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Bridging India's Digital Divide With Linux
Kinnu provides a pointer to this story about India's increasing use of Linux. They mention a battlefield PDA running Linux, making Linux the standard OS for students, and some more about the Simputer.
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Can anybody explain why *BSD can't catch a break? Everything is "linux this" and "linux that."
that's actually a good point. i've wondered it too. it's just as free as linux.
i think it's because up to this point, linux has a good name in embedded devices, and freebsd is known to have problems even in some laptops.
but i do think freebsd should be considered, especially due to it has a potential to have a smaller footprint.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
NEW DELHI, Jan 27 (IPS/TerraViva) - Anyone who doubts the power of Linux needs only to get hold of a nifty, hand-held device that the Indian army plans to issue to soldiers in its million strong army.
http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27191
Richard Stallman also visited the President and interestingly, the President had prepared for the meeting by downloading and reading Stallman's biography from the Internet."
For the curious, the President of India's website runs Apache/PHP on Linux.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
First, I'll grant that there is a dearth of information wrt the capabilities of this SATHI unit in that article.
But to claim that the capabilities of a unit like the Garmin Rino is sufficient coordinating actions of individual soldiers in the achievement of a specific object is to vastly understate the requirements of a useful battlefield computer.
The stated goals and capabilities of the SATHI is a bit more complex. Whether this unit accomplishes all those goal is yet to be determined, though. That can only be determined in field trials. But it is an interesting first step.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
As for as the number of programmers who are using Linux, it is still a very miniscule percentage. Most of the IT companies use Windows for the desktops and the Sysadmins sometimes bullshit the management that having Linux on the desktop means more support costs. Windows and most of the apps running on it are available at dirt cheap prices for the pirated copies. Slowly, the student community is picking up Linux and are doing their academic projects on Linux. They are now having Linux in their home PCs along with Windows. However the profs in the academia are now pushing for Linux based projects. This should mean that Linux would pick up in a big way among the next generation IT workers (3-5 years from now)
--Hemanth P.S.
small correction... iQue is a PalmOS PDA with GPS, not a PocketPC /Mark
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
India already has its own Linux Distribution :-) Take a look at ELX Linux. Every couple of months, PCQuest Magazine distributes a CD with the magazine with customized version of Debian on it. The customization is good enough to be called its own distro.
HTH,
Jalil Vaidya
Since you want more info, here it is. And it is not your gps+mobile. I have played around with the device and it is actually a very very capable handheld. A friend of mine did the body design, the the specs were simple. We intend it to be used in vilages, so it should be immune to drops from about 4 feet and also immune from dust and little rainfall exposure :)
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
The official site for SATHI is: http://www.ncoretech.com/sathi/
It contains pictures of the device and show examples of soldiers handling it.
A complete PDF brochure for the product is available at: http://www.ncoretech.com/sathi/pdf/brochue.pdf
It looks rugged, modern and seems to have been built with certain ergonomic principles in mind (e.g., one-handed use during battle).
I know I should not feed this troll... but: You only have to provide sources when you distribute a GPL software to third parties. As long as the Indian Army keep it for their own use only, there is no violation of the GPL. Internal modifications without disclosure is also guaranteed by all licenses that meet the OSI standards.
To add further info, there are atleast half a dozen computer magazines that have distributed Linux on their monthly CDs. These CDs BTW were very important to me when I was in India. They were my primary source of checking out software as I only had dialup in my town. It used to be cheaper to buy "DeveloperIQ" for less than $2 that came with 2 CDs of software (Linux software included) than to download.
A surprising thing I noticed when I visited a month ago was a Compaq brochure. Out of about 7 notebooks they had on offering, only the most expensive one had MS Windows on it. The rest came with Linux. I guess that brands are finally trying to catch up with cheaper locally assembled PCs on price.