Debian to be Marketed to Japan and China

darthcamaro writes "Thanks to Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux Systems Japan, Debian is about to get some major exposure in Asia according to a report. Debian developer Matthew Garrett told internetnews.com that Debian has always been one of the most international Linux distributions. "It's wonderful to see initiatives that will increase our representation in countries with a growing interest in Linux," he added. "It's especially heartening to see this move coming from commercial enterprises, as it demonstrates that free software can work with business."" There's also a post on Newsforge as well.

Comments

all this linux

[KingOfTheNerds]

how is this new and exciting news? Yes yes, we've known linux is good for years, and we've known that it can work in business. Do I have to keep hearing about it all the time? I've used debian before, it's a great distro. I do think it's great how it's making it's rounds in asia, but linux needs to make serious inroads into India. In India linux usage hasn't increased much in the past year I've read.

Re:all this linux

[Anonymous Coward]

India is so advanced with many intellectuals coming out of IIT. Can't you tell by all the tech jobs going over there? I'm sure they can handle Linux on their own.

Re:all this linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate goths? - You will now!

Re:all this linux

[lilo_booter]

Well, I can't speak for all of India, but I've been employed by a large Indian TV broadcaster to provide a complete suite of video editing and broadcast tools for Linux (and developed under the GPL too).

From this and other recent articles on /., I feel that India is not only paying attention to Linux, they're using it and some at least are embracing the spirit of the open source movement and contributing back.

Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[LiNKz]

Maybe Debian will finally start moving again. I understand there have been problems, but I really wish something would happen.. and as much as I love it as a server OS, I dislike spending my time updating every package or recompiling half of the software when I do a clean install to a server.. then I'm stuck with some very old packages that, though I don't use, I fear may be dangerous. Maybe I should use Sarge?

Off topic a bit, but what is a good distro for servers in general? I've always picked Debian due to the fact it feels Unixish to me, and can be very cleanly installed. Local Community College uses Red Hat, and the SysAdmin swares by it. Any comments?

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any comments?

Yeah. They're both great distros. One's mainly corporate; one's mainly volunteer-based. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[jericho4.0]

Woody is more conservative than almost anyone needs. Testing ("sarge") or unstable ("sid"), are missnamed. Try sarge.

For any debian users who don't know this; change all 'stable' to 'testing' or 'unstable' in /etc/apt/sources.list and run 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get dist-upgrade' as root.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been told that Unstable is a better choice than Testing because if something goes wrong, Unstable is likely to get a fix quicker. Can anyone shed any light on this? I'd like to go with Sarge but I don't want it to get screwed up for any amount of time, but I've managed to bork Unstable every time I've played with that. I'd probably run a Debian box if Sarge was stable.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[nzkbuk]

Personally instead of using stable / testing / unstable I've always had my sources.list use woody / sarge / sid

But I agree totally about moving from woody to sarge. I've been running it on production systems for over a year and had no downtime.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Captain Segfault]

I don't think that is a problem right now; Sarge is getting a *lot* of attention because it is close to release.

Unstable is probably better than testing for a while after a new release, simply because testing gets almost no attention then, and it is very possible that something like a glibc update in unstable that doesn't propagate to testing to keep even security updates for large parts of testing from occurring.

That is not the case right now; Sarge probably has more attention now than it will when it goes stable.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Straker Skunk]

"testing" gets updates only after they've been in "unstable" for some time, without showstopper bugs. True, unstable gets fixes first, but testing is less likely to break in the first place. (And if something does break badly in testing, the fix can be hurried through. This happened a year or two ago, when a bug in testing's X11 startup scripts wouldn't let the window system run. A lot of folks noticed :-)

I'd say, go for Sarge. The kind of bugs you're worried about turn up rarely in practice.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

freebsd 4.x for servers , it also feels very unixish :P , plus the ports tree is kept pretty up to date, i also use debian on a server but its on a mac so im stuck with linux , don't care for netbsd or openbsd for server use

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[digitalchinky]

I'm using http://www.trustix.org/ TLS for a few different things, seems as stable as anything else around on cheap hardware. I have no idea about its 'goodness' value, but for me it is good. To my knowledge it has not been compromised.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are misnamed (in my humble opinion) because "testing" and "unstable" are far more stable than a lot other distros i've seen. Not to mention that sarge will benefit from security updates in a few weeks, just before releasing, that the debian-installer (which installs either sarge or sid) really rocks.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[castrox]

Actually Stable is the branch which is patched first if there's a security flaw. Quoting their Unstable page (found under "Unstable" here):

Please note that security updates for "unstable" distribution are not managed by the security team. Hence, "unstable" does not get security updates in a timely manner.

This turned me off Debian (cannot for the love of god run Stable). I switched to Gentoo. No regrets.
It may be a good server OS, but completely worthless for a desktop imho.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Ed Avis]

I don't understand why Debian doesn't use a regular six month release cycle like OpenBSD, GNOME, tetex and other 'distribution' type projects.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[swillden]

The Debian security team doesn't do security updates for unstable or testing, but the package maintainers are quite aggressive about security fixes for unstable, and they actually have an easier job. The security team has to backport their fixes in many cases, while the regular package maintainer can just grab the fixes and apply them, since the published fixes are generally against the latest release.

Unstable usually gets the security fixes as fast or faster than stable, but the security team can't guarantee that unstable will be fixed because they don't do it.

In practice both stable and unstable get security fixes fast, it's testing that can lag behind.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop swaring, please!

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're using TSL, then you should really have a look at tinysofa classic server.

The next version (1.2) comes with GRSecurity. But for now, 1.1 is far more performant, secure, and stable than the TSL it was based on a year ago (which is pretty much the same thing as the TSL one gets these days.)

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[Reality_X]

Off topic a bit, but what is a good distro for servers in general? I've always picked Debian due to the fact it feels Unixish to me, and can be very cleanly installed. Local Community College uses Red Hat, and the SysAdmin swares by it. Any comments?

I like tinysofa enterprise server. But I'm biased, since I created it and maintain it. But, in case you're bored and want to try yet another distribution, here's a description:

tinysofa is a distribution that's based on Fedora Devel/RHEL4 (with ABI compatibility with RHEL4), uses APT for package management, is fast (I've done serious benchmarks that show a 30% performance increase over RHEL3 [haven't had a chance to test against RHEL4 yet.]), aims to be secure (most services are turned off by default, most configurations only listen on localhost, includes SELinux), and is a (IMHO) good mixture between bleeding edge and stability (Mono/ASP.NET is shipped in the base distribution), and contains features I've found useful in my day-to-day work as a SysAdmin for the last 6 years (DRBD, UCARP, Slony1 for PostgreSQL replication, etc) and has a lot of other goodies included in the 'extras' APT repository (things like Xfce, nagios, exim, clamav, amavisd-new, snort, ntop, etc.)

On top of that, we have an amazingly friendly and helpful mailing list.

