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Indian State Switches to Linux
pamri writes "In a pleasant and surprising move, the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, has opted to switch to Linux from Microsoft for its Gyandooth (intranet in Dhar district connecting rural cybercafes catering to the everyday needs of the masses) programme. What is more surprising is that the state's Chief Minister Digvijay Singh personally conveyed this to Bill Gates. A choice quote: 'For us it is not a question of Microsoft versus Linux. It is just a matter of choosing between a free software and a monopoly. We feel that when we are putting public information out in the open, then it should not be through a proprietary software.'"
One less country in the clutches of the evil M$ corporation! Viva la resitance!
Do you think M$ will get the obvious message being sent out from this situation...probably, but then again, they'll just take over another small 3rd world country.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Makes one wonder if they really are planning to switch, or if it's yet another scheme to extort free MS-licences from Billy-boy..
at what point, does other OS's have sufficient market share, and then Microsoft wont be concidered a monopoly? Guipo
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
I would speculate whether or not this is because of the cost or the freedom.
I know they have better things to spend money on than client licenses for MS stuff. I do think its a great push for linux worldwide BUT I would just happen to think the free as in speech part is just a plus for not having to pay (as much w/ TCO).
Either way, I wish our own government would use linux. As it would be a great push away from the monopoly that they "punished".
In related news... The U.S. government flunked a computer-security review for the third consecutive year
Get paid to code OSS
Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility. Microsoft's main advantage seems to be its pervasiveness and it ability to run Office. Even if Office is the best productivity suite available, is it so much better that it is worth the extra cost of the software and the O/S needed to run it?
I'm just glad to see it when a customer wants something that Microsoft cannot and/or will not provide that they are willing to give Linux a chance. In this particular case, it looks like the decision wasn't made based on cost, but the cost of Linux is what made the decision possible.
It guess people will generally choose freedom especiall when it is free (as in beer!).
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Just to make it more amusing though is the fact that Microsoft retained a large number of Indian coders during the XP 'debugging' cycle; nice to see they're not afraid to bite the hand that occasionaly feeds.
We feel that when we are putting public information out in the open, then it should not be through a proprietary software
I find this quote quite fascinating. India is a nation-state where the top 5% of the population own all the wealth; essentially they have a monopoly on the other lower castes. All the public infrastructure is publicly owned (trains, electricity). Given all this I find it hard to believe that India has been affronted in some way by avoiding a monopoly. What I do believe is that Inida is a country where most are poor and the barriers to technology are extremely high. With Linux, or any free computer technology, that gate is lowered somewhat; though you still have to buy the hardware.
What Linux really needs, I believe, to be the real market winner is to take on Microsoft on equal terms and win-out. Not some back-door, third-world country win, but a real win in the Fortune 500 cubicles of corporate America. But it's a start, and as Gandhi said, "A journey of a thousand miles, starts with just one step."
"How do you like your shackles?"
"Oh, they are quite a nice fit!"
"Excellent, we made them with Linux."
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Mod parent up +1 Funny
For those who don't understand Hindu (Very, very common religion in India), one of the basic premises of the religion is that people are reincarnated over and over again after they die until they generate enough Karma in the form of good deeds, positive experiences, and general learning and understanding that they reach a state of enlightenment and can proceed on from the cycle of mortal reincarnation to Nirvana-- a state of ultimate contentment with no worries, cares, needs, or demands.
Thats why cows are sacred to Hindus... not because of some strange religious edict or a prejudice against beef, but because cattle seen as a higher, more enlightened life form than humans. While I make no pretense about my love of beef in the grilled-to-a-juicy-medium-rare sense, you have to admit that cows do more for the environment we do on an invidual basis (entire herds and livestock yards can be pretty polluting and are responsible for a lot of C02 emission, tho) and with remarkably fewer cares than a human.
Karma has been westernized to mean the total of good deeds a person has and it's used here on Slashdot to indicate a measure of thoughtful posting, but don't forget that 'real' karma is the unmeasurable enlightenment you have acheived.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I've been lurking during this debate over who will (re)colonize India -- Linux or MS -- and am perplexed by one thing, the alleged reluctance of the Indian gov't (which apparently decides some things province by province?) to adopt a scheme like Linux that might not be completely turnkey. Everything I've read suggests that India is one of the biggest producers of computer technical talent, as the Silicon Valley drive for the U.S. to grant more worker visas attests. Also, much of U.S. tech support is being outsourced to India because of cheap fiber optic lines, cheaper tech labor, and the large number of fluent English speakers. (I've read in the NYT that some customer support reps even make up little American lives for chit-chat with unaware clients on the phone.)
