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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.
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?
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
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.
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People's Republic of the World ---- 1
United States of the World -------- 0
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...
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?
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.
;) ). 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.
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
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
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.
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".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
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.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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!
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
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").
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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.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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
davejenkins.com |
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. /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.
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
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.
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.
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.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
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.
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).
/., 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.
From this and other recent articles on