So if you're bored, check it out. :)

I'm also currently working on an embedded distribution based on TES, and have a fully functional RH-like system in under 44MB of disk. Should be available as soon as I've completed the work.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[rsax]

Off topic a bit, but what is a good distro for servers in general?

CentOS. Stable and predictable releases as opposed to long drawn out ones which might happen or might not.

I love Debian but I don't use it much any more for servers. I grew tired of using backports and hearing excuses like "just use testing or unstable on servers" considering both those branches aren't supported by the Debian security team.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[lord_rob the only on]

Debian does a new release *when it is ready* only. IMHO deadlines are the way to make bad products. Debian privileges quality over quantity. I remember when woody become stable, it was already outdated (Woody has KDE 2.2 and the current version was 3.0 at that time for example).
Anyway I've been using Debian SID for more than two years now, and this distro is rock stable. I've never run an OS for a so long period of time without having to reformat or so.

Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now?

[bedessen]

Check out http://backports.org/.

Tried already with BSD

[moofdaddy]

This isn't the first time that this was attempted. About two years ago a coallition of developers tried to start a BSD movement in Japan and China. This isn't designed to start a BSD vs. Linux fight, I just point this out by way of saying that it didn't really work well there. The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it. I don't see this working too well.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The "asian" mindset is take what you can get for free and contribute nothing back. It's called being "kiasu". It's unfortunate, but it's true. Asians will think "why pay for something I can get for free"? That, and the fact that piracy is so rampant here that practically everything is "free", makes it hard for OSS to compete.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Frankie70]

That, and the fact that piracy is so rampant here that practically everything is "free", makes it hard for OSS to compete.


Does that mean that one of the big reasons why Linux
is a strong competitor in the west is because it's
free & the competitors aren't?

Re:Tried already with BSD

[dtfinch]

Yeah. Commies hate open source. They're jealous of its success where they failed.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Trogre]

The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it.

Well that eliminates Microsoft Windows as an option. But what else do they have that would fill that need?

Perhaps Linux backed by IBM. That gives reliability and a strong "manufacturer".

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Coryoth]

There have been concerted effort with Linux, however, and it has some concerted long term backing. China, Japan, and South Korea are working together on this - there have various reports like this in April 2004, or this in Spetember 2003. The notable aspect is that, as mentioned here, this isn't a short term program to adopt Linux, and results shouldn't be expected immediately - rather it is a long term plan to reposition themselves to be more independent of Microsoft.

A large part of the push is making sure Linux support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean character sets and translations is robust and well developed - think of it as a massive scale localization project that reaches down as deep as they can get it.

How this current Debian push fits into the grand scheme of things (part of the larger project, at least in some sense, or just an independent push) is not clear to me, but regardless it represents a growing desire in Asia to move to a more flexible system that can be adapted to their specific needs. This isn't an attempt at promotion so much as a growing interest from China, Japan and Korea. Expect to see more such stories over the next 5 to 10 years.

Jedidiah.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[ShieldW0lf]

Does that mean that one of the big reasons why Linux is a strong competitor in the west is because it's free & the competitors aren't?

That's just not fair. You can't go saying things like that here. It's like dangling a marshmallow in front of a baby with a flamethrower. How the hell is anybody supposed to keep their karma with you saying things like that?

Why don't you just go moderate quietly over there?

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

> The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept

Where's the basis for this comment? Open source wasn't working too well in <insert country name here> in 1995, yet 10 years later it seems to be catching on, despite "the <insert country name here> mindset". Maybe mindset has nothing to do with it and it's just that open source is still ramping up in Asia?

Regarding the AC's "kiasu" crack, English has a word for "greed", does that mean we are all greedy? Some countries may use the word more often in their vocabulary, but that also applies to non-Asian countries (especially if you take your stereotypes from the movie "Wall Street").

The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it's forms - greed for life, for money, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you. -- Gordon Gekko (Wall Street)

Re:Tried already with BSD

[TCM]

About two years ago a coallition of developers tried to start a BSD movement in Japan and China.

I'm confused. From my point of view a large part of, for example NetBSD's developers are from Japan. I don't think you need to start a movement there. They are starting it already. I remember that, when googling for some IPv6 topic, I always see dozens of sites in Asian character sets.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[JanneM]

Half the problem (here in Japan at least) is the very patchy support for i18n - not only translations, but CJK input, printing and so on reasonably well configured out of the box. Biggest Linux distro I've seen here? "Vine Linux" - Redhat with Japanese support set up right and repackaged.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Cryptnotic]

It's called being "kiasu"

Hmm... that's not in EDICT. Is it Japanese? It's got () kiyasui: (adj) relaxed; familiar; easy to access; friendly

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow are you off page. China more-or-less kicked Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer out of the country. The Chinese National Post office has already installed Linux for it's end-to-end operations, and 300 main universities built a high speed network around Linux. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has built a Linux based supercomputer (no big surprise: check out www.top500.org and try to find one of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world that *doesn't* run Linux). Also, China has officially backed RedFlag Linux as the main system for government. I don't know where you got your information from, but it's way wrong.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[nzkbuk]

Debian fits in because the localization in it is already very good and tested.

If you take a look at almost any debian.org webpage there are already quite a few translations. The rest of the distro is similar in that not only does it support many different hardware platforms, it also has support for most major languages

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Psx29]

The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it.

This statement is just wrong, if anything the "asian" mindset (more specifically, China, and Japan in this case) promote working for the good of the whole over the individual. It would seem that this fits right in line with open source ideals.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Riktov]

I think it's a language called "Asian", which is the apparently the extent to which Anonymous Coward is capable of distinguishing between cultures and countries.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[line.at.infinity]

The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it. I don't see this working too well.

The asian mindset doesn't exist. If it did, there'd only be one language, one country, one party, and no murder. Cops will then go unemployed since everyone agrees with each other.

The truth is, if you take a survey of ten people, there's bound to be a disagreement on something. Some get open source (does Ruby mean anything to you?), most have never heard about it.

Try to bundle two billion people's mindset into one, and there is no way you can succeed, no matter what your anecdotal evidence says.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Hokkien, a dialect of Chinese. It's used in Singapore.

There are even jokes about it.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[pilkul]

The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it.

This is nonsense. The real reason is that Linux/BSD currently have poorly integrated support for CJK characters. There are lots of different standards and programs, it's a pain to input them using the keyboard and everything is incompatible. You might need to lots of additional configuration to do a task as simple as editing a text file in the input method you prefer.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[SunFan]

There have been concerted effort with Linux...

Apparently China is on board with Linux. And the vendor is big evil Linux-hating Sun Microsystems! (thousands of trolls' heads explode over this paradox)

Re:Tried already with BSD

[shutdown -p now]

Does that mean that one of the big reasons why Linux is a strong competitor in the west is because it's free & the competitors aren't?