... doesn't India have the homegrown talents, and why do they need state visits from RMS and BG to make up their minds? Why does it seem politicians are getting in the middle of all this? (Oops, answered my own question.)
So
The last week reading slashdot will convince u India is majorly into Linux. *Being and Indian* lemme tell you, this isnt happening here.
The main reason is
1. Piracy is rampant here. Ms Win costs Rs.0($0)
2. Both being free, Windows is easier to use.
3. Tools(MS VStudio) is also free.
All the stories u see in slashdot are exxagerated.
95% of developers in India target MS Win.
thats it. simple.
Life is just a conviction.
Gandhi didn't change shit. That still goes on day to day, I've seen it firsthand. That country disgusted me at just how insensitive humans can be to their own kind. Cows are worshipped, people left in the street to die.
You are a bloody moron - or a liar - I can't figure out which.
Untouchability is not practiced in India anymore - and hasn't been so for the last 30 years at least. I went to schools with friends who belonged to all castes and the persons caste never came up for discussion except in the context of India's ridiculous affirmative action laws.
Cows are NOT worshipped in India. Cows are respected like a mother because they provide milk, plow the fields and provide fuel and fertilizer - thus taking care of their "children". Trust a typical westerner to confuse respect with worship - especially since the concept of repecting ones elders doesn't exist in the US.
Westerners trying to apply their narrow world views to different cultures will always fail to understand them.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The site www.mp.nic.in is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98.
I don't know about CounterStrike or Starcraft, but there is an Unreal Tournament installer which will install the Windows UT "Game Of The Year" edition onto Linux. Loki Software wrote it. And UT2003 comes as a hybrid disk with both the Linux and the Windows installs. So that crosses a couple of games off your list. BTW this also works with FreeBSD using the Linux compatibility layer.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Don't forget that a recent poll showed that 50% of /.ers run an MS OS (myself included). They really do have a target audience here.
Actually, that's a very positive thing. Consider that of the number of new readers coming in, far more than 50% would be long-time windows users. So what does the 50% figure tell you? Right. Tens of thousands of switchers.
In fact, that 50% number is just about optimum. It means we're not just preaching to the choir, we're actually doing some work. So what you see at Slashdot is not only exponential growth in readers (yes it is, check the id numbers) but exponential growth in the number of switchers as well.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Such a move would knock the wind out of Microsoft's stock value overnight, which would in turn be bad for the U.S. economy. There are other economic effects that would follow, to be sure. It would be a shot in America's own foot.
So, in short, it's because using Microsoft software keeps Am-uuurrr-ka strong. *cough*
Oh, because there's no fair market. Never mind.
Yes, a representative of the govenment of the single largest country on Earth is of no importance or interest. That he is acting in opposition to half a billion dollars of bribes distributed by Gates in person doesn't make it news and the possibility that this will undermine the Microsoft hegemony in every developing country in the world and may even impact the EU's attitude to free software is never going to matter to the readers of /. Or perhaps you need to look outside your own window once in a while.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
See what it's like to live in a country, where because of an accident of birth, you literally aren't *allowed* to do anything but scrub public urinals for the rest of your life
As opposed to living in a country, where because of an accident of birth, you can become President even if you are a dunce!
Configuring Unix for security is harder than windows because windows offers you niceties such as the group policy editor and heavy use of ACLs. While various linux filesystems support ACLs, no one is using them yet. I'm sure it's coming, though, which will go a long way towards ease of administration.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to write some simple scripts, institute logrotation, and so on which will make Linux (or any other Unix) fairly self-maintaining. In my experience the Unix system administrator's job tends towards hardware maintenance and upgrades, and software upgrades, but very little maintenance beyond keeping up with security. Various Linux distributions have offered a number of methods for solving this problem. I personally prefer gentoo's, and if you did a little work on the gentoo build system and an automounter config, you could do frequent centralized updates with it; Of course various other distributions actually have systems in place to do these things for you, as they are shipped. This is just an example of the simpler, smaller tools which come from the Unix mindset (reusability through pipes) making system automation much easier.
