Slashdot Mirror
Linux Gaining Ground In India
GillBates0 writes "Yahoo/Reuters is reporting that Linux seems to be gaining over Microsoft in India. According to Red Hat, about 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, up from nothing in January. Linux already drives India's National Stock Exchange, and the Government of India has been promoting open source lately."
oh please don't use the term "gaining ground". India already has border skirmishes with packistan; losing territory to a penguin is not something they'll appreciate!
This is interesting, especially with all the IT outsourcing to India that we have seen lately. Could mean for yet cheaper outsourcing costs here in the US- if people start using Red Hat at home, maybe they will want to use it at work.
let them spend the next 20 years trying to configure their linux config files.
the rest of us can then get our jobs back.
You can have a unique distro for each of their animal headed, multi-armed gods.
Boy, gotta love how well these Reuters journalists research comments to make sure they are truthful!
With so many Indians in the software industry already, maybe we will start seeing some more great open source software come from India.
they are fighting poverty by spending less on MS.
Who took my tinfoil hat?
Hey! Linux is free!
{Homer Simpson} Unless... {/Homer Simpson}
India can fight proverty by taking american jobs.
...about 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux...
That's a lotta' cash for SCO....
Shouldn't India be using the OS with the lowest TCO so they can spend money on fighting poverty?
Just like when Netware was king NT came along and "gained" market share. It was cheaper with flexible licensing and MS did not care if you put it on a server and did not pay. The next step along the way would be (and more appealing to a country like India) something free and readily available.
Well, at least all the new linux users in india will have a local number to call for support. The WIPRO guys won't have to speak english either, its a win/win situation.
Sorry, but I am not going to suddenly have a love-fest with all those bastards who STOLE MY JOB just because they are running linux. Petty? Yes... Immature? yes... I'm Bitter?.. YEP!... But -- fuck 'em, the bastards.
i know,i know..but you can't have a thread on India without a condescending comment like that.. I just did the needful.
...can be found here.
Yet another GForge installation!
The Army reading list
Microsoft has such a strong monopoly in the west, breaking ground is hard enough here. So the easy solution seems to be just hook the Chinese and Indians onto Linux and the enormous software base that will result will put Microsoft at a severe disadvantage. It doesnt help either than the average cost of Windows XP is a month's salary of the average person with a computer there. Microsoft can use huge discounts, but they cannot beat the 100% discount Linux/BSD offers.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Almost all of the UK's tech support call centres are located in India because it costs less. Since call centres require so many PCs, I wouldn't be suprised that they don't want to pay high MS prices for OSs. Linux to the rescue, especially for a somewhat poor country.
--- to swing on the spiral...
to an Indian Linux developer who will rewrite scoop so k5 goes down less.
No wonder India likes Linux.... With commands like fsck and chmod, which don't make any sense in english, maybe they make sense in Hindu.
Wouldn't it be i_cant_write_well@slashdot.org? Just a thought...
hey!
I have it on authority that Apu uses a Linux-based register at the Kwik-E-Mart! I can't remember if he uses SuSe, or if that was the name of one of his kids...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Thank you,
Robert "CmdrTaco" Malda
{Apu} Please do not feed [kernels] to my Elephant God.. {/Apu}
Originally it was peanuts, but what the heck.
Makes me wish I had relatives in Bangalore...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Linux actually needs to win soon in one of the populous developing countries (I include China in this category); it would've been nice to be China, but I'm under the impression Microsoft doesn't stop copies of it's operating system quite so hard there as it would here.
India would be good, especially since a lot of IT is done over there; with a bit of luck it will lead to another huge influx of Linux developers who speak English
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
No, it wouldn't, because it is A FUCKING JOKE YOU MORON!
As more corporate attention is paid to India's computer industry, the tolerance for pirated copies of Windows is doubtlessly getting lower; and thus there's pressure to either pay for a real copy of Windows for each desk (pricey by Indian standards) or find something else legal.
Let's hope they are using a nice non-commerical distro like Debian.
The trouble with such countries is a lack of an infrastructure that can support so many people.
Anti SCO T-Shirt. $1 donated to OSI Fund on each shirt.