Yes, that's exactly what it means. Most users care much more about the "free as in beer" part (or at least cheap) than about the "free as in speech" part.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[ahfoo]

Yeah, decent character input is still a major issue for FOSS that most alphabetic language users just don't grasp because they've never tried it.
People see characters displayed in a browser and they assume there's no more issues left, but that's far from the case.
I think the key is definitely getting decent support in Debian and having that extended into LiveCDs like Knoppix.
I've been playing around trying to get an i18n environment set up on Knoppix 3.7 with this klik system that lets you add on the clunky but functional xcin character input system. Unfortunately, since the fonts are in /usr which remains read-only, it's not a quick fix yet. I have only begun to read up on the klik documentation to see how they get around installing stuff on read-only file systems, but the Klik debs browser website suggests that fonts don't work with it yet.
However, a decent LiveCD that did have it working would be soooo nice. That would do more to help Debian in China than anything. I am one hundred percent sure of that.
Now, I've used what does exist already in terms of Chinese LiveCDs and as far as I know that consists primarily of BV1AL and a few others. I went to go check the names and for some reason linux.nctu.edu.tw seemed to be down. But there's an assortment of them there that I have been using and distributing to people here in Taiwan for several years.
The problem is that none of them is really current. The Knoppix scene is going crazy with innovations to the point that every release brings radical new improvements and yet the Chinese enabled versions are all radically stripped down and outdated. BV1AL is the most functional in terms of the Chinese my experience, but the actual desktop is quite a throwback. I understand that there's the size of the fonts to consider, but I also understand that you can get a keychain USB drive that will add a lot of expandability space to a LiveCD distro at a price that will work in the Chinese market.
I say, this is where the attention needs to go. In fact, this is what I was up till dawn doing last night.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[krymsin01]

One day, I'm going to make my trek to contries such as Asia, Africa, and Europe. I will spred my knowlege far and wide.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[jai0]

Asian countries are not contributing to Linux like some others (like Germany/France/..) because,
1. Talented people are already in US or elsewhere in universities or holding jobs there
2. Busy working for service companies (eg, India)
3. Consumer market is too less.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

That news is from over a year ago. There really hasn't been much more info about it since other than this blurb in this inteview with Scott McNealy. I wonder what's going on with it. Maybe all the people in China that started blogging about it were shot or something.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[njcoder]

Here's an article looks like CS2C has made some changes to JDS and is calling it NeoShine?

Re:Tried already with BSD

[OA]

Asian input is headache. I hope SCIM shall be good direction. But with current Sarge set of Gnome and KDE packages, there will be some rogh edges. Old XCIN and UIM-ANTHY will be choice for most people. I really wish some ender to spend thieir paied employee time on this basic issue.

I thouhght about making toy UBUNTU live CD variant with SCIM. That should be good for Asian people. I have no time. Any volunteer?

Osamu

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

im-ja seems to work quite good in GTK programs.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

>try to find one of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world that *doesn't* run Linux
http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2004&M=11
Numbers: 2,3,6,7 And that's just checking the top ten.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I japanese. I got ledhat rinux. Vely nice!

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Doesn't it occur to anybody that it's the languages that are broken?

I mean, if plain old ascii was good enough for Shakespeare, Homer & Jesus Christ, it's good enough for you.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Except it's a well known fact that they can't program for toffee.

Re:Tried already with BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I will spred my knowlege far and wide

Don't forget to pack a condom!

Re:Tried already with BSD

[shanen]

You anonymous troll racists are distinctly annoying--but I can certainly understand why you want to hide your identity from the Immigration officials in whichever country you're hiding in these days. Nor is it sufficient to make you disappear by ranking your posts down, since some people persist in feeding the trolls.

Tell you what. Why don't you do us the big favor of dropping dead? Seriously. Do you imagine there is anyone who will miss you? Or even notice that you're gone? One less anonymous coward. Whoopee.

Well, I can see it now.

[schnits0r]

I can see how this thread is bound to play out....

A: "Debian is all old!"
B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash"
C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro"
B: "You can buy support from vendors"
D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?"
E: "My Gentoo system rox!"
A,C,D: link to sites like funroll-loops.org
F: Hypes up debian-based Knoppix.
G: Hypes up debian-based Ubuntu.
A: "Debian testing is still old, I need new"
B: 'You could try gentoo, you unfaithful kid".
yadda yadda yadda. It's funny, laugh.

Re:Well, I can see it now.

[rokzy]

you forgot
H: "...in Japan!"

Re:Well, I can see it now.

[iamskelter]

In Korea, only old people use Debian Stable.

Re:Well, I can see it now.

[shutdown -p now]

You forgot J mentioning superior stability of *BSD over that of Debian and Linux in general, followed by an obligatory "*BSD is dying" comment by K. Of course, then E comes and says that Gentoo has all the good things from *BSD (portage blah blah blah), and it starts all over again.

Re:Well, I can see it now.

[hdparm]

E would also tell you how Gentoo is the easiest to install - takes only 3 commands.

Re:Well, I can see it now.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's frightingly close to an *gasp* install script.

Next thing you know Gentoo will be as easy to install as Slackware and it's uber-l33t users won't garner the in-depth "under-the-hood" system knowledge it requires to add your IDE disk to the fstab.

Finally and export to China...

[Statecraftsman]

besides scrap and raw materials. And guess what...it's free!

People's Republic of the World ---- 1
United States of the World -------- 0

they forgot one...

[aendeuryu]

Debian is about to get some major exposure in Asia according to a report.

Debian to be Marketed to Japan and China

Meanwhile, Korea wonders if it should use its powers of invisibility for good or evil...

Re:they forgot one...

[adlaiff6]

Singapore hides.

Re:they forgot one...

[dvdeug]

Korea should wonder? Asia goes all the way west to Iran, north to Siberia and south to Indonesia, including the itsybitsy country of India. Korea is just a tiny speck compared to greater Asia.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Korea is just a tiny speck compared to greater Asia

And what is Japan? Chopped suey?

Re:they forgot one...

[incom]

They're americans, they can only fit countries with 150+ million can fit into their 8 byte geography buffer.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

meanwhile dvdeug wonders if he should use his powers of hairsplitting to make everybody bald or just open his own barbershop.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are apparently still some bugs running Starcraft through WINE.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, Korea wonders if it should use its powers of invisibility for good or evil...

Meanwhile, in Thailand.... etc. etc.

Um, whether or not the Debian team is doing anything for Korean l18n or not, it's still linguistically correct to say it is a major exposure in Asia if they are working hard on Japanese and Chinese l18n. Not to be overly technical or anything. Blah.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

bit

Re:they forgot one...

[CAIMLAS]

Yes, you're right. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that Japan is a major "westernized" country with large trade agreements with the US and other western countries, or that China is the largest economy of people in the world (3rd largest after EU and US in terms of economic power, I think?) now could it? Absolutely not.

By the way - learning proper grammar structure would help. What you're to say is obscured by your illiteracy (s/can fit/people/, s/americans/Americans/).

