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.'"

Comments

Plain economics

[Anonymous Coward]

IT is just cheaper on Linux and old hardware. Which the country of India has plenty of.

Re:Plain economics

[rovingeyes]

IT is just cheaper on Linux and old hardware. Which the country of India has plenty of

1) If India has anything in plenty it is people. Even though there are lot of techies from India, on a average one computer is share by atleast 3 guys in schools. And as far as I know I have never seen an Indian throw away stuff just becoz it is old.

2)Your notion of IT being cheap on Linux is very wrong. In fact if not properly implemented you will end up investing a lot on IT, just for the simple reason that you need linux admins who are good (considering that it is for govt). Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.

Re:Plain economics

[Jason Earl]

Labor is cheap in India, especially compared to software licenses. Not to mention the fact that the government gets to tax Indian wages, where money send to Redmond is gone from India's economy.

Besides, at least here in the States, Linux admins don't make more than Windows admins. The studies I have seen show that the pay is quite comparable.

Re:Plain economics

[oliverthered]

Umm... Windows was hard to configure 'last time i looked'
Everything was through the UI with no option to save diffs that you could roll out.

Direct UI's are for people who don't know what there doing, you should always use a delta and roll out plan.

Re:Plain economics

[drinkypoo]

Your notion of IT being cheap on Linux is very wrong. In fact if not properly implemented you will end up investing a lot on IT, just for the simple reason that you need linux admins who are good (considering that it is for govt). Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.

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...

Re:Plain economics

[phsolide]

Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.

How do you figure? We've all encountered the fact that MSFT products just aren't documented or the documentation is inadequate or just plain wrong. We've all encountered mysterious Blue Screens of Death. We've all encountered Windows 95 and 98 machines that are dying of cruft buildup. We've all encountered "magic" GUI applications that don't have a command line counterpart. We've all encountered installs that require reboots (I had to reboot my Win2K box just to upgrade AIM recently). Just reasoning from first principles, I can say that administering an number of Linux machines will be easier than administering the same number of Windows machines - the admin won't have to physically show up at a linux machine unless something is really wrong with it.

Very honestly, I think that administering a number of Linux machines (number greater than 5) will end up easier and cheaper than the same number of Windows machines.

I'd love to see some "plain economics" rebutting this. As near as I can tell, real information that exists contradicts your position:

• FUD confession
• Red Hat whitepaper
• Rober t Frances Group study

I'm calling "FUD" on your position.

Re:Plain economics

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows

These kinds of statements are what turns people away from adopting Linux.

Linux is just as easy to administer as Windows. It's just the playing field looks different. Telling someone to the contrary just helps them make an easy decision not to try, even though they might very well be capable of administering Linux if they set their mind to doing so.

I got to where I am in IT by a hands-on, do it yourself approach. I never listened to anyone who told me it can't be done, or that's it's too difficult. I at least had the guts to figure it out for myself. Big deal if it didn't work. An awful lot can be learned in the attempt.

ANYBODY can install and administer Linux. There are plenty of resources (HOW-TOs) to allow someone who can read and follow directions to learn the skills of Linux administration. But POSITIVE reinforcement in everyday statements is what helps people decide to take on the challenge.

Saying linux is not as simple as windows is proving that you never used any of the many GUI applications for administration that work like the windows GUI administration apps.

There will still be a learning curve for something new to anybody. Windows isn't any easier by true comparison to someone who is *NEW* to the windows concept. There's still people who think they know how to use their windows computer, but still can't do something as simple as drag and drop or adjust the sound volume without using the knob on their speakers.

Re:Plain economics

[blakestah]

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.

This is nice if you are trying to protect your system from your own users.

However, if you are interested in protected it from remote attacks, linux is MUCH easier. Iptables (for firewalling) is built in for free, and scripts to configure it are freely available. Security updates are quickly available and easy to apply. Linux wins, it is a no brainer.

A competent admin can make either OS secure, from local or remote attack. My subjective estimate is that Unix/linux admins can handle far more boxes per person than Windows admins, though.

Re:Plain economics

[MadAhab]

No, linux is as simple to administer correctly as windows. But when you fuck up a windows box, you can throw your hands in the air and say "whaddayagonnado?". Plus, you can *pretend* to administer windows more easily: it's better to use for total fakers.

Re:Plain economics

[quantum bit]

(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 :*(

Re:Plain economics

[Matey-O]

We've all encountered the fact that MSFT products just aren't documented or the documentation is inadequate or just plain wrong. We've all encountered mysterious Blue Screens of Death. We've all encountered Windows 95 and 98 machines that are dying of cruft buildup. We've all encountered "magic" GUI applications that don't have a command line counterpart.

We've all encountered Samba, Sendmail, and Kernel panics too. We've encountered varying ways of bringing up Runlevels, frontends that configure stuff, but you don't know WHERE it configures 'em.

Pot, I'd like you to meet kettle, BTW, you're both black.

Re:Plain economics

[rseuhs]

administring linux is not as simple as windows

In my experience, Linux is much less time-intensive to administer than Windows, especially on larger installations.

With Windows you constantly have to worry about Registry-rotting, Viruses and patches.

With Linux you have occasionally worry about patches and never about a registry and viruses.

Please note that: occasionally < constantly

Windows is easy to set up. It's easy, but time consuming to add all the needed additional software: Office suite, ICQ, AIM, zip-utility, a browser that doesn't suck, multiple desktop support and much, much more.

Linux (at least SuSE or Mandrake) is easy to set up and comes with a pretty complete work environment. You will probably need only one or 2 extra software packages, if at all. Gentoo and Debian are harder to set up but even easier to keep up todate.

If you don't need some Win32-only software, Linux is the way to go. Always. Also on the desktop.

Re:Plain economics

[Tony-A]

Plus, you can *pretend* to administer windows more easily: it's better to use for total fakers.
"I resemble that remark." I am not a TOTAL faker.
Microsoft is much easier to set up with something that kinda-sorta works. But beware if you try to make it do what *you* want it to do. If *you* want to be in control, Linux (or *BSD) is much, much easier.

Re:Plain economics

[RealAlaskan]

Even then administring linux is not as simple as windows.

Too true. With Windows, everything is either compulsory or forbidden. If the boss tells the sysadmin to do something, it is either trivial or impossible. With Linux/*BSD/Solaris/AIX, everything is possible, if only you know how. You can't say ``That's impossible'' without fear of contradiction.

Everyone knows that Windows crashes periodically, and the sysadmin cannot be responsible for fixing problems: that's done in Redmond or not at all. When things just don't work, the Windows sysadmin can blame it all on MS, and ask for more money, while the Libre *nix sysadmin would have no one to blame but himself, and no excuse for a bigger budget.

Windows is simple, all right; it has little cartoons to guide you, no embarrasing choices and built-in excuses. Who could ask for less?

Re:Plain economics

[WNight]

And they get their training in India, and they sit in India waiting to be hired (basically). That provides a fairly large pool of skilled and semi-skilled workers who will work for local (Indian) wages instead of N.A. wages.

Those wages might be expensive compared to others in the country, but compared to going overseas for anything they need, it's dirt cheap.

Besides, Linux is perfect for a university. It's a working system that you can look into and examine. You couldn't become either an automotive engineer or a mechanic without taking cars apart, nor can you become a decent CS grad, or admin, without disecting a few systems and seeing what makes them tick.

Re:Plain economics

[phsolide]

Pot, I'd like you to meet kettle, BTW, you're both black.

Hey I provided references. Mr FUD-Kettle did not. Go read what the references say then get back to us. When you do get back to us let us know what you've found out - post the URLs. Until then buh bye.

Sincerely
Blackpot W. References

Re:Plain economics

[skyhawker]

If India has anything in plenty it is people.

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.

Re:Plain economics

[Matey-O]

The only references I'm going to spend the time are from personal experience. Having managed BOTH Microsoft AND Un*ices, they BOTH have their strong and weak points.

They're both mature enough that they both solve most problems equally well (assuming clueful administration), and NEITHER are without their strengths and ideosyncrasies.

You can make a fast Mustang and a fast Camaro and only an idiot can't be convinced that's the truth.

Re:Plain economics

[NerdSlayer]

Yeah, these announcements are starting to kind of boring and repetative.

In other news, Bob Smith today bought a new Dell PC preloaded with Windows XP. Chalk one up for the bad guys.

Re:Plain economics

[Malor]

I've been using Linux a long time, and as far as I know, the statement "linux had journaling filesystems before NT" is absolutely, utterly false. NT 3.51 had journaling.

Linux didn't have journaling in the mainstream kernel until the ext3 patches were accepted. You could probably have gotten some journaling under Linux with manual patching and installation of beta software in the NT 4.0 timeframe, but I don't believe the mainstream distros offered journaled filesystems until after Windows 2000 shipped.

Further, NTFS is extremely robust and resilient. It's EXTREMELY unusual to lose data from an NTFS partition. Compare that to reiserfs, which has had many, many, many problems over the years. (I believe it is considered stable now.)

Admittedly, to some degree, NT *had to* have a great filesystem, because it was unstable. And Linux could get away with the horrid ext2 filesystem because the OS was so reliable that the filesystem was very rarely shut down incorrectly.

But, regardless, NTFS got journaling and ACL's really *right* long, long ago. Between the two features, it's a lot better than anything Linux offers (yet). Linux is improving rapidly, but filesystems and permissions are core NT strengths and should not be casually dismissed.

Re:Plain economics

[Citizen of Earth]

We've all encountered Samba, Sendmail, and Kernel panics too.

In my six years of using Linux as my only desktop OS, I have never encountered a kernel panic. But I'll take you word that there is such a thing.

Re:Plain economics

[Archie Steel]

Hmm, I don't know, I have yet to encounter a single Samba, Sendmail or kernel panic yet, after a year and a half since I've switched to Linux at home. I have, however, seen BSOD aplenty, even with Win2K (though these have been less frequent, I must admit - it is the best Windows so far, IMHO).

Re:Plain economics

[Citizen of Earth]

You never had _any_ hardware or driver bugs? You're one lucky person! ;-)

I've had hardware and driver problems, but no kernel panics.

Re:Plain economics

[jelle]

"Further, NTFS is extremely robust and resilient."

In my experience not in the speed sense. Actually, not on any front when compared with ext3. Even when compares with ext2, NTFS is a dog. Where do you get the idea that ext2 is 'horrid'? You must be confusing with last year's reiserfs versions. The only disadvantage of ext2 was the long fsck on large partitions, which was fixed with journaling. The other disadvantage, slowness with many (>5000) files in one subdirectory is worse with NTFS, and will be fixed (may already be fixed) in one of the upcoming kernel releases anyway.

Re:Plain economics

[clare-ents]

I've had two.

Once hard disk cable had fallen out, in the other my video card had melted and never worked again.

Re:Plain economics

[drinkypoo]

Further, NTFS is extremely robust and resilient. It's EXTREMELY unusual to lose data from an NTFS partition. Compare that to reiserfs, which has had many, many, many problems over the years. (I believe it is considered stable now.)

True that linux didn't have a journaling fs in stable before NT had journaling but it's my understanding that NTFS wasn't really journaling until 5, the NTFS used for Win2k and XP. I have lost several files from NT3.51 and 4.0 systems, so if the OS *Does* have journaling that far back, it's buggy as hell which doesn't help. A lamborghini can't hit 200 mph if it falls apart before it gets there.