Now we can get Apple to pull their old ads, knowing that Linux is Ghandi's official OS.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I'm sure Indians will enjoy getting a high quality freely-modifiable operating system for almost no money.
It will enable more of their domestic industry to gain the advantages of information technology that enable the kinds of productivity growth rates the US has seen in the last decade or so.
Here in the US, as a Linux user, I'm looking forward to gaining from this development as well.
From a population of 1e9, the country produces a fair share of the world's brilliant programmers.
Plus, they can read and write English, which gives them a head start relative to China, which possesses a like number of intelligent programmers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They have one small disadvantage - they barely make a living there. And when you don't have enough money to feed your family the last thing you'd do is work for free so that some american (or german) company sells your software for profit. Open Source works when it's subsidized by your salary (or time stolen from your employer). If your salary doesn't leave much room for subsidizing anything - you go somewhere and find an evening job.
Slashbots with mod points is truly a sad sight on this sad site.
..that from the article Bill Gates dropping $400million into India helps increase sales of non-Microsoft products.
:-)
Maybe the Indian people are better at seeing through the charade and snake-oil salesmanship than we are... or can you come up with a better reason?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"According to Red Hat, about 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004"
And what percentage of the buyers of these computers will be just buying them to only to escape the Microsoft tax and then install a Windows bootleg?
I swear, piracy has to be the biggest threat to Linux in the developing world. Ironically, It's better for Microsoft if you steal their software than it is for you to install Linux.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
If you come from zero, it's not hard to gain ground.
No, but seriously, I see indians as a great helper for the linux community, people there don't have al lot of money to pay those expensive microsoft licences and I'm sure some great code will come from that country.
I know they work hard and are very motivated.
India and China announced a bilateral agreement to take over the whole world. Together with over 40% of the worlds population, and a hungry, educated and thriving work force -- the superpower will soon dwarf all other countries.
more at 11.
I already like Indian food. I can't wait to see what they do with their own distros.
;)
LadoOS... CurryOS... MasalaOS... yum!
In all seriousness, I've read a lot of worried articles recently talking about the mass migration of IT jobs from the US to India (and even the migration of IT jobs from India to Singapore). As much as I hate that people are losing jobs due to shortsighted business practices, this may be how linux finally gains a dominant foothold in the computer market. I've also heard that Bangalore is really nice. Maybe it's time to renew the ol' passport and migrate.
I've been told (by Indians) that Indian students in the US must either 1) go to a really nice school, or 2) stay after their schooling and work at an American company before they have a good chance of getting a job back in India. Does anyone know if Americans with tech experience have a chance of getting a job in India?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
All your jobs are belong to us.
Flamebait? Who is he baiting? The job-theiving Injuns?
Submitted the story but got rejected, Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the word jail-time so often. ;-)
Help fight continental drift.
1. What does Bill Gates think of this? He's been donating millions of dollars to India as part of his Bill Gates Foundation philanthropy project, and IIRC some (most?) of it was under the guise of AIDS relief. Being the pessimest that I am, I always felt that Gates pumped so much money into India to prime the tech workers over there for taking over US jobs. Who knows, maybe Gates knew a long time ago that every US programming/tech support job would get moved offshore, and prepared for it by assuring himself that India knew How Microsoft Plays Ball (tm). So with Indians now embracing Linux, are they preparing to ditch MS in favor of other technologies?
On a related note, does that mean that now I have to worry about being beat out of a linux sys admin job by the ever-growing fleet of L-1's? Cnn.com has a good yet depressing look at this today, here. I kind of pride myself on not just being another VB.NET hack or MS2000 Server clone out there looking for jobs. I'd become even more angry at the world if these jobs became a thing of the past (at least here in MN) as well.
Just some thoughts.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Are you sure you're not possessed? You know, one sign is falling into trance and writing incoherently..
what did you expect from a site that is populated by USA school kids/students with 0 life experience and social skills
nice :)
In other news, it's not like the folks in India are just along for the ride. I remember maybe two years ago when I was struck by how generous those generally poorer folks could be when they came up with Everyone's Linux. It apparently costs US$65 ordered directly. It might make a great birthday gift for your relative if your relative is Bill Gates. With all the extra money you save, maybe add a zero gun and some caffeinated soap as a nice touch.
no, they are taking a chance on a great product before their infrastructure becomes microsoft dependant. those who can afford computers don't fit my description of poverty level...
peace,
-Grokent
This shouldn't be too surprizing considering:
1. The general education of India is more technical and scientific than in arts and such. Therefore a larger interest in the more "geeky" technical things. This is a big generalization.