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

I wonder how many other people got your joke.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're rated insightful?

How about you RTFA.

It's about a Japanese company and a Chinese company teaming up together to work on Debian.

"Ignorant Americans" has nothing to do with this. Mentioning Japan and China but not Korea is not ignorant, it's accurate reporting.

Of course, information gets lost once posted on slashdot, and their readers who don't RTFA stretch it way out of context. Thanks!

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure a few old people did.

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, we've just got a strict "catch and release" policy, and the small stuff isn't worth going after. ;-)

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, you were offended 'cause it's true? Okay.

Re:they forgot one...

[swillden]

Meanwhile, Korea wonders if it should use its powers of invisibility for good or evil...

So which one of the Tokyo-based VA Linux Systems and Nanjing-based Sun Wah Linux should be marketing in Korea?

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

"By the way - learning proper grammar structure would help. What you're to say is obscured by your illiteracy..."

Hmm, maybe you should take your own advice?

Re:they forgot one...

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. The Korean system available with Debian is quite reasonable. I've set up an internet cafe of about 20 machines using Debian, with options for English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Thai environments (actually, there is not much Thai software, or localised builds available, but the character input system works). I used Linux because, well, it's free, and I could customise it easily, so the boss went for it. I still feel that Windows XP is way ahead when it comes to out of the box usability for these markets though :-(.

Hopefully this extra exposure will encourage more localised contributions to Linux from those countries.

Aside: I remember writing a piece while still at uni saying that RedHat needs to move into Asian markets early, develop and then consolidate, since the process would be a long and arduous one. It's not just a case of 'Hey look! I made a menu in your language, now use our software'. But the benefits of a consolidated presence are conceivable quite large, if it allows you to coordinate interaction between Eurpean, American, and Asian markets / regional offices of multinationals.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

now we'll have two gazillion asians using it to be cool and inflate their penis

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

like we don't already have a gazillion red-haired barbarians already doing the same thing

Hardly seems community based

[assassinator42]

"The Tokyo-based VA Linux Systems and Nanjing, China-based Sun Wah Linux plan to promote and jointly develop Debian's Linux OS for Chinese and Japanese markets." Will the vast majority of code still be directly from Debian? Are they going to sell it as Debian or something else? Not saying any of this is necessarily bad.

Re:Hardly seems community based

[mozu]

No you are right on this one. Its not really community based and I am no fan of commercial distros, but the question is how much are they going to give back to the community. I believe CJK support has a lot to catch up on compared with the rest of FOSS projects. So much so that anything is better than nothing.

In the CJK world there aren't enough i10n developers for the amount of work that needs to be done. (Yes there are some exceptions like Mozilla that is lucky enough to have whole teams of active i10n developers.) I'm hoping that this would at least contribute to make more resources availble for the CJK development as a whole. Make available more translated documentation, CJK compatible packages, and truly pre-configured one-click-to-CJK distributions.

Also its a good way to let people in CJK countries know there is a better alternative out there. I feel optimistic and believe that FOSS awareness is improving. Though not all of them are equally bad there is still a lot to be desired. For instance many popular web sites in Japan still use commercial-consumer-centric-OS's Shift-JIS character encoding despite availability of UTF-8 and ISO-2022-JP.

Re:Hardly seems community based

[Anonymous Coward]

Its L10n not i10n. What was I thinking. . . .

Mozilla Thunderbird sucks

[Dancin_Santa]

Mozilla Thunderbird can't auto-select Japanese fonts appropriately, IN JAPAN!

Not that that has anything to do with Debian, but seeing as how Thunderbird is the premiere "Next Generation" Linux mail reader, it would help if it worked correctly for the languages over in Asia.

Re:Mozilla Thunderbird sucks

[Frankie70]

Mozilla Thunderbird can't auto-select Japanese fonts appropriately, IN JAPAN!

That's because in Japan, the fonts auto-select the browser.

Re:Mozilla Thunderbird sucks

[Bill Currie]

actually, that would be: the browser, the fonts auto-select.

Re:Mozilla Thunderbird sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be in Japan, it would be in Soviet Russia.

P.S. Whoosh!

Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption

[Xpilot]

One of the selling points of OSS businesses is that it's (usually) cheaper than proprietary closed-source software, but that point is negated by the fact that piracy is so rampant here that every piece of software is "free". Therefore, Windows wins out since it has the most hardware support, and all the (warezed) games run on it, and that it also runs MS Office.

Sure, OO.o and all that is available, but MS has a head start with their stranglehold, and everyone just uses what everyone else uses. Price isn't an issue. For home users, support isn't an issue either since computer hardware shops that sold you the computer will do the support for you (whether that copy of Windows is licensed or not). Basically, what a typical home user does when his box is messed up is take it to the shop, and some bored technician will just reformat and reinstall things.

For big businesses, they want a "reputable" brand and therefore go Microsoft. MS has a lot of mindshare, plus they have a monopolistic stranglehold on the iT industry anyway, so Windows and MS is accepted way of running computers.

It's not all bleak though... OSS is getting momentum around these parts. In Malaysia, there has been a drive by the government to OSS-ify their IT infrastructure (this made a few Microsofties cry ;) ). Governments are getting more aware of the issues involved with security and transparency of software systems. I think the future is bright, but it'll take time getting there.

Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption

[superpulpsicle]

Ah you beat me to it. China is up there on the corruption index list every year. Not as high as like Bangladesh, but it's up there.

Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption

[diogenes57]

If Microsoft started anti-piracy campaigns in Asia it would be the biggest boon to OSS. First government and universities would have to switch, then businesses and finally home-users. And I'm sure they'd engineer Linux game distros for the PC bars.
Right now it's just too easy to get away with piracy, but that could change the moment governments decide to crack down on it.

Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption

[Omega Blue]

One of the selling points of OSS businesses is that it's (usually) cheaper than proprietary closed-source software, but that point is negated by the fact that piracy is so rampant here that every piece of software is "free".

I doubt parent knows what his talking about. First of all, when the cost of using FOSS in business is concerned, it does not only refer to the initial purchase price of a piece of software. It refers to the TCO (total cost of ownership), which includes such fun items as damages incur by malware. Even if pirated programs were free, Windows still loses in TCO by being such a huge magnet of nastiness.

Secondly, pirated programs are not free. Sure, you can find free ones on warez sites, but then that wouldn't be limited to Asia (read: East Asia). Pirates need to eat, too.

Thirdly, but probably the most important point, is the big push toward Linux in East Asia is all about security. Not only Microsoft stuff got all these huge security holes, but these countries also worry about programs they can't see and examine. What's in the blackbox? Why are all these strange processes calling home? I don't blame them -- in fact, being paranoid is a positive trait in security. So, they are going to FOSS, because they can look at the source and know exactly what the software does.

Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption

[Anonymous Coward]

when he said all software is availible for free he probablly meant all software is availible for a tiny markup over the cost of creating and distributing the copy.

in the western world piracy tends to only be done by consumers and VERY small buisnesses and you don't see cds of priate software openly for sale in normal markets (you can get the stuff at specialised computer markets where traders take the risk because of the huge customer base but thats about the only place you see it)

and the obligatory...

[MiKM]

I.) I for one welcome our Asian Debian-using overloads

what a load of bull...

[deadmongrel]

The asian mindset doesn't really understand the open source concept and would prefer reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it
I am sorry but that just bull. The reason why there is more microsoft products in asia is because they microsoft market them well. There are lots and lots of opensource projects that have started from asia just not popular in the US and Europe.
I think its a really good initiative. This is what Open Source and Linux really needs, letting people know what is available to them.

Enterprises

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never understood why Debian does not have "Enterprise Acceptance". I work for a Fortune 500 software company. We have some products which require kernel work. Most of the developers complain about the constant changes in the Red Hat and SuSE kernels. Yet Debian Stable, has little change in comparision. You would think we would support the Debian stable kernel. The low volume of change in stable make it a lower cost to maintain for us.
Oh Well, I am sure some MBA formula can show me I am wrong.

Re:Enterprises

[idiotnot]

Who would you rather do lunch with.....a cute chick from RedHat or Novell, or some fat dude in a thinkgeek t-shirt?

Unfortunately, I have seen this happen quite a bit.

Re:Enterprises

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Enterprises don't want valuable features withheld because they don't compile on the Atari ST. Plus having a predictable release schedule is nice.

Re:Enterprises

[gelfling]

RHEL and Novell/SuSE have better fit and finish than Debian. The starting point for a good business desktop build is set a little a further forward with these than with Debian which is still an enormous toolkit. Not that having 10,000 packages is a disadavantage. Also, suits like the idea that you can pay some company for support aka blame someone when it goes wrong. With Debian or Slackware you only have yourself to blame and let's face facts, true or not, your own executives think IT is retarded and probably incapable of pulling its own weight

Re:Enterprises

[rxmd]

Who would you rather do lunch with.....a cute chick from RedHat or Novell, or some fat dude in a thinkgeek t-shirt?

Unfortunately, I have seen this happen quite a bit.

I assume you were the fat dude? ;)

Re:Enterprises

[willgott]

Debian will not be accepted in the enterprise world until the debian project change its goals. After a heated discussion on #debian I realised that the debian-developers do want to create a "universal operating system", but the universe they talk about is theirs. They care about need for stability and the use of free software, but not for much else it seems.

In order to illustrate this point I take the example of debian's un-scheduled releases:
Me: When do you release the new stable?
Developer: When it's done.
Me: Okay, but when is it done? Do you have any idea?
Developer: I already told you.

An enterprise want to be able to predict/plan for new releases, but with debian it's hard. They could have set target-date at least.

Current problems with debian according to me:
* Non-scheduled releases
* To old software (yes, it's problem for servers and not just desktops)
* Developers want to create an OS for themself and not one that suits most people.

In short: Debian isn't written in order to be popular. It has been created by developers for the developers themself. Since very few of them own a company their is no place for the needs of an enterprise.

Hopefully, another distribution will soon take debian's place because it has gone rotten.

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny since the main reason I left Debian for Fedora was because of Debian's antique Chinese input support.

At least with Fedora you can get the latest modern stuff...with Debian you get Eurocentric crap from the 90s that is a bitch to use.

Re:heh

[erroneus]

It was Japanese language support that kept me from switching from Windows for the longest time. It was some time ago when RedHat's improved Japanese support took that reason away and I moved to RedHat. Fedora confused me a little at first but it's even better still. Since the mechanism is the same in Japanese and Chinese, I assume the quality of Chinese support is the same as Japanese and therefore I have to agree with the parent's sentiments on the matter.

But I wonder how well Debian supports the asian languages. Will they be using the same tools?

Re:heh

[Rocketship Underpant]

"That's funny since the main reason I left Debian for Fedora was because of Debian's antique Chinese input support." While I haven't used Debian, I have to say that Linux support for non-Latin languages in general is pretty bad. I've tried without success to get both Suse and Mandrake to get universal Japanese input working, and I imagine those distros are still better than the conservative Debian. That's why distros like Turbolinux exist - to concentrate on making Asian text work, and work well, with open-source software. Myself, I've switched to OS X, which lets me input any language in any application at any time. No desktop OS should call itself modern or ready for international use until it can get that right.

Re:heh

[808140]

What a load of crap. I live and work in China, write a lot of Chinese, and I use Debian exclusively.

Unless you're running stable (which really is better suited for servers than desktops), you're just spreading FUD. I run testing, FWIW.

Previously, I used XCIN for input, although I used SCIM these days.

It always baffles me when people are like, "Distribution X" doesn't have Y! Especially with Debian, which has nearly every piece of free software under the sun packaged. You just install the packages you want. Sheesh.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I moved TO Debian for the Japanese support and am extremely pleased with it. UIM-XIM and Anthy. And debian offeres an easy solution for the language setup. I live in Japan and work in Japanese, so I use it every day. I'm no expert and it was still a snap to get working just how I wanted it. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:heh

[WWWWolf]

At least with Fedora you can get the latest modern stuff...with Debian you get Eurocentric crap from the 90s that is a bitch to use.

<ramble>

Eurocentric *what*? In my case, in GTK+ file dialogs, folder/object names with UTF8 characters seem to get truncated. Yes, I am in Europe. Not eurocentric - anglocentric. I believe the Japanese have invented a nice euphonic term for screwed-up encodings, called "mojibake" ("ghost characters", I believe), but around here, we call this phenomenon, loosely translated, "it's 2005 and my freaking scandinavic letters still don't work, goddamnit". =)

(Not that it's any better elsewhere. Just last weekend my mother opened one document in Windows and complained that the letters were all wrong. Too bad I was too tired to give a throughout lecture on the pitfalls of misdetected character encodings...)

Honestly, I think it's just that X11 itself is so bad in regards to international stuff. A lot of work needs to be done before this gets optimal.

I've only previously needed to use Russian, and getting keyboard stuff to work was very very painful - but fortunately some applications (GTK+ apps, Yudit, and XEmacs) support transliterative input, which was better than what I expected but probably not very nice for people who speak the language natively. Note that this was application stuff. I hoped I would be able to just pick "Use Finnish 105-key layout" and then "use Cyrillic transliteration" and it'd work in any app. No such luck though. Hopefully there will be one day.

</ramble>

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

XIM is highly antiquated.

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't say you COULDN'T use Chinese with Debian.

Of course you can.

But the input methods they are OLD and SUCKY.

That is all.

Instead of wasting my time trying to setup something modern on Debian I can just use Fedora and get work done.