You're right that NT got ACLs right in antiquity, which is the primary thing they did right from the beginning. When I think of what the secondary was I'll let you know.

Re:Plain economics

[nathanm]

We've all encountered Samba, Sendmail, and Kernel panics too.

That's a very bold statement. I've never encountered these in 7 years of running Linux. Other people I know have had kernel panics, but they're the ones who run bleeding-edge development kernels.

OTOH, almost every Windows box I've ever used has crashed at some point, some quite often. Windows NT was quite stable, before version 4, when they moved the GUI into kernel space.

Re:Plain economics

[drinkypoo]

The only disadvantage of ext2 was the long fsck on large partitions, which was fixed with journaling. The other disadvantage, slowness with many (>5000) files in one subdirectory is worse with NTFS, and will be fixed (may already be fixed) in one of the upcoming kernel releases anyway.

You mean, the lack of journaling was fixed with ext3.

Anyway I wouldn't be pushing ext3 personally (though it is what I used on my firewall for simplicity - I will regret this perhaps when 2.6 comes out with XFS in the main kernel tree) so much as XFS. XFS seems to be the most scalable and capable of the current implementations. ReiserFS has its uses (in that you can treat it like a database) but I still think that the high rate of failures we all saw in it through the last year and change indicate that it's not architected as well as it ought to be. Then again, I'm no programmer, and I haven't been rooting around in the source, so maybe there's some other explanation.

NTFS5 has treated me very well. NTFS4 (pre-journaling) did not. I don't store 5,000 files in one directory typically (except maybe for http cache) as I know what hierarchical file systems are for, so I don't have a problem churning through lots of files in one dir. Remember, a filesystem is a database, you have a limited set of tools for manipulating data directly, and there are certain ways you have to treat the data in order to get good performance.

Re:Plain economics

[jelle]

I've lost more data on a live ntfs system than I've ever lost on a powerfailure with an active ext2... Sure the e2fsck often printed lots of messages, but that was just for the large amount of metadata that remained in the cache when the brute poweroff happened, and was usually fixed without losing data except some recent log entries and other such growing or open files. Added to that the journal of ext3 not virtually guarantees no data loss (and eliminates the extreme fsck wait).

While ntfs needs to be more resilient agains crashes for obvious reasons, even in the crash resiliency respect I've never been mistreated by ext2. It's not a cleanly designed filesystem, it's a stack of features upon a hack. ntfs is just a hack on top of vfat, which is a hack on top of fat. Reminds me of Duck Tape Repairs(tm). It's always in the consistent state of of disarray (In this IBM factory, they luckily found that out ahead of time, with windows machines thrashing and needing defragmentations or reinstalls while Linux just chugged along (I think there was a /. story about this fab, but couldn't find it)). The fact that ntfs doesn't have or use the 'filesystem dirty' state isn't something to be proud of, it results in filesystem errors that remain undetected until the whole thing falls apart. On windows, it's wise to force a full fsck after a crash even if the box seems to be back up.

From a system administration perspective, I want a filesystem that keeps its data and stays fast under any load. About losing a whole server, or a random part of it. Actually, I'd rather lose the whole server and switch to the backup while restoring the tapes than get it started back up and thinking I kept all the data, only to realize that I'm missing part two weeks later just after the backups got overwritten...

Re:Plain economics

[jelle]

Crap? Wrong? Its my experience, that's all. If you read back my posting then you'll see that I'm telling you _my_ experience with ext2 and ntfs, not yours. Perhaps I've been unlucky with ntfs and lucky with ext2, or perhaps it's the other way around for you.

AFAIK, the 'journaling' in NTFS isn't ordered journaling. It keeps a metadata file which get a log of the file actions to allow rollback. But, acording to this page, that file gets written to only once every few seconds. So when you crash, the log may be a few seconds old, so you may end up after reboot with an apparently 'clean' filesystem but some files will be old, missing their latest modifications. ext3 has a mode like that too, 'writeback', but also has the 'journal' and 'ordered' modes that don't have that problem.

The choking of NT for the fab was a result of fragmentation in the filesystem... Another article about the same fab mentioned that (sorry, have no link, but others are reporting it too). That's not what I what I call reliable and robust: Eventually it will fragment too much to perform, resulting in more downtime. It doesn't stay as fast as it was when I built and benchmarked the system... Plus things in the past like this and this don't help at all on the confidence front.

I had many hardware failures on active loaded linux boxes, failing power supplies, mainboards, etc, never lost data as the result (except when a disk completely died without raid, and the disk wouldn't spinup...). The boxes just keep going until the hardware dies. That's what I call reliability and robustness.

About the 'stays fast under any load', I mean cases like the 100% CPU load on fragmented ntfs volumes, as reported here, which cause the system to be unresponsive, resulting in network timeouts... Or things like this, where the given workaround basically means you can't have a lot of small files on your disk...

yeah yeah yeah

[chef_raekwon]

someone has balls!
someone has balls!!

india 1
gates 0

At least it wasn't Sun..

[buzzsport]

If it was McNealy would have a new tag-line:

We're the dot in.. ah.. nevermind.

All I've Got to Say to Bill Gates Is:

[hkhanna]

owned. ;)

Hmmm...

[Pig Hogger]

I guess that was the last Bill Gates contribution to AIDS in India...

Re:Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ack! Bill has been spreading AIDS too? He's even more evil than we thought!

Re:Hmmm...

[invenustus]

No, but you could blame Bill Gates for some of the other virus outbreaks of the last 3 years. Nimda, Code Red, Sircam....

Horray!

[dethl]

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.

Really?

[joib]

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..

Re:Really?

[stratjakt]

No, they stuck their hands out and ordereed "PAY US TO USE WINDOWS", Gates said no.

Indian government runs on bribes and extortion. Any of you /.'ers who want to compare it favorably to america, need to go live there for a few years.

Re:Really?

[Anarchofascist]

"...wonder if they really are planning to switch, or if it's yet another scheme to extort free MS-licences..."

Either way, It's good news, except of course for Microsoft shareholders.

Re:Really?

[Darby]

Indian government runs on bribes and extortion.

Which is different from the US government exactly how?

Re:Really?

[oolon]

Not really, the will right of the costs of giving the software away against tax and the full list price rather than at the cost of production for MS. So if you consider the fact that they would not have bought a licence if they had not been given a copy, MS is infact making a profit.

James

Re:Really?

[marauder404]

Either way, It's good news, except of course for Microsoft shareholders.

Not true at all. I'm not a Linux zealot, but I will say this: if Microsoft gives its software to them for free, they will gain marketshare and will have lost nothing. The long term advantages of increasing an installed base and requiring more techies trained on Microsoft platforms especially in a developing country will do far more damage than losing any potential short term income if cash flow isn't a problem.

Re:Really?

[Shelled]

That has to be the oddest use of the word 'extort' I've seen, like saying that cooking my own meals is extorting from McDonalds.

Re:Really?

[Anarchofascist]

So if you consider the fact that they would not have bought a licence if they had not been given a copy, MS is infact making a profit.

By that logic they might as well give away fifty-CD collections of Microsoft's Greatest Hits because the production costs are almost zero. It's not worth my while correcting your understanding of economics.. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader

The precedent is what's important, not the cost of licenses in one province in India. From now on, if you want to drive down the price of MS software you just have to confront them with "we were thinking of converting all fifty thousand desktops to Linux." Even if it's not true.

In negotiation with vendors, competition is always good for the consumer, even if you are not really considering the competing product. Just say "mass-migration" and the MS salesman's heart will skip a beat. Remember to have a defibrillator on hand.

Re:Really?

[Anarchofascist]

...if Microsoft gives its software to them for free, they will gain marketshare and will have lost nothing.

I'm a developer, why don't they give me a complete set of development tools and documentation for free? Because tools cost money to develop, money they knew they could recoup by selling them to me, and to India. A tool given to a developer who would otherwise have paid for it is a loss for MS shareholders.

Without the threat of migration, MS would have told India "here's the price, take it or leave it."

In the global picture, with increasing competition from Linux, both Linux and MS developers win. Only MS (the company, not the community) loses. I can't see a downside.

Re:Really?

[marauder404]

True, but that wasn't the original point. The original point was that it's a loss for Microsoft if they had to give away the tools (in this case) for free. All I was saying was that even if they gave away the tools for free, they'd win anyway.

Maybe it's like poker ..

[riven1128]

Gates: We'll see your refusal to switch and raise you a contribution to

Re:Maybe it's like poker ..

[riven1128]

Oops..

Slashdot cut out part of the post thinking it was an html tag ..

it should have read "a contribution to .. [insert name of horrible disease here]"

I must be missing something

[iamwoodyjones]

Where in the article did it say he conveyed this personaly to Bill Gates. All I saw was that he conveyed it to ET.

I thought I was going to see a quote around the lines of, "Madhya walked up to Bill, spat in his face and said, 'Take that Billy Boy. You monopolistic capitlistic pig. I'm going to use something free as in getting really drunk'"

Alas I'm missing something here.

question

[Guipo]

at what point, does other OS's have sufficient market share, and then Microsoft wont be concidered a monopoly? Guipo

Re:question

[grub]

at what point, does other OS's have sufficient market share, and then Microsoft wont be concidered a monopoly?

Normal Answer: When Microsoft is no longer the dominant player in both the OS and applications markets and they stop using their muscle to put small companies out of business.

Slashdot Answer: When Bill Gates is drawn and quartered in a town square in Finland and Redmond is a deep, smouldering crater.

Re:question

[JimmytheGeek]

Been to redmond lately? It already IS a deep, smoldering crater. Another Bellevue, alas. It used to be something more than a mall and the belly of the beast.

Re:question

[rseuhs]

As soon as all major PC-makers offer non-MS options on all their computers.

Yeah ok...

[pranalukas]

But will this eliminate Microsoft ads on Slashdot?

Re:Yeah ok...

[WNight]

Those numbers show me firmly in the Windows camp, IE6 on XP. But I run Mozilla on Linux.

I don't doubt there are a lot of Windows users here, but keep in mind that nobody spoofs using Mozilla on Linux, but many people spoof the other way, thanks to web designers without clues.

I'd be somewhat sceptical of those numbers.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[miffo.swe]

"India will continue to pirate as long as Microsoft leads everywhere else, though having the governor officially reject capitalism is a good step for socialism."

He did NOT reject capitalism, it was the freedom he didnt want to give up. Thats a very big difference.

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

MP opens windows to Linux
ANIL SHARMA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2002 01:42:20 AM ]
BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh has shut the door on Bill Gates. The state government schemes will use Linux software. Chief minister Digvijay Singh personally conveyed this to Microsoft boss Bill Gates during an interaction last week in New Delhi.

"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," Mr Singh told ET.

Nor is it merely a public vs private ideological battle. Germany and Latin American countries, particularly Peru and Brazil, have opted for Linux rather than proprietary software to bring down costs, which keep mounting with successive upgrades in the case of proprietary software.

Madhya Pradesh has two significant programmes that reach out to people in a big way: Gyandoot e-governance, which covers 26 out of 45 districts and won the Stockholm Challenge Award for 2000, and the Headstart programme for computer-enabled school education. For the Headstart programme, the state government is now committed to use Linux.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has shown an interest in Gyandoot.

According R Gopalakrishnan, state coordinator for the Rajiv Gandhi missions, the first phase of the Headstart did use Microsoft software, but the next will use Linux.

