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Bridging India's Digital Divide With Linux

Posted by michael on from the routing-around-microsoft dept.

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.

12 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Woo, background info on the front page! by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is unlikely that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, ever intended this open-source operating system to be put to military use.

    You're absolutely right. He wasn't looking to make money off of Linux. If he had, military use would have been the first place he would have brought Linux to.

    Called SATHI (short for situational awareness and tactical hand-held information, and Hindi for buddy), the 875-gram device helps soldiers coordinate with one another on the battlefield. It is one of the many spin-offs of a low-cost computer developed indigenously, the basic version of which is available on the market for about US$200.

    So a two pound device that has some sort of communication and GPS capabilities? Something like other handheld GPS units like the Garmin Rino which shows your location and the locations of others holding Rinos while having FRS radios attached. Crazy!

    While I applaud their efforts in creating these devices (supercomputers, educational computer, inexpensive computers for the masses, etc) this wasn't terribly informative or interesting. More well-known background information that could have been left off the front page.

    1. Re:Woo, background info on the front page! by anactofgod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hmmm...you were able to glean, from that "...press release with pictures of nothing..." all those facts related to "non-battlefield uses".

      So, apparentlly there *was* some information in that press release, after all. Who what other information can be gleaned from that "brochue" (Encore's spelling, not mine). *grynn*

      As for the "...it's nothing more than a PDA with GPS" comment -- my laptop is nothing more than a PDA with a faster processor, keyboard, bigger screen, more memory, hard drive, FireWire, etc. etc. Your point?

      *My* point in providing that link was to show that this is low-cost, ruggedized, general purpose computer with features that may (or may not) be useful to coordinating soldiers in the field. At the very least, if the Indian Army does decide to deploy these units to the individual soldiers, the soldiers will all have access to a fully featured, ruggedized computing platform that can be configured for a variety of uses.

      Contrast that with the experience of some friends of mine in the US military, who had to provide their own laptops (mostly for personal use, though some did find "unofficial, official use"), many of which failed after a relatively short period of time due to conditions on station.

      The US military is itself researching the development of battlefield computers that can be deployed at the unit level. It's stated goals are a lot more ambitious than the relatively modest ones of the SATHI developers. But I'd be very surprised if they aren't going to be viewing the Indian military's experience in this area with more than a little interest, if for nothing else then to gain some "lessons learned" from real-world, field deployed units at someone else's expense.

      For these reasons alone, I'd say the development is interesting enough to warrent reporting. And the fact that SATHI uses Linux in the provision of a real-world solution, and not a proprietary OS, is also interesting enough to warrant reporting, IMHO.

      If gentle readers will indulge me further, let me make some observations intended to actually advance the discussion, instead of holding in back thru trivialization. In observing the approaches being employed by the US and Indian military approaches to computerizing the battlefield, there appears to be an interesting divergence.

      The US military appears to be following an approach where they are building up a centralized command and control computerized structure, and then rolling out integrated systems down the chain until, eventually, the individual soldiers and sailors are integrated in the chain. The Indian military appear to be working from "the bottom up". They appear to be putting general purpose "battlefield computers" in the hands of their units without first thinking thru how to integrate all those units into a centralized backend.

      If true, it was interesting to me to hypothesize why this is the case. Even more intriguing, I think, is continuing to observe how the two systems develop, to see which method results in a more effective overall platform. It seems to me that the US military's approach is more likely to follow the mantra of "this is how we want our people to use the system, so these are the features we'll provide." The other is more likely to follow the mantra of "this is how our people actually use the system, so how can we support that?" Now, I think that *that* is very, very interesting, *especially* since this is a military organization we are talking about. The success of the latter approach will be predicated on smart people actually getting continual feedback from the end-users, and incorporating that feedback into an incremental development cycle. Sound familiar to anyone?

      And, lastly, in a related, but slightly off-topic issue... ...someone still needs to solve the battery problem.

      --

      ---anactofgod---

      "Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
  2. Still moving forward by R0UTE · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yet another large group to make use of open source. Lets just hope this trend keeps moving forward and we see many more take up the initiative, not a bad application for a free piece of software, hopefully this will show others tha tthis is one possible way forward!

