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2003: Year of Linux in Asia?
Anonymous Coward writes "The Register has a story
about traveling to a magical country where seeing Linux laptops displayed in stores is perfectly normal. The author then goes on to predict that this year will see much more desktop action coming not from Red Hat or Euro-Distros, but from China and India. Makes sense to me."
disclaimer : I'm an Indian from Bombay.
:-)
I don't see Linux making any significant inroads in the mass computer culture of India.
Most savvy users in India will only pick up a tool if it can be an instrument for economic gain. This is why ofcourse, computer programming and learning it is a big thing in India. Because that's what the 20-something thinks. Learn coding and the world is open to you. The Indian mindset is not exactly open to adopting a culture where the software is free (beer) and support (LOL) is the source of revenue. Which in other words means there is no (or hardly any) revenue !
If someone in India trys out Linux, its because of the geekish 'chic' factor. To expect a group of Indian coders to sit and down and code say, an IDE, give it away for free is fantasy*
*Unless that group is currently in an academic or research institution where they have a stipend or other sources of income.
Note 2: If you're going to counteract that they can sell the product as a shrinkwrap too, then you don't know the Indian software retail market
While the article would seem like a happy fairy tale for Linux supporters, the cold, hard reality is that Linux is not even known by the large majority of computer users in most parts of Asia... AND this includes the so-called high-potential areas such as China and India.
While companies prefer to stay legit and actually buy licenses for their software (and even this is fairly recent, thanks to the BSA), a large majority of home-based consumers run pirated versions of Windows, and a bunch of pirated application which can be bought at less than US$2 per CD. This is the cold hard truth.
And many Western media report blames the Govt for not doing anything when the fact is that they can't actually properly enforce the rules. The pirates here are true gangsters in the sense of the word... not some pimply faced kid with cable connection and terrabytes of storage like the typical image of software pirate many of you think.
They are backed by armed thugs, scouts that check on police/IP-enforcers, and possibly insiders from the police or even the local BSA branch... yes, really!
And to top it off, they keep the customers happy... Yes, they really do. I find these pirates more approachable than your average MS or Adobe salesperson.
CD not working? No problem, we'll replace it for you... No questions asked.
Two weeks guarantee on any purchased CD.
Recommendation on a better substitute of the app you wanted to buy
With that kind of service it's no wonder people here flock to pirated CD shops than to the legit vendors. Price is one thing, but if you are going to be severely restricted by EULAs and other licensing terms, might as well buy a pirated copy for 1/200 of the price and be happy about it.
From a typical Asian point-of-view, there is no value-added incentive to purchase original CDs.
Back to the topic, while companies (especially SMEs) will embrace Linux because of the money they can save from software licenses. But even so, many of the established businesses will stick to propietry software because it is what they are used to. And these are decided by the bigwigs which have no desire at all to embrace new technologies eventhough it might save them a huge pile of cash. It is in the mindset... not the software itself.
Linux can move forward by becoming more Desktop-centric not just for home users but for corporate users. And it does not need to be free (as in beer)... most companies will invest a suitable amount of cash to improve productivity.
Sorry for the long rant, hope u get my point.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
A plethora of users have demonstrated here that they aren't interested in adopting Linux. They are comfy with what works for them. And since they started out with MS and Windows applications, that's what they like.
The key phrase here is "started out with MS and Windows".
There are literally BILLIONS of potential users who have never become used to Photoshop or Outlook Express or MSIE. This untapped userbase is ripe for the picking and if Linux is there early with an OS that is cheap and applications in their languages then Linux could have a large proportion of those users.
Imagine Asia and Africa populated with computer users who can't see any reason to switch to Microsoft because they are used to what they have; Linux.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Anyone who has been here for a long time has seen my posts about Thailand, but I'll summarize what's happening here, and it's big.
You see linux desktops and laptops in almost every computer store. All top five domestic brands, including Belta Liberta and Laser ( I can't find a link), use it for their lower models. It is always the same, the National Electronics and Computer Technology (NECTEC) organization of Thailand's own Linux TLE, a Red Hat based distibution that has had Thai language support and translations added to virtually every application.
Since November,the new releases come with version 4.1R2, which is touted as "Professional," and includes OfficeTLE, an OO.o variant which includes such difficult to program features as a Thai word parser, because Thai uses no spaces between words. It, in my opinion, outshines Sun's Pladao Office, which translates as "Starfish." The menus for Pladao are all in Thai, but the OfficeTLE menus are in English. Books for both litter the bookstore shelves in prominant places.
NECTEC also has a venerable serverdistribution, SIS (can't find the link), which stands for School Internet Server, and connects primary, secondary, and tertiary(?) schools to their SchoolNet, a free internet and information sharing operation.