"This should set at rest any fears that we are anti-Microsoft as such. But we have opted for Linux in this phase, because of the cost factor, and the fact that it avoids costly upgrades and improved versions that are an inseparable element of Microsoft packages," he said.

"It is a considered decision taken by us. We have noted that several governments in the west and other countries too have opted for the Linux software instead of Microsoft because of a host of considerations," Mr Singh said.

Wait a Minute!

[4of12]

Dammit, who let a man of principle become highly placed in government?

This would never have happened back here in the good ole U.S. of A!

Re:Wait a Minute!

[Usquebaugh]

Principle , priciple he says...

The only reason you think he has principles is that he agrees with your beliefs. Looks like the school boy moderators agree with you.

Principled indeed. He's a politician, do you have any idea what that job involves? It has very little to do with working for the benefit of the electorate.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[donutello]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[donutello]

Don't confuse someone who merely agrees with you as being someone who has principles.

Digvijay Singh has been at the center of several scandals. For example.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[SquadBoy]

I'm sure these people will be glad to know that untouchability is not practiced. And I'm sure that all of these stories are just made up.

And of course CNN is well known for making things up. And I'm sure this
guy is just making stuff up also. And last but not least this

Re:Wait a Minute!

[Quixote]

Of course, since you don't agree with him, you must be without principles.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[sonamchauhan]

> Cows are worshipped, people left to die...
> one of the most corrupt governments ...
> Kickbacks? Bribes? Abuse of authority? ...
True, this goes on. And there is more corruption there than, say, the US. But there are _tons_ of people who try to do right, and...

> Become one of the "untouchables"...
> because of an accident of birth,
> you literally aren't *allowed* to do
> anything but scrub public urinals for the rest
> of your life, get any sort of education, or
> look the higher castes in the eyes.
An Indian _President_ - the previous one - was one such "untouchable".

Did you really spend time in India? Was it in transit?

> how insensitive humans can be to their
> own kind.
We'd respect what you said more, if you actually do something to help.

> if Gates paid the customary round bribes,
> you'd see Windows XP on every one of those PCs.

I guess you mean Licensed copies, no? I don't quite think India can afford that.

[ From another post of yours ]
> No, they stuck their hands out and ordereed
> "PAY US TO USE WINDOWS", Gates said no.

Gee, you are one investigative Troll!

Re:Wait a Minute!

[pubjames]

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!

Re:Wait a Minute!

[4of12]

The only reason you think he has principles is that he agrees with your beliefs.

You're right - my knee-jerk reaction.

Forgive me, I'm just so conditioned to think that any politician that doesn't automatically climb into bed with money is somehow better and different from most.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[Tom]

Move to India. Leave this country.

You may not realize it, but the "like it or leave it" bullshit is not a "witty aphorism", it's a tool to sentence critics. It takes more courage to stay and fight an abusive regime than to pack up and go elsewhere. And without people who have the guts to stay and do something about whatever it is that's wrong, we'd probably all be living in caves still.

So if you don't like people speaking their mind, then leave. ;-)

Re:Wait a Minute!

[sqlgeek]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[thedigitalbean]

I feel compelled to point out a few things.

First, outside of strict mathematical definitions, the statement "Untouchability is not practiced in India anymore" does not necessarily imply that there are absolutely no cases of untouchability practised. It would be tantamount to pointing to news stories within the US involving hate crimes and claiming that the assertion that the US does not support hate crimes is false. Even several counter examples are not sufficient to render the original claim false. When you have a billion people, it is inevitable that some will do stupid things, however that DOES NOT reflect the attitude of the population as a whole. What does reflect the attitudes of the population are the laws upheld by the society, laws which clearly state that any discrimination based on caste are illegal.

Now for your second paragraph. Yes CNN is in fact known for making things up and exagerrating facts, but that is beside the issue.

Lets look at the story you point to:

It is the author that claims that hindus worship cows even though the article has the following quote "Cow in this country is like a mother" which I believe was the original poster's claim.

As for your google links I find it interesting that several of those particular links are sites which try not to present facts but try to convince you of the moral superiority of another religions belief. Come on now, do you honestly expect the site muslimonline.com to present a fair and unopinionated view of any aspect of hinduism?

Re:Wait a Minute!

[zulux]

Trust a typical westerner to confuse respect with worship - especially since the concept of repecting ones elders doesn't exist in the US.


Trust a typical American-basher to confuse the views of an individual with an entire country. Ther're plenty of Americans with all sorts of viwepoints - and, from personal experience, most of them respect their elders.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[jaoswald]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[donutello]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[cybercuzco]

As opposed to living in a country, where because of an accident of birth, you can become President even if you are a dunce!

Or the King 'O England

Re:Wait a Minute!

[donutello]

I am by no means an American-basher. The US is the country I've chosen to live in and in my book that counts for much more than someone who just happened to be born here.

However, there are concepts that the average westerner does not have the background to grasp - respect for elders as practiced in Asia is one of those concepts. Similarly, there are concepts which the average person from (name your culture) is not able to grasp - such as why plagiarism in a class report is wrong or why it is so bad to cheat on a test.

Pointing that out doesn't make a an American fanboy or an American basher.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[raptor21]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[zulux]

Ahem...

I wasen't "bashing" the rest of the world, just a particular narrow-minded individual who happens to think that America = McDonalds * The H-Bomb + Porn. I've learned that the entire world is somewhat simelar in many respects - It's rather useless to catagorise people by race, and even more useless to catagorise people base on the physical locqtion of their domicile.

Re:Wait a Minute!

[zulux]

But don't you get it: YOU ARE AMEICAN! Damn it. YOU ARE PART OF AMERICA.

If you respect your elders then by definition, America has respect for elders.

I have a Vietnamise friend that suffers the same sense of distance - he merried here, made his home here and had his children here and yet sees himself apart from America. We native born need to do a better job of making people welcomed, and the recent immigrants need to reasise that they are now part of this rather odd expeiment known as America.

Welcome.

Re:Awright!

[moonbender]

The Indian government is Karma whoring!

Is that ...

[Frag-A-Muffin]

Madhya Pradesh in the background I see laughing?

Will this destroy MS?

[riven1128]

I can see it now.. in 10 years on FOX we'll see a "Where are they now" featuring Bill Gates.. you'll have to explain to your children who this bad man was.

Maybe he'll be working for sun in the mail room..?

I can dream can't I?

Re:Will this destroy MS?

[Dirtside]

Maybe he'll be working for sun in the mail room..?

With any luck, he'll be working in a mail room on the sun.

Re:Will this destroy MS?

[Trogre]

Maybe he'll be working for sun in the mail room..?

Not likely. Bill, and the senior members of the board of directors will be unemplyable in the techology industry.

The Sun mail room would have too many waste paper baskets for him to rummage in and find code snippets.

Meet the new boss

[Gizzmonic]

Linux prepares to take the reigns of government in an (admittedly) impoverished state. The minister of state conveys his commitment to free and public software. A symbolic victory on this hand.

But what about the growing perspective that Linux is free, and thus, is somehow "cheap"? If this and other third-world countries like South Africa continue to embrace Linux, will it lose points in the corporate boardroom?

Already we have the KDE project, which continues to make a "Windows clone" desktop. New users may be confused by this desktop, and come to think of Linux as a cheap, third-rate alternative to Windows.

Although Linux can't respectfully decline the Indian government's offer, perhaps some its senior officials (Torvalds, Cox etc) should distance themselves from this decision. Otherwise, it we may be hearing "cheap Linux crap!" as often as our racist forefathers used to say "cheap Japanese crap!"

Re:Meet the new boss

[Junior J. Junior III]

But what about the growing perspective that Linux is free, and thus, is somehow "cheap"? If this and other third-world countries like South Africa continue to embrace Linux, will it lose points in the corporate boardroom?

Well now that all depends. If foreign based companies and governments start kicking ass with it, I'd think that would give US corporations pause.

Imagine if some debt-ridden 3rd world country is able to pay off its national debt because they don't have to re-buy software every 18 months. I think that'd turn some heads.

Besides, India's not really a 3rd world country anyway. They have nuclear capability. Sure, there standard of living there is different and many over there are unimaginably poor, but they are highly advanced in sciences and technology -- particularly mathematics and computer science.

Re:Meet the new boss

[proxima]

What you call a clone I call a more enjoyable desktop experience. I've used KDE since the 1.x days, and I've been pleased to see several features implemented in KDE well before I saw it in the latest Windows version.

Take, for example, grouped tasks on the taskbar; I don't know at what point it became part of KDE or Windows exactly, but I distinctly remember using it in KDE for some time before seeing it in the latest Windows beta.

Another example would be built-in theme support that actually significantly changes the way the desktop looks. I'm talking widgets, borders, icons, etc. I agree that this feature is mere fluff and even unwanted in certain environments, but the ability for KDE to look and act like several environments is a strong feature in my view. As an example, for about the past month I tried out the "Mac OS" style menu - all my KDE menus showed up at the top of the screen. This is supposedly better for ergonomics because one can fling his/her mouse towards the top of the screen and hit the menu more quickly than hunting it out. In addition, some people like the focus to move with the mouse, and most X wms support this easily.

In the end, every UI uses common good ideas from the others. Mac OS X, Windows, KDE, GNOME, etc. all share a fair amount in common - to call any of them simply a "clone" of the other is oversimplified. To me, KDE makes a desktop experience that's relatively easy to learn, yet packs an incredible system for customization.

The biggest risk of Linux being branded as "cheap" is offering it as a "Windows replacement" on the cheapest of computers (like Walmart is doing). Putting it on cheap computers is fine, but I'd like to see some Linux ready mid level and high end machines be more advertised to the masses.

Re:Meet the new boss

[Tony-A]

Linux is free, yes.
Linux is cheap, don't think so.
IBM dumping a billion US dollars per year into Linux isn't cheap.
Linux can be obtained cheaply, very cheaply, but since the break-even point of what is *worthwhile* doing is very different, the TCO of Linux may well be greater than that of Microsoft Windows. What *will* be done with Linux is not the same as what will be done with Microsoft Windows.
( IBM may well be right in that they "more than got their money back" ;)

Re:Meet the new boss

[Sloppy]

New users may be confused by this desktop, and come to think of Linux as a cheap, third-rate alternative to Windows.

That won't stop 'em. After all, they got over Windows being a cheap third-rate alternative to MacOS. ;-)

(Moderators: no hard feelings if you wanna call this flamebait. I deserve it. I've been a baaad boy.)

Re:Meet the new boss

[gmack]

The words "cheap Japanese crap" was more a result of the quality rather than price They fixed that and now look where they are.

I don't see why anyone needs to distance themselves from this at all.

Re:Meet the new boss

[MrResistor]

That might be a danger if Linux were actually crap.

I think the point you are ignoring is that in the 70s and 80s the vast majority of goods imported from Japan (and China, Taiwan, Korea, etc) were, in fact, poor quality, cheaply made, CRAP! Similarly, that goods of poor quality were refered to as "K-Mart Kuality" was a direct result of the fact that K-Mart sold low quality crap! These stereotypes, and the phrases/epithets they spawned, didn't just appear out of nowhere. In the majority of cases they were simple statements of fact.

Also, I think calling KDE a "Windows clone" is absurd. While there are some basic similarities, those similarities are generally also shared with other GUIs such as Aqua, namely general default placement of toolbars and desktop icons, and the placement of basic window controls. The actual function, and functionality, of the two environments is quite different.