2. Given the existance of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and that it's tougher to get into there than it is MIT and UC Berkely, it just re-itterates #1 above.
3. And of course, the fact that the GNP per capita in USD is $380 per year makes things tough to learn or use anything that costs a significant amount of money. Now, the $380 is very low and is mainly this low because of the VERY rural towns and villages. In the city it is significantly higher, but not enough to call the average high or rich.
4. Given low income and abundance of people, anyone doing any job will have to do it their best, therefore they will try to use the least amount of resources in order to accomplish the most. Using something free helps in this respect as you save on capital - a very important resource.
This post might seem as a very one-sided post, but I can't think of any reason why MS would be at all useful here. If someone doesn't even know how to turn on a computer, using XP is going to be as difficult as using a Linux flavour.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
welcome to the capitalist world you love and regard so highly
don't hate the players hate the game
The parent is by far the most interesting statement I've seen on the subject. But don't think about it! It says the US is not TEH RULAR so it must be a troll. Do not consider it. It obviously can't be true. It's not like there are over a billion people in China, and a billion in India. It's not like they're smart and rapidly building their cities or anything. Remain complacent. Nothing ever changes. We all know the US will be on top forever. Don't let "numbers" and "facts" get in the way of patriotism.
Does anybody know if/when India is thinking (like China) about developping its own linux distro?
... that was before Linux changed the spelling from "flavour" to "flavor"!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
You couldn't find a better match- Linux is Open Source, and Indian programmers work virtually for free!
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Linux fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of an Athlon64 (an XP-3000+) running SuSE for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 500 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my eMac running Mac OS X 10.3, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this PC, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, KDE will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even pico is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Linux distros, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Linux distro that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Linuxhead's insistence of open-source efficiency. My eMac 1Ghz with 512 megs of ram runs faster than this 3000 mhz(?) machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that a Linux PC is a superior machine.
Linuxheads, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a GNU/Linux system over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
I think the history repeats itself. Back in 1970s, IBM wanted to gain market for its mainframes in India.
But as we all know the Mainframe hardware, software and services costs lots of $$$.
So instead placing bets on a proprietory vendor with lots of money, the government officials decided to go without it.
This presented an opportunity for others. Indian companies like HCL licensed inexpensive Unix from AT&T, built their own hardware and modified the source code to run on their hardware.
All the universities and banks had modest computing power running on a version of Unix.
Students learnt Unix not OS 390 and it turned out that Unix is the future and mainframes were obsolete. We all now know why this is good for India.
The same thing happening now, instead of IBM substitute M$.
So lack of money can sometimes be advantageous.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, too little and too much wealth are not good for well-being of the society.
How comforting it is to know that when my entire tech support dept gets outsourced to India, my former employer will be unwittingly using linux.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
And SCO is gaining ground in Linux
If more people use linux, there will be more linux applications. If more people use linux, applications written for linux will be user tested more. I dont think there is a "market" as such for linux. Linux, after all, is free. In any case, most personal users in India and china dont pay for software(MS or Linux).
Where the hell are my mod points when I need them?
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Public domain" is equivalent to "common knowledge" in most respects: you can do whatever you want with it and you don't have to tell anybody about it, although it might not be that common or obvious.
Not so with most open source licenses (especially GPL), otherwise MS would be shipping Office for Linux since 2000.
They have one small disadvantage - they barely make a living there.
India has an enormous (and growing) middle class.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why would anyone want to have to settle for a wimpy box because the M$ tithe is the difference between a killer box and a wimpy box.
Its a no brainer. Linux rules. (The same economic pressure that gave rise to clones [and floated M$ boat] are going to wipe M$ off the map.
The fact that Linux is better, stabler, supported by the world-wide open-source community is gravy but the fact is that boxen with M$ cost more and M$ is doomed to die.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Although this article says that "About 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004...", my guess is when you count all of the existing Windows systems in India and all of the computers that will be running pirated versions of Windows by March, 2004, the Linux market share starts to look pretty darn small.
