Linux Continues March On China

elucidus writes: "A government-sponsored software development group in China unveiled a version of the Linux operating system it has developed that it said will eventually replace Windows and Unix on all of its government PCs and servers. Called Yangfan Linux, which means 'raise the sail' in Chinese, the open source operating system is being pieced together by the Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center, a group established by the government to organize Linux development in China." Update: 08/14 22:34 GMT by T : Note that the story from which this text is drawn originally appeared in InfoWorld; thanks to writer Matt Berger for pointing this out. Read on below for a bit more, and some interesting links.

"The source code for Yangfan was made available last week under the GNU General Public License. The group is now collecting feedback and will continue improving the operating system.

The group has also done significant work localizing the operating system to support Chinese-language characters, which will be contributed back into the Linux community, according to Jon 'Maddog' Hall, director of Linux International.

Yangfan is based on two distributions of the Linux operating system. One is the distribution developed by Chinese Linux vendor Red Flag Software. The second is a version of the operating system called Cosix Linux, developed by China Computer Software Corp."

Reader kchris59 points to these articles at The Screen Savers and at chinadaily.com.cn which provide some more insight on what's going on behind that firewall.

Comments

Re:Is there any chinese slashdotters?

[sql*kitten]

1. Microsoft lobbyist
2. Microsoft license sweeps
3. Microsoft Strongarm tactics
4. [insert your own M$ reason]

Idiot. The US doesn't more readily adopt Linux because Joe User and his Grandma don't want to mess around with recompiling their kernels and editing text based configuration files and bitching to hardware manufacturers about device drivers in order to write letters, play games and email pictures of their kids and puppies to each other. If Microsoft didn't exist, Linux would still be confined to the tech community, and Apple (or Commodore or Acorn or whoever) would dominate the consumer and desktop space.

Face it, for 99% of computer users, Linux simply isn't suitable, at least not at the moment.