Which brings me to my final point, which is that while Linux may lack visual polish, it is quite often functionally superior to Windows. I think it is much more likely that we will be hearing "damned Microsoft crap!" (especially since I hear that regularly right now, and have never heard anyone say "cheap Linux crap!").

Re:Meet the new boss

[Dionysus]

Dialog boxes are often copied from Windows. It used to be that you logged out of your session. Microsoft changed it to login as another user. In the latest KDE I have tested (3.0), you also login as another user instead of logout (which I think is confusing). So, to say the KDE people doesn't copy Windows, good or bad, is just plain wrong.

Re:Meet the new boss

[jpetts]

Otherwise, it we may be hearing "cheap Linux crap!" as often as our racist forefathers used to say "cheap Japanese crap!"

The relevant part being used to say.

People used to say that you couldn't install Linux unless you were an expert hacker. People used to say that Linux would never have a workable desktop. People used to say lots of things. However, nowadays one hears the wonderful sounds of a lot of such unwisely spoken words being eaten.

In addition to which, the Indian subcontinent has a lot of incredibly smart and motivated IT professionals, who - and this is very important - are used to a collaborative working environment, and pulling together to make things happen: far more so than the Western hemisphere. My money says that if anybody will make this work, it will be the Indians. Smart people will be keeping an eye on their progress: even smarter people will be learning from it.

This could be a potentially huge boost for the credibility of a widely distributed Linux infrastructure which can be made to serve a very immature computing market. I drink heartily to its success...

Re:Meet the new boss

[proxima]

So, to say the KDE people doesn't copy Windows, good or bad, is just plain wrong.

Please re-read my post. I didn't say that KDE people don't copy Windows. In fact, I said, "In the end, every UI uses common good ideas from the others."

My main point was that to say KDE is a clone of Windows is an incorrect simplification. I've seen innovative things come from KDE and things that have originated from Windows, Mac, etc. All UIs take ideas from others - but that's because these things work. You'll notice that some (not quite there yet) dialogs in KDE use verbs for their buttons instead of "OK" and "cancel" - that's good UI design that probably appeared first in Mac OS. Windows would be wise to implement the same.

Re:Meet the new boss

[MrResistor]

And new Windows users don't say exactly the same things?

If you're going to criticize Linux, you could at least come up with something that doesn't apply equally to every single OS on the planet.

There is no such thing as an intuitive interface. A famous computer guy once said that the only intuitive interface is the nipple; he was wrong. Both mother and child have to learn how to nurse, as he would have found out had he actually consulted with someone who knew something about breastfeeding.

What is my point? That nothing is intuitive, only familiar. Anyone who moves to a different OS and expects things to be exactly the same is an idiot. And honestly, once you look at the actual reasoning, the average Linux distro arranges things far more sensably that Windows does. It just seems stupid and backwards at first because it's unfamiliar.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[sisukapalli1]

Most of the cybercafes in India are used primarily to send email (hotmail, yahoo, rediffmail, etc.) Some are used for chatting (simple messenger programs). For lots of online games, or "fancy pr0n", the cafes simply don't have enough bandwidth.

For simple things like getting info on web, web based email, and simple chatting, no difference between linux and windows.

S

Yes you are

[kiwimate]

First paragraph. Third sentence.

Chief minister Digvijay Singh personally conveyed this to Microsoft boss Bill Gates during an interaction last week in New Delhi.

Free beer or speech?

[Beatbyte]

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

Re:Free beer or speech?

[Tom]

Either way, I wish our own government would use linux. As it would be a great push away from the monopoly [microsoft.com] that they "punished".

Yeah, funny isn't it? You'd think they don't deal with convicted felons or the likes of them.

Shows you how much power the government really has. Just enough to bully a few tiny foreign nations (Iraq has 16 mio. people - that is what? twice LA ?) but not enough to take a stand against found-guilty corporations within their own borders.

Re:Free beer or speech?

[Darby]

Yeah, funny isn't it? You'd think they don't deal with convicted felons or the likes of them.

Yeah, funny like how Poindexter, convicted felon, traitor, high level mover in the international drug cartel is now in charge of Big Brother's database of all information about you.

Putting a bullet in the head of any member of the American government is an act of Patriotism at this point.

Re:Free beer or speech?

[Atzanteol]

*ahem*

Being declared a "monopoly" is a far cry from being declared a "convicted felon"...

Facts are a stubborn thing...

Re:Free beer or speech?

[Shelled]

It would be much better for the advance of linux if the Indian governent chose is solely on the basis of lower TCO. Corporate boardrooms aren't known as fervent breeding grounds of free speech. The language spoken is pure TCO.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[pubjames]

India will continue to pirate as long as Microsoft leads everywhere else, though having the governor officially reject capitalism is a good step for socialism.

Sorry? I assume that you are using your own special definitions of capitalism and socialism here, because I don't see how they've got anything to do with this Indian state deciding to use Linux for a particular project rather than Microsoft.

Cost and Idealogy

[Blindman]

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!).

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[pixelpusher220]

And one other point that M$ usually takes great pains to make...think of the training costs to switch to Linux.

To which I'd love to hear someone respond:

"Yeah but that's money that goes back into OUR economy, not Bill's pockets"

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[binaryDigit]

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?

Damn skippy it would be. Remember, companies don't use OS's, they use applications. This is why SGI used to be so successful even though their stuff was ungodly expensive compared to other solutions, they provided tools to let people get done what they needed to get done in the best way possible. Hell, if you could get your hands on a piece of software that made you 25% more efficient at doing your job (of course this is in absolutely no way implying that office does this, this is just a generalzation), wouldn't you sink an extra $500 to acquire it? In a heartbeat you would.

The main point being that in the end, the OS don't mean squat, its the apps that run on it. "Minor" cost variances in the OS doesn't save you much in the long term if you can't get the apps that will help you do your job better. This is why M$ dominates on the desktop, but is losing more ground in the server room, Windoze is a desktop oriented OS, Linux is (was) not. Linux makes inroads in the server space because the applications available more readily lend themselves to that.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[MrResistor]

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?

Not to people who have no need for the alleged additional functionality that Office provides. I have yet to encounter a task that I could do with Office that can't do just as well, and often more easily, with OpenOffice and Mozilla.

If that is true for me, a person who is very familiar with MS products, then I think it is certainly true for someone from the backwaters of India who has little, if any, experience with computers at all.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[RealAlaskan]

Hell, if you could get your hands on a piece of software that made you 25% more efficient at doing your job (of course this is in absolutely no way implying that office does this, this is just a generalzation), wouldn't you sink an extra $500 to acquire it? In a heartbeat you would.

Yep, you're right. That's what makes it so strange that so many people persist in using Windows and proprietary software in general.

I do quite a bit of writing, and a bit of statistical programming. GNU emacs and LaTeX and R increased my productivity by quite a lot [1]; I'm sure that it was more than a 25% increase. I would have paid to get that, but of course I didn't have to.

I think that a lot of the reason that folks hang on to Windows et cetera is that they define their tasks in terms of the software they use, as in: ``I use MS Word'' rather than ``I write things'', or ``I use SAS'' rather than ``I work with data''.

Of course, if your job is to have MS Word on the screen all day, you're going to be most productive running Windows. If your job is to write structured documents with meaningful content, you're going to be most productive using something suited to the job, and that's not a word processor, on any OS.

[1] The increased productivity is in comparison to running MS Word, MS Excel and SAS on Windows.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[mgkimsal2]

Hell, if you could get your hands on a piece of software that made you 25% more efficient at doing your job (of course this is in absolutely no way implying that office does this, this is just a generalzation), wouldn't you sink an extra $500 to acquire it? In a heartbeat you would.

Not if I only made $500/year.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[Decimal]

Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility.

They could, but they won't. Instead, they make massive profits on MS-Office and MS-Windows and use the extra money to fund their many other ventures which lose money. X-Box is a good example. The goal is to survive long enough in these other arenas to become profitable there, too. Chances are that eventually they will.

This is why Linux will never kill Microsoft, only make chinks in the armor.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[Decimal]

I have yet to encounter a task that I could do with Office that can't do just as well, and often more easily, with OpenOffice and Mozilla.

Hey, you can? Keen - perhaps you could help me out. I've been trying to do this in OpenOffice for some time. Here is the task:

Press the "Enter" key and have the cursor move down exactly one line.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[Trogre]

FWIW, I have been an extensive MS Office user for several years, and have spent the last six months trialing OpenOffice.org.

I find OOo much easier to use than MSO, and I can get stuff done faster. MSO just doesn't appear very flexible.

The only benefits of MSO to me are:
1. Inclusion of a pseudo-database (Access)
2. Ability to run the latest viruses (Outlook and Visual Basic macros)

If MSO was 'free', and OOo was payware, I'd still pay for OOo rather than go back to MSO.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[binaryDigit]

OK, you listed the "benefits" of MSO and you say that OOo is "easier to use" and that MSO isn't "flexible", could you be a bit more specific? I would like to take a look at OOo and would be interested in the perspective of someone who has used both.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[jelle]

MSOffice _more_ productive? On what planet?

Just this week, I had to rush out a large document for a customer. But it needed some final preparations before I could send it off. I opened it, in word2000 (the company standard...), started editing, moving things around, etc, and poof. An error box pops up and bye bye word2000. Restarting word, document not recovered, it just showed a new empty document. Oh great! And this is on win2000, so don't blame it on winme. Anyways, here is the switch ad: So I ditched word2000 and used OpenOffice and finished the document in time without any problems.

Where do all these myths come from that MSOffice is more productive than the other office suites? If it's not MS FUD, then it's got to be inexperience using any of the other office suites out there.

If it's the only ice cream you've ever had, you'll think it's the greatest... even if it's not.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[jelle]

"I would like to take a look at OOo"

Why not try it out yourself?

My experience is, more reliable (less crashes and lost work), and much less annoyances dealing with the IT department to get licenses for the desktop, laptop, etc. The only drawbacks I've encountered is first a much slower startup time, but that is only for the first document, and second it's very close but still not 100% capable of reading and writing MS formats with no formatting mistakes.

Re:Cost and Idealogy

[Decimal]

No, it moves down a full 2 lines. I can't find a setting to change this in the options menu.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[LordNimon]

Since when is Linux pro-socialism and anti-capitalism? I thought the point behind capitalism is that the best product/service wins, without any help from having an illegal monopoly?

India ...

[vrai]

... is hardly a 'small 3rd world country'. It has a population of over a billion and is the world's largest democratic nation. Admittedly we're only talking about one state here, but this is far more significant than say Greece (first world-ish but insignificant) switching to Linux.

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.

Re:India ...

[Mignon]

we're only talking about one state here

The "profile" link on the state's portal page reports the population as "6,03,85,118." I'm not familiar with this notation, but I'm guessing that means about 60 million people. This strikes me as a reasonably large state - about 17th the total population (of 1.045 billion, according to the CIA) while there are 28 Indian states.

Re:India ...

[Single GNU Theory]

this is far more significant than say Greece (first world-ish but insignificant) switching to Linux

I have to disagree with you there. IMO, every switch to Linux and friends is significant.

Saying Greece is insignificant would be like saying New Hampshire (pretty small by most counts such as area and population) doesn't amount to much in U.S. Presidential elections.

Ha!