Free Software is kicking here in Thailand.
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with China rising hugely -- in the Linux sense -- right in the middle of it all.
:)
:)
Right on. Look at RedFlag Linux. It's backed by China Government, RedHat-based Linux distro.
In my opinion, China Government is no much an Open Source advocate, instead, MS forced them to take this path. I got some underground news when I worked for IBM around 94, when we completed each other developing a Chinese OS for Mainland China. The progress of the development our Chinese OS/2 was not as fast as Windows 95 because they outsourced their work to Taiwan and we've put comparatively too much effort on testing(I were one of the full-time tester in Asian region).
That was the biggest mistake MS has ever made.
As usual, MS pushed their first release of Simplified Chinese version of Win95 before thorough testing. To China Government dismay, they found that whenever they type the word 'Kung'(the first word of Communism in Chinese), the association helper immediate popup the word 'bandit' after it. 'Communist Bandit' is how Taiwanese called Communist party in Mainland China.
That was a really good prank the Taiwanese Developers made for China Government.
I've also been told that there's still a couple of nasty easter eggs hidden in this first release of OS(or Word/Excel?) that made fun of some lead people in communist party, that pissed them very much. Although MS had done everything to 'repair' the damage, but as a common practise of them "this shall not be forgiven."
RedFlag Linux may be the first major getback on MS.
Most people switch to Linux because they're fed up with dealing with Windows. Some people switch because they want to see what all of the noise is about.
*I* switched because I found Windows to be an awful development environment and was welcomed with open arms by Linux. Today I find it extremely difficult to use Windows in any context other than to play an occasional game (and even that is pretty frustrating).
But you sound pretty happy with your setup. IMO, you have no reason to switch. Are people really demanding that you stop using Windows?
You did however make a good point in that you already know Windows and can use it to get your work done, and thusly don't need to learn Linux. What I find interesting about it is that people will try Linux, remark about how hard it is to use, and then go back to Windows. In my experience, they are not really complaining that Linux is hard to use, rather they are complaining that Linux is nothing like Windows which they have taken the time to learn (and logged the requisite thousands of hours fucking with it to become familiar with it and get it to work right)
Four cases in point, one of which may interest you professionally:
A good colleague of mine used nothing but Linux for like 10 years. Never touched anything else. One day we sat him in front of a Windows box and he was completely helpless. He's been exposed to it regularly now but he still finds it alien and unworkable.
My wife didn't use computers much at all before she met/married me. Of course my household predominantly runs Linux, but has the occasional Windows machine which she sometimes finds herself in front of. She always whines when she has to use the Windows machine because, well, she's not at all computer literate, so it's hard for her to explain, but here's what she said: "It sucks -- it just, it's hard to explain it. Let me find the words. OK, it's like, if Windows were a circle, Linux would be a sphere. If Windows and Linux were chefs, Windows would be an average chef at an average restaurant. Not good, not bad, just go to any diner and order a burger. Ho hum. A Linux chef could be anybody, any top restaurant, any dive, it's whatever the user makes of it. Which for me isn't much, but I can use it under any circumstance that my husband puts it through". A very unscientific explanation, but I thought it was interesting, as it really shocked me one day to hear her say that she preferred Linux when I had made it a point to install Windows on a machine just for her.
This same wife and I tried an unscientific experiment. I'd wipe a computer, hand her Red Hat Linux 7.1 and Windows ME. It was her job to install one as far as possible, I'd wipe the machine, and then she'd try again with the other. No help from me. The results were again shocking. She finished the Red Hat installation with no sweat, but got stuck with Windows ME (it took her about 5 times as long and she eventually pleaded with me if she could stop now since she was getting frustrated). I will repeat again that my wife is as computer illiterate as they come. The most advanced topic she understands I think is that computers store things in files and folders, and that she can navigate this as a tree.
At a Linux user group meet I recently met a user who was in the market you claim Linux is totally unable to address, an artist. I spoke with him for awhile about why he used Linux (he actually gave a presentation on the topic). Originally he had been using Macs for years to create his work, and as such, over time (about 8 years or so), he built up a large library of material. One day he decided to go through it all and found that the software which he used to create all of this work didn't exist anymore, and that they were in file formats that nothing on Macs today could understand. The vendors were dead, the software didn't run on current hardware/OS, and there were no business interests in providing compatibility today. This terrified him, as he was in danger of losing some of his greatest pieces. It was then that he understood what all of those open source zealots were screaming about. He decided to switch to Linux, and is comfortable knowing that open source software never dies, and that all of his work now will last indefinitely (or at least much longer). Once he got past the initial culture shock, he said it's been a better platform for him overall and regrets not switching sooner.