  3. Re:If they can do it, why can't we! by kannibal_klown · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That was the same thing at my school (except for that 1 Windows programming class using the Win32 API).

    We had to have our C and C++ programs compile on Solaris (we each had an account and could telnet in). If it wouldn't compile, you had like 1 day to fix it (in some classes).

    Before I graduated, my school bought a bunch of those thin Sun workstations for the library. They were neat, but they really needed a better UI. They were using string X-Windows or whatever which turned a lot of *nix newbies off. But, at least it always ensured I had access to a workstation since I didn't mind.

    Now, if only they had also educated me in Java...

  4. Re: The GPL?? by vettemph · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe it is being shunned because of the license. The GPL folks don't want their code being stolen by commercial interests without proper recognition and proper sharing(give back to the community). The BSD license allows the greedy to virtually steel and covet your code when it suits them. We can't win a war that way. :)
    Linux is winning the popularity contest via the GLP, no?

    --
    The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
  5. The desktop revolution by ndogg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Articles like this keep making me think that if there is ever a desktop revolution, that it will happen in a developing nation like India. They aren't quite so tied to Windows.

    --
    // file: mice.h
    #include "frickin_lasers.h"
    1. Re:The desktop revolution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      "not as tied to Windows"? Yeah right!
      I've visited my relatives in India semi-frequently (94, 99, 2000 and 2004 most recently), and all I see is windows on all of their computers, and now in the internet cafes.
      I ask about Linux, of which there is an awareness, but most of my relatives and their friends think it's "too hard". (Of course, supposedly some think that about web pages too, for what that's worth! :)
      They're plenty tied to Windows. Indians make a lot of Indian-specific softwares (Hindi, Kannada and other language editors) on Windows, and have been for years. There's a few such products for Linux, but they're few and far between by comparison. Interestingly enough, The stuff on Windows is majority freeware/shareware too.. -Ajay

  6. ignorant story title by sbma44 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm glad to see Linux adoption by other countries' governments -- yes, even their militaries -- but the title to this story is just ridiculous. The idea that FOSS can "bridge" the staggering gulf between rich and poor in India just beggars belief. Let's not fool ourselves by pretending that Linux means anything to the citizens of India beyond the elite. Maybe in a few decades...

  7. Re:If they can do it, why can't we! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I had to add a "me too" to your posting. Today I edited a Perl program, partly on a train, and then on a connecting bus. I had to download the program first of course, that was a little slow with GPRS. I also read some news. Oh, this was on a Linxu handheld (Zaurus). I didn't see any OSX users doing the same.

  8. Language Support by Sukh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think the largest problem with India bridging the divide with Linux is (or was) poor language support. Thank fully these problems have been slowly addressed using Unicode.

    However there are still issues outstanding. All the major Indian scripts encoded using Unicode are based on Devanagari (used to write Hindi and other languages). This has caused headaches for some scripts and has made other scripts unneccessarily complex. Take for example Gurmukhi (the script used to write Punjabi) - Gurmukhi is a simple script and doesn't have the complexities involved in some other Indic scripts. However to maintain compatibility with other scripts, independent vowels are encoded seperately which is unnatural for Gurmukhi. This causes problems with typing and adds and extra layer of complexity.

    As the author of the Punjabi Computing Resource Centre I have actively been looking into such issues (others exist). However as I see it, we have been forced to accept a standard that hasn't been fully thought out for individual Indian scripts. It is a standard we can live with, but is not perfect. A lot can be blamed on ISCII!

  9. Re:The US technology dinosaur by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well the original parent had a point. American lazy-ness might be the thing that saves Microsoft. People don't want to waste time install linux if they don't have to. They'd rather plan their next trip to Disney world.

    We Americans are innovative yes. But we do a half ass job following thru. We lost the opportunity to be the automobile powerhouse. Asian countries build far better Stereos, DVDs now. It's a matter of time before another country build a superior computer, OS, internet etc.

  10. Re:More Info by maniac_inside · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's all OK, but do you know that
    a) The website simputer.org was last updated in 2001.
    b) That it fails to satisfy the goal of providing computing to common man in India. Where by common man I refer to the 650 million+ population who live below poverty line.
    c) That being an Indian, I have never heard anyone talking about it. Except the press which carried an article about 3 years back when simputer was not even launced.