[Ivan Raikov]

That after yesterday's article, Microsoft freebies turn India gov. against open-source. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony!

GNU/Linux

[sfraggle]

Is RMS going to write to the Madhya State officials and complain that they called it "Linux" and not "GNU/Linux" now?

Re:GNU/Linux

[epyT-R]

Don't these stupid jokes get tiresome after awhile? Post something intelligent or don't bother.

Re:GNU/Linux

[Dahan]

Nope, not as long as RMS keeps insisting it's GNU/Linux, and calling himself its principal developer.

Re:GNU/Linux

[thelexx]

Lot's of people claim that anti-MS sentiment is just sour eggs/jealousy of Gates and his success. I've always held that this was bullshit due to having a myriad of reasons to hate the company that have nothing to do with Gates himself. Now I find myself thinking the same thing, only it's of people throwing rocks at RMS. He is, if no longer _the_, certainly _a_ principal GNU developer. Where exactly has he claimed he's the principal Linux kernel developer? Credit where it's due, Linux as we know it would not exist but for the earlier efforts of RMS. So what are you're real reasons for not liking him? The way he looks? Because GNU/Linux sounds stupid? How he won't back down from his ideals? What?

------- from gnu.org:

Richard Stallman

Biography

Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system, GNU.

Richard Stallman is the principal author of the GNU C Compiler, the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB), GNU Emacs, and various other GNU programs. Stallman currently serves as president of the Free Software Foundation.

Linux and GNU/Linux

The GNU Hurd is not ready for production use. Fortunately, another kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself, of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of the GNU system today.

We call this system version GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.

--------

Cybercafe and game

[bayankaran]

Ah...have you seen any Indian cybercafe...I am yet to see one in India running any of the games you mentioned.

Microsoft doesnt raid Indian software blackmarket as they do in Taiwan and Malaysia because they need the next generation of Indian techies to practice and understand its products. And this means a wide availability of all the Windows flavors in most of the towns.

Plus a computer you can get for Rs.30000 and upwards and if you are asking for Rs.10000 (around US$200) for an OS no one is going to buy that.

This is the reason cybercafes are running XP/2000, not because of games.

A Question of Monopoly

[airrage]

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."

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[kalidasa]

I find this quote quite fascinating. India is a nation-state where the top 5% of the population own all the wealth

Unlike the US, where the top 5% of the population own something like 80% of the stocks, bonds and real estate.

essentially they have a monopoly on the other lower castes.

I'd be very careful about using the word "caste" if I were you; there's a lot of misinformation about what "caste" means.

All the public infrastructure is publicly owned (trains, electricity).

Unlike, say, Europe?

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[LoRider]

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.

And then what will happen, you will stop using IE?

Think about who has more users the government of India or a fortune 500 company?

A not to everyone that thinks Linux is a failure as an OS because Fortune 500 companies in America aren't spending millions of dollars to switch, WHO CARES?

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[bstadil]

I'd be very careful about using the word "caste" if I were you; there's a lot of misinformation about what "caste" means.

Take your pick, each one makes you sick.

1 A race, a stock, a breed. obs. in gen. sense.

2 A Hindu hereditary class of socially equal persons, united in religion and usu. following similar occupations, distinguished from other castes in the hierarchy by its relative degree of purity or pollution. Any more or less exclusive social class.

3 The position conferred by membership of a caste.

4 The system of division of society into castes.

5 The form of a social insect having a particular function.

Excerpted from Oxford Dictionary

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[Quixote]

India is a nation-state where the top 5% of the population own all the wealth;

Similarly, in the US, the top 5% own 95% of the wealth. Same is probably true for most countries (except the truly socialist/communist ones).

essentially they have a monopoly on the other lower castes
The richest dude in India, Azim Premji, is a moslem. What was that about castes again?

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[0x0d0a]

Well, they *are* switching...just on the server instead of the desktop.

Sooner or later, we'll nail 'em. More usability studies from Sun, new desktop paradigm, more WINE development or something.

Linux is the sharpest knife Sun and IBM have ever had, and they're slavering at the chops at the thought of twisting it around in MS's guts.

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[Tom]

All the public infrastructure is publicly owned (trains, electricity)

Which, as any economist not blinded by neoliberal capitalism will tell you, can be a good thing. It all depends on how its run. Public transport especially tends to be best where it's publicly owned.

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[kalidasa]

Which is exactly my point. My understanding is that caste more and more is coming to operate something like "nationality" (in the American sense of ethnicity, rather than the more European sense of citizenship) did in the US in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Re:A Question of Monopoly

[kalidasa]

The richest dude in India, Azim Premji, is a moslem. What was that about castes again?

Don't use the term Moslem, use Muslim. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[Shillo]

> WINE doesn't run CS, Starcraft, UT, and all the other online games that make third-world cyber cafes profitable.

Wine in fact does run Starcraft. UT (and UT2003) are released natively for Linux. CS I don't know about.

New games (which aren't likely to run on Wine) require the frequently upgraded hardware, which is too expensive for India anyway.

Not that any of this matters; caffes will stop piracy when they get closed down because of it and no sooner. They also won't change the OS because it's simply a hassle.

--

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Awright!

[Bonker]

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.

Indian tech sophistication

[MacAndrew]

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.)

So ... 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.)

Re:Indian tech sophistication

[MacAndrew]

Some good points. But the thing is the gov't has to make a choice based on what is best to provide information to the population. It doesn't have to choose an OS based on wage-earning potential. It has to be very price-sensitive.

If India could simply choose between Linux (free) and pirated MS (free) that would be one thing. But it is very different for the state to steal software versus individuals. India will not be eager to provoke protests from U.S. copyright holders, even if it declines to pursue private piracy. (Unlike China, India actually appears sensitive to U.S. pressure.) Bill Gates is doubtlessly aware India could just steal what it needs, and is offering cheaper deals to avoid that while earning some diplomatic points.

Regardless of which OS is chosen, it will need support. I doubt the manpower is much greater for one over the other, and ultimately Linux would likely demand less supervision.

Re:Indian tech sophistication

[subzero_ice]

Yes India probably produce the most engineers but mark that only about 10 institutions will be of international standards.

I don't know if you read the newspapers or not but India does produce quality software engineers, and as far as the institutions in India are concerned I don't think you have heard of IIT's, IIS Banglore, Birla Institute of Technology and other State colleges which are equally good. Just a note the IITs are among the best institutions in the world.

And just so that you know all major software companies employ a good number of Indians. If they didn't qualify as good programmers why do you think companies employed them.

Please clarify international standards.

A Proud Indian.

bad news for Linux?

[tps12]

Well, I guess I have to support the use of Linux for any sort of serious application. No such thing as bad publicity and all that. Plus, Linux is a perfect match in this case, since they can't afford anything non-free, and at the moment Linux is the best free OS (some would say it's the best OS period, but I'm not looking for a flamewar) out there. So that's good.

One thing I've thought about a lot is the image that Linux has, in both the media and business worlds. It goes without saying that gaining a foothold in American industry is vital to the long-term success of Linux. But many corporations have been reluctant to switch to Linux due to its image as an OS used by outcasts, hippies, pirates, and hackers. We seem to be making some progress away from this, what with products like Lindows getting some press, but we have a long way to go.

Now this comes along, and it's like we're being attacked from a whole new side. If Linux takes off in India, then we risk being associated with overpopulation, disease, tainted water supplies, and nucular warfare. What American company will consider using Linux after that? I wish there was a way to have it both ways, but I feel like the best thing for the Linux community to do at this point is to try to get India to switch to FreeBSD.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[tshak]

Since when did people work for large corporations and governments for free? So no, Linux isn't pro-socialism, but whatever it is I still don't get it.

* I'm obviously not refering to the dev's that get paid at IBM to work on Linux. That's business. I'm talking about the vast majority of OSS developers who do not code OSS professionally.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[Soko]

WINE doesn't run CS, Starcraft, UT, and all the other online games that make third-world cyber cafes profitable.

Though some of the official stuff, as well as the more family-oriented shops may change to Linux, the vast majority of cyber cafes will still be running pirated games under a pirated Windows.

I doubt it- this is a government sponsored program - they plainly can't allow pirated software for a host of reasons. If it were for-profit shops, I'd agree with you whole heartedly. The effort here is for education of the poor, not profits.

India will continue to pirate as long as Microsoft leads everywhere else, though having the governor officially reject capitalism is a good step for socialism.

Hunh? This 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."

says they reject capitaism for socialism? That sounds very much like an informed, reasoned choice to me. It also will get the poor of India used to the idea of properly licensed software - and may end up curtailing some of the piracy you speak of.

You sound as though you've pre-judged India as a country with no morals, self respect or smarts, since they have no money. I can assure you that this is definately not the case, especially in the smarts department. Educate yourself on what you speak of, please, especially before you attepmt to make such blanket statements.

As it is, IMHO you definately put the ass in assume.

Soko

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[NoodleSlayer]

StarCraft was one of the first games to get working under WINE before WineX. There is a LINUX NATIVE version of both UT and UT2003 (I have both), and I've heard favorable reports to getting CS working under WINE, however the anti-cheating software doesn't work too well in WINE. Take a good look at Transgaming, there's a number of games on that list that do work under linux.

However this really is a moot point. The goal of the rural cyberecafes is to provide access to email and web browsing, not to train a generation of "uber1337" kiddies that can't do anything but cheat in CS.

And eveidently you don't understand what capitalist system is. If it was a socailist system there would be no choice, its one-service-for-all, kind of like how Microsoft wants it, that for every PC you have you have to pay the "Microsoft Tax". Linux is the one trying to break this up so there actually is competition in the x86 PC market.

~noodle

Re: Troll URL

[tomhudson]

The above URL is a redirect elsewhere. Mouse over it to see what I mean. F$cking troll!

Re:I thought Indiana State used

[Havokmon]

a cluster of Amigas

Hence, IUPUI.

This is bull ....

[cyberjessy]

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.

Re:This is bull ....

[currentdirectory]

This is not entirely true. IAAI (I am an indian). It is true that privacy is rampant among small software companies and large number of individuals. Why will a state govt. do something illegal? Big indian companies and some selected schools would never use pirated software.

Re:This is bull ....

[0x0d0a]

First Linux came out... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then it got faster than Windows... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then it turned into a more secure server than Windows... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then it got thousands of developers working on desktop software for it... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then Gartner Group said "move from MS to it"... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then all the big iron vendors started supporting it... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then client companies started moving their servers over to it... ...and they said it didn't matter.

Then state and national governments started switching to it by the handful... ...and they said it didn't matter.

It's grown faster in popularity than any other OS... ...and they said it didn't matter.

What does it take?

Re:This is bull ....

[Hugonz]

This is the government.Specially with the govt. MS Windows is NOT Rs.0 (or Mexican Pesos $0, for that matter) They DO have to pay the licensing. I can see it because I live in Mexico.

Re:This is bull ....

[marauder404]

It's going to take an entry in to the desktop market. Recent reports STILL put Linux on the desktop at less than 1% market share, sometimes as low as 0.2-0.3%. If Linux is to succeed and become significant, it needs to be a score on the desktop market. At least as large as Macintosh. If you can find any recent, credible articles reflecting desktop marketshare, I'd love to read them.

Re:This is bull ....