A basic Linux distribution is in no way more complicated than windows. In many ways it is simpler; No mucking with the registry and all the pain that it entails is a big step in the right direction. Linux had journaling filesystems before NT, too, and it has faster and more advanced filesystems now (though who can say what is in store for NTFS in the future?) In the end Linux's primary attractions are twofold; The first is that it is free(beer) and the other that it is free(speech). To most of the world, those things are significant in that order, as well.
Unix tends to just work. Windows tends to have little bells and whistles (like a *usually responsive gui which also happens to be easy to use and does a hell of alot) but you don't need those things to do work. There are various adequate file managers for Unix which let you get real work done without bloat. They don't do everything Windows does, but you don't need to. The glitz and glimmer of windows is nothing but candy. I like to eat candy (Mostly in the form of Tactical Ops and Mechwarrior IV) so I still run Windows XP on the desktop, and Linux as an appliance...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Facts to keep in mind :
Corruption is a way of life, especially if you are in the government. While corruption is not unknown in the US, these are usually exceptions (most law buying takes place over the table rather than under it and is thus not "corrupt" behaviour). In India, the honest politicians would be the exception. Odds are that someone in Karnataka did take a bribe.
Madhya Pradesh is not one of the technologically advanced states. Karnataka (which has Bangalore) is - hence Bill Gates would naturally spend more money on Karnataka. Even if Madhya Pradesh chose to stick to WinXX, it is doubtful that it would constitute a good market for MS.
All, in all, it does look like a bid in the poker game.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
(I had to reboot my Win2K box just to upgrade AIM recently)
:*(
Don't believe it. Most installers are stupid. When they say the need to reboot, just ignore them (kill the process through task manager if they don't give you a choice).
I got 60-140+ day uptimes back when I was running Win2k by doing this. Everything that claimed it needed a reboot worked fine without it -- except for MS security patches
From your comment that caste no longer matters in India we can only conclude that you are from a mid-to-upper caste. Correct me if I've errored in this assumption.
Oh, please. You seriously believe George W. Bush would be president today if his father weren't George H. W. Bush, or GHWB would have been president if *his* father had not been Prescott Bush?
W.'s whole "business" experience (i.e., demonstrating his ability to lose other people's money) was based on political connections to his father's associates.
As for dunce, I suppose you think that getting gentlemen's C's at Yale after a comfortable life as a Bush in Connecticut is demonstrating more intelligence than being granted a Rhodes scholarship after growing up in the middle-of-nowhere-Arkansas. Given that GWB can't seem to utter more than two sentences in a row without either garbled syntax or a manifest absurdity, I find your judgement suspect.
I can point you to links about racial attacks in the US too. I can also give you a google link. And I can counter your "muslimonline.com" and Pakistani newspaper links with tons of links to news articles on African American websites.
None of this is going to prove that racial segregation is practiced in the US.
And yes, CNN does make stuff up - all the time. And the guy you are refering to was posting a humorous article.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Quite true. In addition, my experience tells me that India also has plenty of smart, educated, highly motivated people as well. I don't think it's going to prove much of a challenge for them to manage a collection of Linux machines.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
Then make me a foe. :P
And you've missed the point entirely. By your same arguement, I haven't seen the support issues you're describing.
Purchasing server grade hardware, server grade operating systems and server grade support, I haven't seen these BSOD's your talking about. Nor do I have any machines (or workflow issues) sitting idle because I can't access Microsoft's code.
I DO have a few machines that can't recompile a kernel to save their lives. Take the exact goddamn makefile and code tree, and it's compiling on my P4 desktop, but not the Celeron fileserver OR the PII 266 laptop.
It's all about perception, dude, don't tell me your shit don't stink.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The first site is pakistani which rules it out. I would gladly send you a few hundred accounts of women being treated much worse in pakistan. A majority of the others you point out are muslim sites which also rule them out. Do you know how they treat women in parts of the muslim world? Have you heard of female genital mutilation? Lastly one of them is written by a beef lover who obviously can't fathom the idea that he can't eat all the cows in india.
In fact a lot of the sites you pointed out look madeup.
I dare you to find pork in an islamic country. And what about snake worshippers in the US.