Jesus.. in this day and age, and the majority of posts seem to be out of work programmers taking cheap shots at India, where their jobs are getting outsourced. There is no excuse for racism in this day and age, and it frustrates me every time I see it on a site which normally prides itself on the intellectuals who frequent it.
I'd like to say that I sympathise with your situation, but why the fuck aren't you taking this up with the companies that ditched you or the government that is supposed to support you (instead of going out bombing the East).
This outsourcing was a natural progression, and its hardly like the people of India are to blame for this.. if you got offered a job that you could do, and you have a wife and child that need supporting, then you will bloody well do it regardless of who's nose you put out of joint.
Now put up, or shut up!
Microsoft appears to be one of the few companies where the management is smarter (in a Machiavellian way, like they're supposed to be) than the coders.
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
One of the quotes from a presentation by John "Maddog" Hall a few years ago at ApacheCon was that "with 500 million personal computers in the world, that means that there are still 5.5 billion that haven't chosen their operating system yet." I always liked that saying.
Linux makes quite a bit of practical sense in India. No indian can really afford to pay retail for software. Even the $40 that is the (rumored) cost of windows to PC OEMS is something most people just cannot pay in addition to the huge price of a computer. The OS and the office suite are thus mostly pirated, and usually include a plethora of free viruses...Ditto for the development environments. Everyone who is serious about learning comp/programming realizes sooner o\r later that instead of trying to pirate each and every tool one needs for a dev environment, its just better to move to linux. :P
Ghoul2
In addition to that, there are magazine like PC Quest which have distributed free linux distro CDs (and include loads of good linux articles) with the magazine since around 1994. These CDs are how i got hooked on linux. That helps...
In my college, the IITs linux has long been the OS of choice in comp labs. They would rather buy a few more PCs than spend the huge ammount on WIN+DEV STUDIO, (even after the educational discount), and even when i was there, 5 years back, students, even non power users clearly preferred the linux systems over the NT systems...to the end where they migrated the NT ones to linux too.
blah...i thought i had a point here...DAMN ADD
Sigura Non Grata
I've seen a lot of comments here about avoiding the windows tax. This doesn't take into account the fact that very few people actually buy branded computers like HP etc. Most of them are assembled from parts and sold by companies/individuals who ask you what software you want on you computer and then load up pirated versions of everything you ask. Considering that name brand computers are almost 2x or more costly this is what most people buy.
Another things is the whole $380 per year thing is misleading due to disparities in income and because India has a much lower cost of living and fairly large number of middle class families can afford computers. Most of my friends and relatives have computers.
- dharhas
ps. I'm an Indian.
Why must you post such tripe anonymously? Are you afraid we'll find something out that you don't want people knowing?
Most of the people who post on this site and are pro-open source/pro-linux are adults with a high degree of intelligence.
Just because you lack that same level of intelligence doesn't mean you can go around bashing other people's comments. Go back to your Windows box with your small brain pan and play more Solitaire.
Un-news
"Would you like a FUCKING squishy with that?"
Just because there are more machines being sold wint Linux does not really mean that Linux is "gaining ground" in terms of prefered OS. It could mean that the Indians are simply trying to avoid the microsoft tax that comes with new machines. In fact, they could just load up pirated winXP after they purchase those Linux installed machines. In a country with lax copyright/intelectual property laws, why not?
The big proprietary vendors have been leaning on governments lately to enforce copyrights. How is your small to medium sized business going to pay for those licenses when the Indian equivalent of the BSA raids you? For that matter, suppose a few of those Bombay CD vendors got chucked in the pokey or least hit with huge fines. That $1.47 situation could change in a hurry if the right politicians over there were properly motivated.
Maybe passing up the "free" Windows is a smarter choice than it looks.
Now they're going to take that job away from me?! Slashdot won't start out-sourcing anytime soon, will they?
The end is neigh...
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
Well I would like to contradict those people claiming "people buy Linux computers to escape MS tax and to run bootleg Windows". What about people like me who removed Windows and use Linux exclusively?. There may be numbers to be crunched, but I think the price is enormous - having to pay for something you don't want - And don't forget, not everybody will resort to this behaviour to save $$$, for instance corporate customers.