[istartedi]

It sounds to me like not only MS, but a lot of other big corporations (drug companies come to mind) need to price appropriately for foreign markets. This is especially true for something like software, where you could set up a CD printing plant in India and make CDs for almost nothing a piece. That would help grow the Indian economy, and eventually MS would be able to charge a higher price for the Indian version. Instead, by pricing it at the ridiculously high US level, they've make piracy socially acceptable.

A much milder example of this occurs here in the US, where high cigarette taxes have got ordinary people violating the law by mail-ordering from Indian (Native American) reservations or low-tax states. I live in Virginia, which probably has the lowest cig tax, and crooks load up minivans with cigs here and truck them to New York. The New York tax is so high that they just created a way for criminals (some have speculated that this includes terrorists) to raise money.

In other words, if a tax on anything is too high, people will just refuse to pay the tax and factor in the penalty when caught as a "cost of business". In the case of Windows, the likelyhood of getting caught is nil for most Indians, and the tax is a year's average pay! Whooowee! If Windows cost $34,000 (isn't that the US median income?) I'd have only one thing to say:

Aaarh, Matey.

What about us?

[SLASHAttitude]

Why can't the US make such a switch? I know they have a lot invested in there M$ stuff right now but why could they not change. I think this comes down to people that run the software. We all know that politicians and a lot of people in government jobs are lazy and just there for the money or power. That is what I think is holding us back. Not to mention the lusers we have running things. They could never figure out why they can not get those .vbs files to work and not having to reboot every day.

Re:What about us?

[xenoweeno]

Why can't the US make such a switch?

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*

Re:What about us?

[Quill_28]

Oh I don't know because maybe it would cost millions to switch? Why do you think so many companies and colleges still use a system from the 80's.
Because of all the retraining that would be neccessary. Because of the apps that wouldn't work. I could go on.

The real question is why don't new projects use linux, freebsd, etc

Re:What about us?

[Kashif Shaikh]

"Why can't the US make such a switch?"

Before you demand a country to make a switch, why not ask your friendly slashdot users? As much as this site is pro-(Linux|MAC|*NIX|BeOS), there are a significant number of Windows users(according to the recent windows poll even though "thou shalt not use poll to due anything serious").

Now if you can't get your slash buddies to convert, how the hell are you going to get the gov't, companies, organization, etc. to convert? I mean you can go from step 1 to step 4, without doing steps 2 and 3.

(no profit jokes, please)

Re:What about us?

[vinsci]

Now if you can't get your slash buddies to convert

Actually, Slashdot readers are switching to Linux in very large numbers: see the simple proof in this comment.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[tomhudson]

For simple things like getting info on web, web based email, and simple chatting, no difference between linux and windows.</quote>

Differences:

1. BSOD's
2. Viruses
3. licen$e co$t$

But, yeah, I see your point. Too bad that more people in North America don't realize this.

From Linux to Windoze?

[binaryDigit]

Just out of curiosity, we hear a lot about people migrating from various solutions over to Linux, but I don't hear much about people doing the reverse. Is this because this just isn't happening (doubt it) or that it's just not publicised? If it does occur, I think it would benefit the community greatly to feature them even more so than those who switch TO Linux. I think the reason is obvious, if someone is switching away, then there is something to be learned. It may be features, it may be economics, or it may even be politics, but I think that we would learn from these turncoa^h^h^h uh, people.

Re:From Linux to Windoze?

[distributed.karma]

It if actually were happening, don't you think there would be lots and lots of publicity put forward by M$ -- just like the Mac converts stories.

I simply find it hard to imagine thar organizations would convert from Win to Lin. In this Win-centric world, those who choose open source (either conversion or start up) are likely to have weighed the options quite carefully.

Re:From Linux to Windoze?

[infiniti99]

You mean like this ?

Interestingly, this is the 11th most active Slashdot story ever. It was only recently bumped off of the top 10 hall of fame, because of the US/MiddleEast events lately.

Gyandoot is still a Microsoft project

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the article before jumping for joy. Only one of the two state government programs are switching to linux (the Headstart program). The other, Gyandoot, seems to be a Microsoft project.

See also this for a little more about Gyandoot and MS involvement.

Prakash

netcraft says...

[jackstack]

The site www.mp.nic.in is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98.

UT on Linux.

[MsGeek]

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.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[ratamacue]

Yes. The notion of government "rejecting capitalism" implies exactly two requirements: (1) to increase the power and expense of government, and (2) to reduce the freedom of the people. Neither one of these requirements has been met with this new proposal, as far as I can see. The individual who made that quote simply does not understand the concepts of capitalism and socialism.

Capitalism is freedom -- specifically, the freedom to engage in voluntary association. Socialism is the exact opposite of this. Socialism is essentially a prohibition of capitalism, because it requires that your freedom of voluntary association be eliminated (or reduced) by the force of government.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[Archie Steel]

CS runs very well under WineX (I play regularly), and so does StarCraft. Unreal Tournament (and UT2003) has a native linux version.

Also, the thing most popular in indian cybercafes is not games, but e-mail.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[MrResistor]

Two things:

1) You're an idiot

2) You don't know what the hell you're talking about

Let me explain:

Counter-Strike and StarCraft both run just fine under WINE, and have done so for years (I personally know people who were playing CS under Wine over 2 years ago). Unreal Tournament doesn't need to run on WINE since both UT and UT2003 have native support for Linux (Although, for the record, I know people who were playing UT under WINE, again, over 2 years ago).

Since this is easily verifiable fact, it is quite clear that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

having the governor officially reject capitalism is a good step for socialism.

While this statement is technically true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand. The issue is not one of Capitalism v. Socialism, but rather one of government accountability and transparancy. These two issues are completely different and distinct, and only an idiot who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about would get them confused.

Though some of the official stuff, as well as the more family-oriented shops may change to Linux, the vast majority of cyber cafes will still be running pirated games under a pirated Windows.

That may be true in the large cities, which actually have economies which are able to support privately owned cybercafes, but India is a very big place, and the vast majority of it does not fit that description.

_Indian State_ not _India_

[MHV]

I'm just amazed at how much people are getting this wrong. It is not the WHOLE of India that decided to switch to GNU/Linux, but only the state of Madhya Pradesh. Guys, what would you have said if the headline was the American state of Arkansas, has opted to switch to Linux from Microsoft

In case you didn't know, Bhopal has been the site of the world's worst chemical disaster in 1984. A leak from the Union Carbide (an american company) nearby plant has killed and injured thousands of citizens, and the company has denied responsibility for a long time. See here for more info. Somehow, I'm not surprised that they want to avoid the presence of big american companies

Just my two maple-leaved cents

Re:Awright!

[Tassach]

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

It's been a long time since I took a comparative religion class, but that doesn't correspond to what I remember. To simplify greatly: if you generate positive Karma in this life, your next incarnation will be at a higher level; negative karma and you'll come back lower. Animals are lower on the Karmic ladder than humans. The reason you don't eat a cow is that it might have been Grandma in it's previous life.

Re:Let the racist comments begin...

[GLX]

Ok, I'll bite.

I just read the Ask Slashdot you referred to at -1 (I missed it the first time around...) and don't find any "racist" comments whatsoever.

All I see is a few posts from people griping about H1B Visa workers. While you may have assumed (incorrectly) that all H1B Visa holders come from India (I'm presuming that's why you posted the comment in this story), plenty come from countries such as England, Russia and the Asia-Pac Rim. No one specifically mentioned any race, creed, or religion in any demeaning term.

People are obviously upset about the proliferation of H1B workers in America. It wouldn't have made it to Congress and the mainstream media if there wasn't widespread sentiment about it.

There's a difference between racism and criticism, and I think you need to be a little less defensive unless you feel guilty of something yourself.

A positive thing

[Daniel Phillips]

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.

Re:That's cool...

[MullerMn]

And releasing something through your buttocks is much like the development process that produces MS software.

What a beautiful symmetry.

Re:Awright!

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

but don't forget that 'real' karma is the unmeasurable enlightenment you have acheived.


That's right.... It once was said:

"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos", - Homer Simpson

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[gl4ss]

you forgot the re-installs after customers clicked some fancy url sent by their 'friend' and erased the hd.

Correction

[distributed.karma]

CmdrTypo strikes again. It should of course read ".. convert from Lin to Win".

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[0x0d0a]

Runs more smoothly in WINE than the last version of Windows I had installed, NT 4.

Re:Awright!

[drinkypoo]

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.

They do more for providing me lunch, for certain, but they don't do all that much for the environment. Sure, they wander around shitting, but that really don't impress me much.

The only reason cows haven't put up an immense operation to raise and slaughter various wild grasses is that they lack opposable thumbs.

Re:who cares?

[nagora]

This obviously shows how desperate the linux community is to brag about something as useless as this. -- lets all report every time some amazon tribe uses toilet paper instead of a leaf to wipe his ass!

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

This is quite the quote..

[jonnythan]

is just a matter of choosing between a free software and a monopoly.

Is it me, or does it seem that if you have a real *choice*, then there is no monopoly?

I thought the essence of a monopoly was that there was no viable choice to be made.

Re:This is quite the quote..

[adb]

Yes. Microsoft has a monopoly in the US, because they have saturated the market with their software. Note that I mean saturated in the technical sense, not just the "heavy marketing" sense: relatively few new users enter the computing scene here, so any alternative has to convince people to switch. Microsoft then makes unviable by a variety of means: incompatible file formats and APIs, a huge proliferation of Windows-only proprietary software that people are locked into, and so on.

In India, there is a huge market that is not yet saturated. If they chose Microsoft, they would likely be choosing to create a monopoly just like ours.

The economics of free vs proprietary software..

[theprancinghorse]

I came across this excellent article in an Indian business newspaper discussing the economics behind the use of free software vs proprietary software in developing countries like India. It also touches upon the adoption of Linux in Madhya Pradesh. In a nutshell, the article presents a strong argument in favour of free software mainly from the economic standpoint.

Re:The economics of free vs proprietary software..

[Tony-A]

Good read.
"Our software industry has so far been doing simple applications work. Working with free software gives our industry the opportunity of jumping to the next level of complexity. It would give domestic competence and control over the heart of our computers."
Linux may be cheaper, but more important, it's better. It's a matter of copetence, control, and trust. Trust? Yep. Because the source is open, it's much less likely to have any "funny business", and if there is any, somebody competent is likely to stumble onto it and start making noises.

Re:Sweet! Less money for the U.S. and its citizens

[0x0d0a]

You know, that doesn't mean that the global standard of living improvements through improved efficiency won't make it worthwhile.

You don't *have* to take foo from B and give it to A. You *can* get A and B to work together and improve *both* of their stations.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[tomhudson]

Yeah, but that's just part of the Micro$oft tax, or a feature, or whatever... :-)

Re:Sweet! Less money for the U.S. and its citizens

[0x0d0a]

a large organization accused and found guilty of illegal activities

Same as Greenpeace? (lots of borderline ecoterrorism)
How about the FBI? (Hoover's abuses in the '70s)

Hysterical!

[mekkab]

Very funny...

But to take you seriously for half a second:

you wrote:
But many corporations have been reluctant to switch to Linux due to its image as an OS used by outcasts, hippies, pirates, and hackers.

