to communicate with the upstreams. In face, the chinese hackers do lots of i18n work. Such as CLE (Chinese Linux Extent), TurboLinux Chinese, they have released most of their work about Chinese under GPL license. We are joining the main stream of opensoure society, but please notice the real opensouce history in China is less than seven years. There are already many users of Linux in collages of China now. As I known, the OS lesson of many collages is based on Linux now. And I myself am a Debian Developer. I believe you will see more and more opensoure projects from China in future.

  6. Fig Leaf? by cygnusx · · Score: 5, Informative
    But she and Liu agree that most of the pre-loaded Linux computers don't stay in that condition once buyers take them home or to the office. It's only slightly more difficult than it used to be to buy an inexpensive, unauthorized copy of Windows, which tends to make its way onto many of the hard disks that housed Linux when they left the store.


    Excuse me for being cynical, but I know what software piracy in Asia is like. These are places where you can pick up Mathematica, STAAD, Oracle - for $20 or thereabouts. So is this bundling of Linux anything more a fig leaf from rock-bottom assemblers to not appear as selling "naked pcs" to clueless consumers?

    The only two good points are -

    a) since pc penetration in china is less than that of the US, the avg pc user in china is a lot more savvy than the avg us pc user. hence the chances of staying with linux is higher.

    b) maybe (like the article notes) the users will dual-boot. At least the bright school/college goer will take a look at Linux and realize choice does exist.
    1. Re:Fig Leaf? by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're right of course, but don't underestimate the power of having Linux distributed to all those users, even if most of them blow it away.

      The fact that Linux actually ships with the system means that users in China have a real choice to make, whereas in the rest of the world most users have no idea that non-Windows operating systems exist. Microsoft actually has to compete on merit.

      As Microsoft takes steps to reduce piracy in China (including things like product activation), things will get really interesting. Nobody is going to pay the full price for Windows/Office - it's just not that much better. MS will either lose tons of market share, or they'll have to reduce the price in China. In fact, they'll probably find a compromise price to maximize revenue. That compromise will end up giving Linux a pretty decent market share.

      --
      It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
    2. Re:Fig Leaf? by WNight · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, given the average national income in many of the countries we're looking at... Microsoft would have to match Pepsi's (misstated) power of *bringing back the dead*, to be worth the price.

      Microsoft Win 2k Pro + Office Standard, is USD 699.

      That's USD 200 less than the total yearly wage in Rwanda, which is one of the countries people are considering trying to wire.

      Chine has a *much* higher average wage, almost USD 3600, but that cost is still almost a fifth of it.

      I know quite a few people (of those who use Windows) who consider that they should pay for it. Despite MS's illegal practices they still believe people should be paid for their efforts. But can you imagine if the package cost between USD 9000 and USD 30,000? That's the range it effectively is in many third-world countries. Who would choose to pay that voluntarily?

      Not only is hardware a more reasonable cost. After all, people are used to paying money for something that costs to make, not something you can duplicate for free, but they could get a 1.5Ghz computer with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB HD for the same price. Chances are though that they'd like to pay less for the hardware and that they'd choose to buy an old computer, maybe a P1 or low-end P2. Many businesses pay to have them taken away because they can't justify the cost of inventorying them. These computers frequently end up heading overseas to be repaired and distributed.

      When you could get a complete system for $50, or one twentieth of your yearly income, do you think you could justify 15/20ths of it for a crappy OS?

      Microsoft then biases this further in the direction of encouraging the pirates by refusing to let the computer legally be used with the old OSes they often still have on them. If someone boots on old copy of Win95 still installed on a P1 that technically was "upgraded" to 2k they'll say you owe them for a second license, of almost the same value as the brand new OS, despite that fact that W95 aged worse than the P1s it was run on.

      Pardon the rant, but the whole MS OS thing pisses me off. They have the power to be so helpful and yet they deny people everything they can, as if there's a chance of getting some poor peasant to cough up a year's wages for an OS for some old PC. No wonder those countries ignore our copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
      I know you were arguing the same point, but I just wanted to point out that unless Win2k came with a ton of rations, tools, and medicine, it couldn't match the pricetag they put on it.

  7. The Chinese government chose Linux not because... by frleong · · Score: 3, Insightful

    of the price, since MS software is largely pirated (piracy rates in China is more than 90%), but because they fear that MS has somehow planted a backdoor that helps the U.S. government to spy their communication channels (remember the NSAKey registry that was introduced in NT SP5?).

    --
    ¦ ©® ±
  8. State of the PRC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's not kid ourselves: Nothing is as easy and widespread as Windows XP in the PRC. The internet cafe I'm sitting in has had XP since XP's launch day. And I imagine the laoban paid 10 RMB for the one or two cds and proceeded to install it on all 20 or so computers. Maybe Linux is catching on a little bit with enthusiasts (a few of my Chinese friends have heard of it, and you can easily find it in stores) but wrestling with some install and Corel's Office lookalike is just not worth the effort. The whole pile of Office XP cds can be had for 20 RMB. Windows XP and OFfice XP can probably be had for 25 RMB if you buy them together. That's three American dollars.

    Though to be honest I wish he'd stuck with Windows 98. An upgrade to XP without a hardware upgrade is a speed downgrade (eryi).

    Also, if I could comment on the misperception presented by these somewhat sketchy articles that Slashdot features every once in a while, the Chinese "control" on the internet isn't oppressive, it's quixotic. I can read NYT, Reuters, but not the LA Times. And there's practically no restriction on any 'illegal' content bearing sites. Please bear in mind the reporting in the mainland is sketchy -- bad news, good news, it's all blown out of proportion or deflated down to managable levels. The best way to check out the real deal is to come out and see for yourself.

    China's beautiful!

    An American abroad,

    c.d.

  9. MS Helping Proliferation of Linux by KarmaBlackballed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are two complementing strategies for proliferating an operating system:
    1. Make it practical and easy to get.
    2. Make other operating systems expensive and difficult to get.

    Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux. Linux with KDE and StarOffice is a practical solution for lots of business users now, all they have to do is discover it. Seems like several million Chinese are discovering it every day.

    Can anyone say critical mass?

    I'm not sure this is the effect Microsoft foresaw, but it is one I expect.

    --

    --- -- - -
    Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
  10. Linux in Africa by elem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wired.com did a nice story about linux in africa about two months ago (here).

    In this article they were talking to an ex-Xerox researcher. He was making the point that in a country such as kenya it would set you back about $900 for Windows and Office, but the average annual income is only about $250 which pretty much puts the MS solution out of pocket for all but the rich and big companies. In contrast the Linux solution is esentially free (baring the Hardware) although his company does offer a range of applications aimed at the small/medium company for $6.50.

    So, what I hope that we'll see is that the developing world, whilst developing choses to rely on Open Source solutions and not M$. Just think... in a few decades (or less) Linux/BSD might well have a huge, huge user base and there will be parts of the world that M$ will never be able to conquer.