Poor country, low cost software that runs on lower cost hardware with lower maintenence costs... Thanks Captain Obvious!
"The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars." Isaac Asimov
Rejected story with more links - Linux is gaining ground in India
clever tags were stripped out.
Women of Springfield: Ooooooooohhhhhhhh!
The Book of Jobs Chapter 12: He who flameth others without cause shall reapeth the flames himself - ten fold. And whosoever casteth doubt on his brothers skillz shall be cast down in condemnation for himself being a jackass worthy of a kick to the forehead. For thou art a angry and contemptful even as thou deride the suffering of others who hath faced hardship and loss. Thou art shameless, cruel and petty; only fit for scorn and ridicule because of thy tiny wing wang. Amen!
And programmers typically live above the powerty level. Yet overwhelming majority of free software is developed by US and European programmers. Weird, huh? :0) Simply because you earn enough money to buy decent food (and that may make you "middle class" in countries like India) doesn't mean you're well off. You've got to buy a house for your family, a car and put your kids through the college (while financially supporting them, because there's no way in hell a bank would give them a loan). This doesn't leave you much money or time to spend on free software, even though you look insanely rich when compared to a farmer from a redneck town.
If Indians are so keen on getting open source stuff, how come they dont contribute much (I'm speaking proportion wise here; so many Indian programmers and so few open source developers per Indian programmer) The only contributions I've seen so far were some LaTeX packages for Indian languages and some Emacs themes. BTW, I'm from India, so flames don't touch me :)
But Netcraft says www.nse-india.com is running Solaris 8...
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I hope they can really get a good jump on Open Source and use it to boost their local economy. I was born and raised in the good ole' USA. However, I am saddened by the fact that Americans make up ONLY 5% of the worlds population yet we have snatched up more then 50% of the worlds wealth. That seems like excessive greed to me. This leaves the other 95% (like India) to fight over less then 50% of the worlds wealth. Again, this just doesn't seem right to me. I hope ALL non-US nations can really build up THEIR OWN IT and not be reliant on the USA and espcially MS. While I think international trade is important, I think the majority of any nations IT should stay in that nation. Maybe India will not be selling it's IT wares internationally, but it could really spark it's own industry and keep India's money where it belongs, in India.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Isn't Apache enough?
I18N == Intergalacticization
The primary appeal of Linux is low cost: $0.00. with Windows being free in India, the typical Indian will not be interested in using Linux. Windows has significantly more applications that run on it than Linux. Off course, those applications are also "free".
Similar comments apply to China. China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) is the software-piracy capital of the world. More then 90% of the software used in China is pirated. Here are some references to solidly support the aforementioned observations.
This is simply more unwarranted optimism and euphoria.
The whole of India is licking up Microsoft's toilet water.
Microsoft will win, as it does everywhere else, and with even more vigor.
The majority of potential users will want to use their native language on it, and Microsoft has a virtual monoply on it with their agreement with CDAC which essentially holds the monopoly on the established standards for multilingual software --and they only provide Windows software. ONLY for Windows (yeah, some shit for Solaris too, but only limited and who knows up to when)
Funny that Sun's Open Source Diva Danese Cooper was in India promoting Open Source last month.
OK That's it. Let's give India back to Indians!
class he-man extends man!
How the hell did this get modded +5. Wow, the moderators are in a racist mood today - all WASPs lurking?
They could install a legacy system, but probably don't, because they must get their work done to stay competitive and installing a copy of legacy systems like Windows would not only be illegal, it would decrease productivity -- more time spent trying to keep the machines running, more time per machine in corrective mainenance, fewer remote admin possiblitities and so on.
Most shops just pay the MS tax and do the very first boot directly from the Linux or *BSD install CD.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
D'oh!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/colum
The speed with which things have changed is amazing. Malls and multiplexes were unheard of six-seven years ago.
Just wondering, how do they figure out how many illegal software copies are being used ?
I cannot vouch for the numbers, but software piracy is indeed rampant in India. I would be surprised, though, if the software companies use pirated versions.
How many hours a week do you find acceptable?
Do you know people that work more then that or less then that?
Do you work more or less then that?
If you answer, I'll explain my question.
Wow, slashcode is smart.