Which is totally wrong. Every managers fisrt question is usually: "hmmm, this linux thing, does it run Outlook and Office? But more importantly, does it run AOL?"

netherlands

[jilles]

Here in the Netherlands, the left-wing green party yesterday also proposed embracing open source. In a quite extensive report on their website (http://www.groenlinks.nl/nieuws/4001428.html, in Dutch). They motivate the proposal quite well. There are a few minor details that they got wrong (most notably, Linus' last name is misspelled and the fact that a closed source format is used for the actual report) but overall the message is that closed source is bad and open source can be beneficial for both economical reasons and other reasons such as security, reliability and openness. Considering the report is written by a non technical person for a non technical audience, the effort should be applauded.

With the upcoming election in January, I hope this will be one of the election themes.

Re:netherlands

[weston]

Europe's treatment of MS's place in the market is going to be particularly interesting. They don't have the same kind of political/economic interest in playing nice with MS that the U.S. might have, and a more centrist view prevails when it comes to market operation, so it won't lead as easily to "leave the market alone"/"you're just jealous of success" positions.

But where things get especially interesting is considering how the EU is in the stage of becoming more of a unified and global power. Some commentators have likened the reforms going on there to the transition phase that the 13 original colonies went through... articles of confederation, then consitution... and anticipate an accelerated transition into a true block. As this block acquires more power, we may see more jockeying for power between the U.S. and th E.U. ... maybe everything from the sort of tariff tiffs that happened last year over steel, to looking at ways to improve their domestic advantage when it comes to software and I/T. Losing licensing costs for Windows and paying local companies for development may be one way to encourage that.

I agree

[mao che minh]

I have been in constant communication with 3 developers in India over the past year. Until I sent one a Red Hat CD, none of them had ever even seen Linux. Oh sorry, GNU/Linux. Anyways, the favored OS with all three is Windows 2000.

Now, the opinion of and exposure to one particular operating system by three guys in India isn't saying much, but when coupled with cyberjessy's statement, it's something.

Re:Damn another

[mao che minh]

I take it that you never used either Mandrake, Suse, or Red Hat's automatic software update utilities? Red Hat network? apt-get for Debian? Linux?

Premature

[r_j_prahad]

Do not be holding your breath for this to actually happen. There is still plenty of JET A-1 fuel at Sea-Tac for Mr. Bill's airplane.

I hear he has a delicate stomach, I wonder how well he is tolerating Indian food?

Hitting too close to home

[Kenneth Stephen]

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.

Re:Hitting too close to home

[Darby]

While corruption is not unknown in the US, these are usually exceptions

You are deluding yourself if you think that this is even remotely true. Corruption is the absolute rule in our government. Explain DMCA, Patriot act, Mickey Mouse Protection act, Homeland Security (alone and with all the riders) in any other way.

In India, the honest politicians would be the exception.

Here we apparently had one left who is now dead.
Wellstone was the one dissenter to the Patriot act.
Anyone who voted in favor of that showed their hatred and contempt of the constitution, freedom, and basically everything America says that we stand for.
If you disagree try and come up with an actual reason that I'm wrong.

It's sad that you can have proof piled upon proof that the US government is completely owned and corrupt yet you are afraid to face the truth.
I'm not singling you out. Most people in America are afraid of facing reality. That is out primary problem.

Re:Hitting too close to home

[Darby]

He's popular to deify right now, of course. Frankly, I wish he'd lived to see his defeat at the polls.

I didn't intend to deify him. I don't know that much about him professionally, and less personally.

The fact that the act of voting in favor of the Patriot Act was, quite literally, an act of treason, and he's the only one that had the courage to vote no does justify offering some respect for his principles IMHO.

Re:Hitting too close to home

[nathanm]

Corruption is the absolute rule in our government. Explain DMCA, Patriot act, Mickey Mouse Protection act, Homeland Security (alone and with all the riders) in any other way.

You didn't read the post you're replying to very carefully. In fact, if you'd finish reading the rest of the sentence you quoted, you wouldn't need an explanation:

(most law buying takes place over the table rather than under it and is thus not "corrupt" behaviour)

Re:Sweet! Less money for the U.S. and its citizens

[thelexx]

This is exactly the kind of thinking that is the root of the problems in the US business world today. Executives who think that since it's all just money or 'just business', breaking the law is OK. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. This is not about a matter of degree. You are still a criminal regardless of whether you pickpocketed or murdered. You are still put in cuffs and toted downtown. The punishment is the only thing that varies. Spend time in prison, and you are an ex-con. Tax evasion or murder makes no difference.

Well, CNN is not that credible source

[santeri]

And of course CNN [cnn.com] is well known for making things up.

Well, they are. (Topic aside.)

Example: check their coverage of the so called "Gulf War". Blatant lies and propaganda all-day-around.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[tomhudson]

I haven't seen a BSOD in over 2 years. </quote>

Nice to know you haven't seen a BSOD in over 2 years. I haven't either - on my boxes - 'cause I run linux. But just this morning, I've had to 'fix' 2 BSODs on others.

Windows is a crappy design. There's no getting around it.

In fact, Linux/Un*x boxes are more security risks because of their great support for multiple users. Nice to see you acknowledge *nix boxes "great support for multiple users". Something Windows was supposed to do, and still sux at. I haven't seen a BSOD in over 2 years. Multiple user accounts on *nix boxes are less of a threat to everyone than a winhozer

With Windows, any user can keep it up to date (as up to date as Microsoft makes it) by clicking a button. </quote> That's the problem w. closed source. It stays shitty because nobody else can fix it.

It really is a rollercoaster

[theolein]

Last year it started with the German Bundestag Linux initiative and the French government's open source requirements, moved on to the Chinese government's Linux move, crossed the Pacific to Peru and that intelligent senator there rebutting MS-Peru's words one by one, actually made it past Heathrow customs in the UK, shot down the Atlantic to Namibia, passing by Spain on the way, going round the Cape of good Hope to nest in Japan and now move back to India.

It truly is amazing just how well Linux is being adopted. Most of this is serverside however, but I give Microsoft's server business another year or two of profitability before no one goes for Ms servers anymore in a big way. .NET server and co might be extremely good performers but when you can get three boxes for the price of one server licence, which one would you go for?

In addition I think the rollercoaster will only gather speed from now, where even total MS butt kissers like the good folk here in Switzerland start to realise that MS isn't doing anything for them and start getting a clue on Linux. OpenOffice will most likely also only increase in use and I can veritably see the day when MS actually starts losing money. Given their size, I think they'll burn through the 40 Billion real quick.

Dalits (untouchables) need not apply......

[hughk]

Caste is definitely still relevant in India.Whilst I would agree that the prejudice is supressed, it definitely still exists.

Re:Dalits (untouchables) need not apply......

[donutello]

And race is still relevant in the US. Whilst I would agree that the prejudice is suppressed, it definitely still exists.

Read the parent post to my post. The author says that because casteism exists in India, therefore Bill Gates is refusing to do "business that way". By that same logic, other countries would have to stop trading with the US.

Every country has its fringe elements who practice various practices - Indias are no worse than those in most other places including the US.

Other news!

[budalite]

And in other news, the town council of Lynchburg, Kentucky has switched to moonshine, saying open source booze is just a win-win situation.

Glad to hear of the "coup", but is this place of any size, importance to the IT world? Just curious. }:{)||

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[istartedi]

There are two schools of thought on this. The first one is that Linux is pro-capitalist because companies are using a different "service based" business model. Adherents to this school of thought argue that the service model is a better way to distribute software and will win in the long run.

The other school of thought is that Linux is anti-capitalist because it seeks to drive other operating systems out of the market and replace them with a public monopoly. When the public monopoly fails to achieve timely development, it is likely to seek government funding (and already has in some cases). Thus, the government eventually becomes the sole provider of OS development services. Government ownership of a business is the classic definition of socialism.

Contrary to what the other guy said, posts about Linux and Socialism are *not* trolls.

As you might have guessed, I hold to the 2nd school of thought. The first school makes sense as long as the government "stays out" doesn't fund it. Proponents of the first school argue that the government already funds proprietary software by providing PD research and enforcing copyright law. The counterargument to that is that PD research is available to both camps. The cost of enforcing copyright law argument falls apart when you realize that if all software were GPL'd, the government would have to enforce "exclusive supplier" contracts which could effectively negate the GPL.

Also, Linux is under GPL, which came from RMS, who is an RED :). But seriously, if you read the GNU website you will see that it makes no secret of the fact that the movement is based in Leftist ideology.

And the debate will almost certainly go on and on from here...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm sick of this troll.

[twitter]

We've all encountered Samba, Sendmail, and Kernel panics too. We've encountered varying ways of bringing up Runlevels, frontends that configure stuff, but you don't know WHERE it configures 'em.

I'd have encountered SAMBA if I had any windoze machines, but I don't.

I've got exim instead of sendmail, so I don't really know if there's anything hard about sendmail. Exim is easy to configure and comes very well documented.

Kernel panic? Well, that has happened to me once or twice. Once on an overheating machine. Once on a machine where I screwed up by not knowing how to work lilo. Never on a reasonlable machine with a normal install of Debian or Red Hat. Ever.

In any case, there is no comparing the "problems" you have cited to M$ crap. When a piece of free software does not work there IS something you can do about it. If the man or info page fails you, unlikely, and a google search does not turn up an answer right away, you can always download and read the source code itself. I've never had to do that, ever, becuse man and info generally list where all the configuration files are and those are almost always well documented. What happens when some bogus M$ code pulls up the old blue screen of death? You reboot, look at MSDN, google, and what not. But you can never ever actually fix the problem because only one company sits on the source and you are at their mercy. They get around to it when they get around to it, sometimes that's never and that's why M$ boxes fail so often, are so easy to break into and cost so much to own and run.

Poor pot and kettle, they've been sitting in the smoke of propriatory software so long they can't see the light of day.

Re:I'm sick of this troll.

[Matey-O]

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.

Re:I'm sick of this troll.

[jelle]

"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."

Golden tip of the day: The Makefile is not the kernel configuration file, it's the .config file that configures it. Note you need to do a 'make xconfig', or 'make menuconfig', or 'make oldconfig' if you're using a 'clean' unpacked kernel tarball and want to apply the .config file you just copied into it.

What is the error you get? Have you investigated further or did you only try the blind approach of 'lets try this on another machine'?

Sounds like you have a "CONFIG_MPENTIUM4=y" in your .config

Or something similar in your gcc, binutils, or libc6-dev, or you're simply running out of memory/swap.

BTW, none of my windows machines can recompile their kernel.

we'd stand up and cheer

[Xtifr]

what would you have said if the headline was the American state of Arkansas, has opted to switch to Linux from Microsoft?

I'd stand up and cheer. Just like I did when the city of Largo announced they were switching to Linux. Sure, it'd be even nicer if it were the whole country of India, but this is still a step in the right direction. The fact is that each one of these small victories adds credibility to this funky free software stuff and makes it that much more likely that the next small group pondering what I'm pondering will go ahead and make the switch to freedom.

Wine does run starcraft.

[autopr0n]

In fact, many hours were devoted just to making sure that it would run starcraft.

Well, they can convert to budhism.

[autopr0n]

Or Islam, christianity, etc...

We don't need no stinking shit.

[twitter]

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've seen "server grade" stuff BSOD when it was running M$'s "server grade" OS. It was a big shiny multi processor beast from Dell and very beautiful. The extra cost did not buy the company much and, gasp, it worked just like the non "server grade" stuff we all know and use. As Beavis once said, "It's amazing how mass produced objects are nearly identical."

It's all about perception, dude, don't tell me your shit don't stink.