Re:heh

[AndyCater]

Debian - should support virtually any Cyrillic/Uralic character set. Supports Chinese/Japanese/Korean in a multitude of input methods. I installed multi-lingual Emacs yesterday
with all the fonts I had available. 550M of fonts
- and 20 or so languages displayed on the help page . There should be support for multi-lingual xterms
or equivalents - and enough locales for anybody.
This tested using "testing" / sarge and "unstable" / sid.

other resources

[kuzukiri]

FYI.

LWN.net: VA Linux and Sun Wah Linux Join Forces Around Debian
LinuxWorld.au: VA Linux, Sun Wah team on Debian Linux

Martin Michlmayr(Debian Project Leader)'s comment

What branch would they use?

[Trogre]

I'm all for supporting truly Free and independent software like Debian, but the problem of which release should be unleashed upon the general public?

Stable? Sadly, not an option due to its complete lack of support for modern hardware or moderm features. It's a marvelous example of what computing should have been in 1997.

Unstable? Far too likely to break at the next apt-get upgrade.

Experimental? Same as Unstable, but worse.

Testing? Probably the best bet, though still not recommended for production use by Debian.org.

Re:What branch would they use?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Testing? Probably the best bet, though still not recommended for production use by Debian.org."

The worst part is there is NO GUARANTEE whatsoever of timely security updates for testing. They first have to get into unstable and sit there for a 2 week "testing period" or whatever then they trickle into testing.

Re:What branch would they use?

[MrNemesis]

The two servers I admin at work have both been runnning testing for well over 100 days since I upgraded them. It might not be recommended for production use, but it works fine in this instance - just as well as stable in fact (my home server runs stable), it just takes a bit more effort to maintain.

If you're worried about security updates but still want modern stuff on top, there's always backports.org

Re:What branch would they use?

[BlueWonder]

Stable? [...] It's a marvelous example of what computing should have been in 1997.

Interesting? MOC!

The parent is an obvious troll. Woody (the current Debian Stable) was released in the summer of 2002, so he is demanding that in 1997, the Debian developers should have provided software which would only have been written half a decade later.

Re:What branch would they use?

[ozamosi]

Well, that is the point of stable: it is supposed to not change. Stable means that the codebase doesnt change, not that it doesnt crash.

I find that unstable (as in frequently changeing code) is very stable (as in dont crash), it just gets updates more often than stable.

Re:What branch would they use?

[Anonymous Coward]

You see? It was already half a decade behind the schedule.

Re:What branch would they use?

[Trogre]

Not sure if you know, but your message is coming up as Score: -1. I have no special modifiers, and there is no report of moderation to your comment. Have you done something to piss off the /. powers that be?

Re:What branch would they use?

[focitrixilous P]

Usually a default score of -1 is a punishment for being continually modded troll/offtopic/flamebait. It's the reverse of having excellent karma from continual Insightful/Interesting/Informative and getting to start posting at 2.

YOU FAIwL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

was at the same and as BSD sinks pro-homosexual BSD sux0rs. What anyone that thinks Some of you have everything else take a llok at the they're gone Mac as one of the

This should be interesting to watch

[Mr Ambersand]

While it is true that there are various piracy issues to be worked out, I'm fairly confident that the Asian market will do as the west has done which is take the best of OSS and adapt it to their needs.

In fact, with Asia's help, maybe we can finally solve the problem of people following false editors and settle on the one true editor -- nano!

Re:This should be interesting to watch

[polyp2000]

While it is true that there are various piracy issues to be worked out, Eh?

Im sure thats true for proprietary products such as windows but why is this a problem for Debian which is freely available and downloadable both in source and binary forms from a variety of places?

The Big Business of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has been raking in the spare change lately.

• Linux server revenue last year was five thousand million dollars ($5,000,000,000).
• IBM Linux revenue was $1.5 billion
• HP Linux revenue was $1.25 billion
• Dell Linux revenue was $750 million

See the report.

Re:The Big Business of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI That's mostly hardware.

Interesting to note that IBM sinks $billions into Linux devleopment and Dell gets 50% of their revenue for basically doing nothing. Let's all see who can race to the bottom fastest!

Re:The Big Business of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You usually need hardware to run Linux.

Re:The Big Business of Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux developers revenue: $0

At least the corporations are getting rich. What a good model (for them). No wonder they are all so excited about OSS. Finally they got people to work for them for free!

With all this work going on...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about releasing a distribution sometime?

At this point, from the attitudes I've gotten off various debian developers I've met during events like OLS, I can only assume developers are afraid of having to support a release.

Ubuntu:

[gabbarbhai]

Because with Ubuntu, I can see all the Chinese characters in my daily spam feed perfectly. Also, they base the distro on Debian Sid, and release every six months.

Re:Ubuntu:

[wakejagr]

I just got my ubuntu CD's the other day: free shipping rules! I believe they'd ship to Asia . . .

Re:Ubuntu:

[Hosting Geek]

Yea I order 500 of them to be sent to the moon.

Public Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm supprised that the editors didn't mention that OSTG which owns slashdot is owned by VA systems (IIRC) and that va sys. japan is no doubt a subsidiary.

now mod this +3 informitive, or i'll cower in the corner with my fedora2 install.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

hey moron,
VA Linux Systems Japan is not the same VA Linux that owns OSTG. It's a different company - they split off almost five years ago.

go f yourself.

Smoking crack lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "asian" mindset is take what you can get for free and contribute nothing back. It's called being "kiasu".

"Kiasu"?? What the hell is that a typo of? It certainly isn't Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Cantonese. I doubt you've ever heard a single Asian word that wasn't from one of the above mentioned. LOL funny yet, someone modded you +1.

Re:Smoking crack lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly isn't Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Cantonese. I doubt you've ever heard a single Asian word that wasn't from one of the above mentioned.

It's Hokkien. Obviously you don't know Asia well enough :p

Re:Smoking crack lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, talk about ignorant of other cultures, man.

It's Piracy, Not Marketing In Asia

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The true reason why there is more microsoft products in asia is because software piracy. You can buy a pirated Windows CD for 2 RMB ($0.25) and Windows 2000 - 2003, all in one CD (some magic compressing method used but it does work).

Re:It's Piracy, Not Marketing In Asia

[Anonymous Coward]

And Microsoft Products are simply better than Open Source ones (so long as you aren't an ISP).

Huzzah for Debian

[davejenkins]

From Tokyo, I have the following opinion to offer:
1. Good news. The more the merrier. Debian, the distro of choice for hardcore users and developers, certainly needs a push and some TLC over here. The developer community is sorely sorely lacking in profile, heroes, and most of all corporate support.

2. Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux are known within the community, but are bit players in the market as a whole. Red Hat has majority shares in Japan, is very strong in Korea, and is the corporate default linux for China. Meanwhile, Novell is non-existant in Korea, and is making a big push in China (they are so-so in Japan). Just as in the US, Debian will be hard-pressed to go against these guys

3. The drive for this-- a purely community-driven distro-- is welcome to the ears of government buyers. The asian governments hate sending their tax yen/yuan/wan to Redmond, but they would hate it just as much to send to Raleigh or Boston. This is (was) the impetus behind Asianux. unfortunately, Asianux doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

4. Turbo seems to be making somewhat of a comeback. If Debian can make some headway, then we may have some more play over here, and that is good for everyone.