I don't use or recomend shit. My hardware is cheap, my software is free yet it all works great.

And you've missed the point entirely.

I don't think so. You tried to tell me that buggy M$ junk was just as good as free software. Experience indicates otherwise, regardless of the hardware. You also implied that there was little difference between free and non free documentation. Again, that's false for all the reasons outlined in my last post.

Then make me a foe. :P

You will have to be uglier than that.

You take any anthro classes at the business school

[ainsoph]

Must not have, or maybe its just another case of the epidemic sweeping the country these days:

xenophobia

Yeah thats right.

Know what? I have been over there too. It sure is a shock to see the way the world is, and yeah its painful as well watching the poverty, pain and suffering that envelopes *most* of the globe.

For me it was an eyeopener, for you it was an excuse to get a cheap fuck (you cheap fuck, fuck you, you stupid ignorant imperialist fuck), and to come home and fuckin complain.

Fuck you. Oh and fuck you. Oh and, when are you idiots gonna realize its only a teeny bit of the population that gets to live in a SUV driving, Elimidate watching, non-corrupt (cough cough) paradise that is the "West".

I suggest you goto fuckin college and do a little studying before you make yer next trip. And by the way, hope you fall in a pit of shit while you wipe your ass with your hand.

Asshole.

I Call BS! sorry

[Cyno01]

Wellstone was the one dissenter to the Patriot act.

Actually my senator, Russ Feingold, was the only one to vote against the USA Patriot Act. An address of his revealing his reasons for dong so. Wellstone was a good guy, he was IMO the most liberal senator next to Feingold. [conspiracy]Anyone else find it weird that one of the most liberal senators who was up for re-election died in a plane crash days before the election. A few years back Mel Carnahan, Ashcrofts rival for the MO senate seat died in a plane crash shortly before the election. Chew on that.[/conspiracy]

Re:I Call BS! sorry

[Darby]

Now how exactly is a factual quote and a link Flamebait?
The fact that the moderator is too much of a coward to face the reality we're living in does *not* make something flamebait.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Cyno01]

If i had the points man. Really, BG isn't that bad a guy, i know M$ sucks, but he did build a multi-national, multi-billion company out of his garage, he deserves a little respect. The point is this one man has given nearly 6 billion *pinky to mouth* dollars to charity.

Wonderful analogy. Brilliant in fact...

[crovira]

"You couldn't become either an automotive engineer or a mechanic without taking cars apart, nor can you become a decent CS grad, or admin, without disecting a few systems and seeing what makes them tick."

And you can't do it without the source.

ACL's

[driehuis]

ACL's done _right_ on NT? Give me a break!

For those tuning in late, the UI for modifying an ACL on a directory gave the user two choices: either replace all underlying ACL's, or applying it just to the directory.

The first would run the risk of wiping out all ACL's at a deeper level (I've seen the results of a misguided sysadmin wiping out the ACL's of all user directories, and it ain't pretty). Not applying it recursively of course leaves you with inconsistent ACL's.

The beauty of Netware's ACL's was mentioned, but that solution would've been a serious deviation from the VMS heritage on which NT was built.

To do ACL's right on NT isn't impossible (and maybe the interface has improved since NT 4.0, the last Windows release I'm certified on :-)

But to do it right would mean designing a user interface which can do the _intended_ change (e.g., downgrade write access to readonly for user BILLG) without overwriting other restrictions. This would require a dialog such as the Word dialog when changing styles on selected text with multiple styles, which would at best be a challenge in training in its own right (how many people do you know that know how to operate the Style menus in Word? Just checking).

I've dealt with ACL's on VMS, on RACF, on Netware and on NT. The only one I liked was the only one I could explain to fledgling administrators. The fact that you can't go back and undo a change on NTFS is something that goes so badly against user expectations that it just doesn't stick.

Re:ACL's

[drinkypoo]

NT offers you several options in ACLs these days. First, you can replace. Second, you can erase and specify. Third, you can inherit and add. Since NT gives least permission, you can inherit and then add and be sure that you won't be giving someone permission to a resource based on inherited ACLs as long as you explicitly deny them access.

Meanwhile as of Win2k there are ACLs which apply to computers, and computers belong to groups, so not only can you determine access based on user but also on computer.

Your problem does not apply to modern versions of Windows NT.

Re:India

[the eric conspiracy]

Premise:

Indian workers are much better than American workers.

Conclusion:

India should beat the crap out of America in software development.

Actuality:

America outsources a percentage of it's development work to India, but American is still by far the world leader in software development.

Reason: (my opinion)

India has never been able to implement anything like a market economy. Rather it struggles with the largest and most inefficient form of socialism imaginable. Time and again efforts to make India into a modern economy have foundered on the shoals of the world's largest, most corrupt bureaucracy.

http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no18921.htm
http://w ww.vedamsbooks.com/no18921.htm
http://www.aegis.c om/news/ads/1994/AD942153.html
http://www.aegis.c om/news/ads/1994/AD942153.html

Tips...

[jelle]

The point he was making that in windows it's often not documented, so it often ends up with trial and error, hours of kb searches, or just reinstalling with fingers crossed. In Linux, you have the source and the configuration files are human readable, you just need to find the beginning of the yellow brick road and follow it.

"bringing up Runlevels,"

Start at /etc/inittab and follow the rail of scripts, first the script on the 'si:' line, then look at the 'default:' line, and follow the 'l?:' line with '?' the runlevel. You'll probably find most your start and stop scripts in /etc/init.d, and /etc/rcS.d with links from /etc/rc?.d

Most other configurations are in /etc, and per user ones in '.*' (hidden) files or directories of the user's home directory.

Sendmail problems? Try postfix, you'll love it. Easier to configure, easier to understand, and better security track record. btw, configuration is in /etc/postfix... duh.

Got a kernel panic and it's not because youre using the 2.5.x unstable kernels? -> Most probably hardware that is breaking down.

Re:My experiences in India

[ainsoph]

COINTELNPRO

Lg English base allows further pooling of advances

[SgtChaireBourne]

... is hardly a 'small 3rd world country'. It has a population of over a billion and is the world's largest democratic nation.

This is also more significant than any individual Chinese state going OSS.

If I recall correctly, India also has the largest English speaking population. Since English (or specifically 'Merican) is the base tech language, it makes developments in India immediately accessible to the rest of the world.

Kernel compilation issues.

[Matey-O]

On the PII laptop, I get various GCC coredumps, One the Celeron Fileserver, I get Errors during Make_Modules, on the PIV, it completes, but kernel panics when you use the image. It's from using the install tree that came with the distribution, and it's from getting the latest stable tree from Kernel.org This is with minimum Makefiles, full make files, 'make oldconfig' makefiles, I've yet to get one that'll work. Oh, and the distribution is RH8 All I wanted was the ability to mount (RO) an NTFS partition, which ISN'T compiled onto RedHat's kernel by default. Surfing around, I found another pre-compiled kernel that FUBU's during the RPM install. (RPM -iv blah.rpm - error - RPM -iv blah.rpm - blah.rpm already installed.) And this is all with READING THE FREE DOX and compiling the available code. And I'm sure very few other people had this problem.

Re:Kernel compilation issues.

[jelle]

You probably have a hardware problem on the laptop (compiling the kernel is a known hardware problem finder because of its unique system load). On the celeron, you may have a missing or wrong supporting package, for exampel the /usr/include/linux directory may not be the correct one.

The RH8 install tree doesn't give you the .config configuration file that you need to build a RH8 compatible kernel (unless you copy it manually, see the linuxexperience.com link below), so the P4 kernel panic could be either a misconfigured kernel (something like missing 'initrd support'), or something misconfigured in /etc/lilo.conf (wrong root partition).

Did you check the NTFS development webpage. It has a special page for RedHat. Also this linkshould be helpful to het ntfs on redhat. It contains a step-by-step explanation.

If you just want ntfs support, you don't need a new kernel. All you need is the ntfs.o module that is compatible with your kernel. Check if you have /lib/modules/*/fs/ntfs.o or /usr/src/linux/fs/ntfs/ntfs.o. If you do, try to insmod it. If you don't, you don't need to do 'make bzImage' or 'make zImage' to ge the module, a 'make modules' should give you the ntfs.o (if you configured it with 'make xconfig' or 'make menuconfig' to make the ntfs support module). If you get compile errors doing 'make modules', for any reason, just swith off compilation of any modules except ntfs (look for 'BLABLA=m' lines in the .config to find out what is configured to be compiled as module).

I use Debian, so I can't verify it for RH, but I've had no problems getting a working ntfs support module for Debian.

Re:Kernel compilation issues.

[Matey-O]

Thanks, dude! I'll give those a shot. (Of course, it's all academic. I got tired of waiting, move the drive to another box, backed it up, then made it a reiserfs partition.)

Re:India will learn the hard-knocks truth....

[roachmotel3]

I saw your post while I was meta-moderating, and though I don't agree that your post is a troll, you have a few well-placed stereo-types in your head about things.

First off, Mac OSX is NOT a linux based OS, it's based on FreeBSD. It's like saying that MacOS and AmigaOS are the same thing because they both run on motorola processors. This may be an anal point, but it's very important.

Second, apple hardware and software is NOT significantly more expensive than a PC. It sounds to me like you're falling victim to megahertz marketing where you compare a p3-800 to a g3-800 and expect the same performance. Let's not even mention TCO with a Mac vs. Windows in terms of support and service. I used to work telephone tech support at an ISP in my region, in the Mac queue. And yes, while it is true that there are fewer Mac users, the problems we experienced were always much simpler than the PC side of the house. Invariably it was "I forgot my password" or "I can't download an email message because it's too big".

In so far as an integrated groupware suite, you are correct in that there is NOT a comprehensive solution that is ready for prime time yet. But, remember, the linux application development cycle is MUCH shorter than on a windows platform, especially when Microsoft is doing it ;)

Finally, have you ever actually used a linux office suite? Like Star Office, or Open Office, to try and open a document? Have you done it lately? Perhaps you should sit down, install a copy of RedHat 8.0 on a decent machine, and see the functionality you have.

Re:Cyber-cafes will never change from pirated WinX

[tomhudson]

You see the happy smiling person walking down the street holding the hand of his girlfriend? That will never be you, might as well get used to your parents basement and scaring females with your odour. </quote>

(Sigh ... time to feed the off-topic troll ...) it's been me, or I wouldn't have 2 daughters, now would I?

It's just that now that they're on their own, I'm being more discriminating in what my next girlfriend is going to be like.

But, back on topic ... I can see cyber-cafes in Asia using a mix of technologies, just as we do elsewhere in the world. And, as per your post, just like it takes all kinds to make a world.

Re:Bull.

[drinkypoo]

If NTFS is not cleanly unmounted it requires cleaning, one of the MAJOR reasons to journel.

You don't know shit, and you can't spell "journal" even though there are numerous examples in the parent thread.

NTFS5 is journaling and requires no cleaning if shut down without being unmounted.

You are just another anti-Microsoft zealot who hasn't done his homework.

Re:In other news...

[Kombat]

Sure. Mod me down. Censor me. If they can't hear me, it can't be true, right? But the truth is, Slashdot makes such a huge deal over tiny little token decisions like this, and ignores the literally hundreds of opposite decisions (i.e, choosing Microsoft) every day. I'm a Linux guy, but I don't think any service is done to Linux by trying to hide our own insecurities through modding down those who speak the truth.