Shameless plug: you track these kinds of stories, events, and opinions at OpenAsia.org

Big in Japan!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotfl, lol! Actually I laugh because it reminds me of all those small bands being forgotten on the domestic market and finding themselves famous on foreign markets...

From songfacts about Alphaville's Big In Japan...
The title of the song is kind of a joke. Many rock bands that are well past their prime continue to be "Big in Japan" long after they cannot draw a large audience in the UK or US. The movie Spinal Tap also made fun of this phenomenon, as the band had a hit single in Japan just as they appeared to be washed up. (thanks, Eulbie - New York, NY)

Come on people, Debian does not matter anymore... Sarge has not yet a totally working and usable installer, it is difficult to navigate the w.d.o website to find the damn complete iso's, the jigdo/mkisofs couple does not work well at all from windows ("the enemy platform we must destroy") and debian-devel@lists.debian.org is like the plane of fire from nethack.

I mean, for SERVERS it would be better to use something different, and between commercial and free alternatives there are many good platforms out there: have you ever heard of gentoo and BSD? Don't care if BSD is dying, it still works better than Debian... and usually BSD OS kernels are in-line with the mainstream develpers, not frozen at three/four releases back in time...

Re:Big in Japan!

[l3v1]

Come on people, Debian does not matter anymore... Sarge has not yet a totally working and usable installer, it is difficult to navigate the w.d.o website to find the damn complete iso's, the jigdo/mkisofs couple does not work well

Ignorance is not always bliss you know. It can sometimes also be blushingly stupid. On the other side, it's always fun - to an extent - to read all the tons of crap coming from people who don't have a 2 ns experience with anything Debian.

Thing is, Debian SID is just as rockingly good as any other distro you could find (telling this with almost two years of debian "testing" usage). Not a wonder you can also find debian sid-based other distros out there.

For some years now no other distro (which were quite a lot) was allowed to come out of vmware to replace my debian. I constantly keep checking out and evaluating other distros, and if I find something better, then I will surely change without hesitation. Till then, I'm happy with it. The only other distro that has made me happy for a time was slackware.

fonts and input

[sql_noob]

The penetration rate of linux would still low unless certain basic requirment is meet:

- eye-easy fonts and fonts engine, the asia fonts structure is complex. In 10-12px web page they just look horrible
- out of the box input methods: intelligent phoenetic type input or chanjei should be enabled as default. (Common newbies cannot install it themself)

I know that some improvement is progressing like firefly-arphic fonts and iiimf. Unless they become mature things won't start right.

Re:fonts and input

[spacehunt]

To give the problems a bit more perspective:

1. The firefly-arphic fonts have legal issues and will never be accepted in Debian proper unless they are cleared;
2. At 10-12px, the ideal would be hand-tuned bitmaps for each of the tens of thousands of characters. Problem can be sidestepped by having larger default font sizes and/or better antialias and autohinting algorithms (these are being worked on), a la OS X/Aqua;
3. While the design of IIIMF is excellent (disclaimer: I am the one mentioned in the PR who is on OpenI18N's SC), due to its unconventional design it has the reputation of being unapproachable by input method writers;
4. GB18030 has the largest defined character set (at least the same as Unicode if not larger) and is the Chinese standard. Products are not allowed to be sold, period, unless they have GB18030 support, and that includes having a font with all the characters.

Re:fonts and input

[sql_noob]

So basically we need a modified Arphic font with APL license, adding more characters and hint it manually like what firefly is doing. Or else we would need another 4-8 years for the expire of the hinting patents

www.study-area.org/apt/firefly-font/
cle.linux.org.tw
www.oaka.org/freefonts
freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fCJKUnifonts

The input method is another issue yet we have all kind of gui working together.

If people cannot see and cannot write, they would just turn back immediately. At this rate the future of linux in China/TW/HK shouldn't be optimistic.

Let's hope Japanese/Korean could do it better

Re:fonts and input

[spacehunt]

If people cannot see and cannot write, they would just turn back immediately. At this rate the future of linux in China/TW/HK shouldn't be optimistic.

No need to be pessimistic. We've passed the point of "cannot read and cannot write" a very long time ago. The problem right now is of improving the user experience and usability of things. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the current state-of-the-art CJK experience on Linux desktops already surpass that of Windows XP.

To be?

[the angry liberal]

Debian to be Marketed to Japan and China

I thought debian has been out for a number of years. :rolleyes:

hm..

[Anonymous Coward]

now.. why did I see "Lesbian to be marketed to Japan and China"?

/bin/sovietr

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Debian Markets YOU!

Gambling with customers

[DavidNWelton]

I've been a Debian developer since 1997. I like Debian a lot, and still think it's the best thing out there in many ways.

But "just run unstable in production environments" doesn't cut it for a lot of people.

Re:Gambling with customers

[OA]

I guess this (unstable for production use) really depends on what do people want for their "production" environment.

If it is developer's desktop, unstable is perfectly fine. (At least you do not need to recompile like gentoo.)

But for hosting any service for others, I agree it does not cut it for a lot of people unless they QA every updates in advance in details.

What we need is more regular desktop release :-)

By the way, I have to admit we have not so many active Asian DD when compaired to Europe.

Osamu
---

mod parent down for obvious trolling...

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't designed to start a BSD vs. Linux fight

The asian mindset doesn't really understand

reliable software with a strong manufacture behind it

Obligatory response

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian Testing does not have security updates.

Another piece of so-called news

[Donny Smith]

What kind of bullshit is this?
The submitter has no clue about Linux in Asia, but then again, that's why we have editors (perhaps replacing one of current editors ... oh well)

a) Linux I18N still sucks (you don't need Unicode support on a DHCP server, but still) so it's not like they're not using Debian because they like Windows (or Red Hat).

b) Everyone knows what kind of user base Debian has - it's certainly not "enterprise". Academic, department, small & medium enterprises, individuals - yes. Enterprises - no.
Which is why there are other distros that do what enterprises require (certifications, commercial vendor backing, alliances, etc.) so it's pointless to push Debian to those who don't want it. Good luck, though.

c) Why would enterprise users buy support from these guys? Debian is by users and for users - as much as I'd like them to succeed, I don't see what diff will their efforts make in light of low-cost enterprise Linux clones like CentOS (not to mention decent low-cost commercial distros like Mandrake, Turbolinux, etc.).

Re:Another piece of so-called news

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA dude, its loaded with Asia news and context.

Re:Another piece of so-called news

[Donny Smith]

I didn't say TFA article is clueless, I said the submitter of the news is - the way he explained/understood TFA.

I am Timecop and I love Japs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohayo Gozaimasu.

debian need to get sarge out the fucking door asap

[Anonymous Coward]

woody is an OLD release now but for anything more than the odd box you don't really want to be dealing with testing or unstable.

i like debian too i just wish the stable release was not so out of date.

Go Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

We use Debian, we like it, good news indeed.

Debian? I prefer...

[xdavexxx]

Fedora Core 3. More features and better compatability.

Ubuntu plug!

[andr0meda]

Well, *somebody* had to do it, right?

Debian: an interesting case on what *not* to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey --
Debian is a case history in what *not* do in community software devlopement:
1) No timed release cycles
2) Democracy, not meritocracy - everybody's got the same rights. So dick heads get to argue eternally.
3) Bad documentation - compare with FreeBSD's "handbook."

When they see that sucky KDE 2.1 they'll definitely turn to Microsoft bootlegs. Windows XP is just sooo much better than Debian stable, ain't it?
Debian is now a fucking joke.
It's a disaster in management. The stable-testing-still-in-development cycle hasn't worked for them, has it? Why? Because Debian developers don't give a shit about stable! Consequently, no one gives a shit about security policy. Ask any Debian developer near you and the he/she will answer something like "well, it gets updated when upstream updates it!". That is like having *no* security policy.

The sheer fact that some people went and took sid, gave it a timed release cycle, and a security policy for sid, that is, did everything Debian couldn't get around to doing it (because the point has gotta be argued with 1.000 developers with *equal rights* and thick heads) should make Debian people seriously think. I'm talking about Ubuntu Linux, of course.

Here's the dialogue again

[Anonymous Coward]

A: "Debian is all old!"
B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash"
C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro"
B: "You can buy support from vendors"
D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?"
E: "My Gentoo system rox!"
A,C,D: link to sites like funroll-loops.org
F: Hypes up debian-based Knoppix.
G: Hypes up debian-based Ubuntu.
A: "Debian testing is still old, I need new"
B: "You could try gentoo, you unfaithful kid".
J: "But *BSD has superior stability!"
K: "Yeah, but *BSD is dying!"
L: "In Korea, only old pople use Debian stable."
E: "Gentoo has portage. You get all the good thing *BSD have."
A: "Debian is all old!"
B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash"
C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro"
B: "You can buy support from vendors"
D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?"

This goes on until you can no longer post on /.
However, Debian developers take up the discussion on their mailing lists. Stable release stalls for another year, due endless arguments.
Laugh, it *is* funny.

BS

[Red Rocket]

Most users care much more about the "free as in beer" part (or at least cheap) than about the "free as in speech" part.

That's just pure crap. How many Slashdotters do you think are incapable of obtaining free (as in beer) warez? It's not that difficult, you know. It's the other freedom (libre) that gets us on board the FOSS train.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Most slashdotters run Windows. And yes, if Linux had to compete on price it wouldn't be able to.

Re:BS

[LPetrazickis]

Actually, I think that "free as in honest" is the part that's keeping people away from warez. There's a stigma attached to violating the wishes of other people. Also, "free as in priceless quality" is another important aspect. Software that is coded with love tends to be far better than software that is coded for a paycheque.

Another big Debian mistake: the installer

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Debian sid has *no* security policy.
How's *that* for a distro?
The Debian installer is just the maximum example of the stupidity that has overtaken Debian in the last years. It doesn't work solidly, it's been over a year in development. And here's the best part: Progeny (a commercial distro based on Debian) had developed a highly modular installer.
However, Debian heads instead of using what Progeny had already done, decided to start from zero. There were some incompatibilitues in hardware recognition due to Progeny's installer not using kudzu, but that could have been worked around (meaning: change the Python source code and use kudzu). Instead, they simply started form zero and chose C++ and the rest of the story is what everyone knows: there are better options than Debian (even if they're Debian-based).
So, I'm thinking...*you* don't know shit about Debian development.

What's that have to do with anything?

[Red Rocket]

Most slashdotters run Windows. And yes, if Linux had to compete on price it wouldn't be able to.

So? My point was that those who use FOSS do so, not because it is free (gratis), but because it is free (libre). Claiming that we're just looking for free-beer software is a lie, because we're capable of obtaining just about any software we want for free but we choose to use FOSS. Your post does not address that issue.

Re:What's that have to do with anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many Slashdotters do you think are incapable of obtaining free (as in beer) warez? It's not that difficult, you know. It's the other freedom (libre) that gets us on board the FOSS train"

You said Slashdotters, not those that use FOSS. Most Slashdotters choose Windows for their OS and Web Browser, not a FOSS alternative. Of course, people don't like to admit that around here. That is what it has to do with it.

The big point is that if people had to go to the store and buy a web browser and IE cost $25, and Firefox cost $25, most people would buy IE. Period.

What's in a name...

[jarrell]

I predict that Debian will have little penetration in China... Every Chinese person I've ever mentioned the name to goes "Did you just say shit??"

Yes, Debian sounds amazingly like the mandarin word for "shit"...

Logic?

[Red Rocket]

Man, if ever there was anyone in need of a course in logic...
Your arguments are all non sequiturs.
Slashdotters, grannies, truck drivers, whoever -- use FOSS because they prefer their software with a side of liberty, not because it comes without monetary cost. And using Windows doesn't preclude one from using FOSS. Last I checked, Firefox was available for the Win32 API. Check the post I replied to if you want to get your arguments back into context. You're just making pointless argument -- caviling, as it were.

The big point is that if people had to go to the store and buy a web browser and IE cost $25, and Firefox cost $25, most people would buy IE. Period.

Once, again ... non sequitur -- because the argument was about FOSS users' reasons for choosing FOSS, not about pricing and marketing. That's also a mighty big "if." As it is now, both browsers are free (as in beer) yet people still download and install Firefox -- even on Windows. Seems to me those users are choosing FOSS over proprietary even given that the cost is the same . One could even argue that Firefox is more expensive given that the user has to spend time and bandwidth downloading and installing it. Yet many users still choose to use Firefox. Could it be that these users appreciate the liberty of a secure browser whose source code is available and that runs on the OS of their choice? I think that shows that your argument is not only a non sequitur, it's also demonstrably untrue.

Enterprise Software

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, that's the GOOD thing about Debian, and if Debian DID become 'Enterprise Level', I'd stop using it.

As an Enterprise software application developer, when I hear the word 'Enterprise', I think 'massively overpriced, buggy piece of crap' - because that's what every single enterprise system I've seen or worked on is.

Enterprise software is just software that is slapped together as quickly and cheaply as possible, but sold with the most expensive sales and marketting that can be found - because Enterprise software is sold to CEOs and CIOs - people who don't know enough technically to judge the value of the product anyway, but will buy it because of expensive presentations and varying levels of bribery.

If you buy enterprise software, you're getting what you deserve.

price or performance...

[torrents]

debian can't win on price in china... you can pick up a copy of xp for about the price of a blank cd, so it'll have to win on it's other merits...