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Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows

Posted by Zonk on from the who-needs-an-ms-product dept.

Spy der Mann writes "Noticing the Microsoft threat to withdraw Windows from South Korea, the Linspire CEO, Kevin Carmony, just offered to license every computer in the country with Linspire, for just $5m. This would be around 10 cents / person. 'South Korea could save around a quarter of a billion dollars. More importantly, however, it would break South Korea loose from the monopolistic grasp of Microsoft, which the country currently finds itself under,'"

2 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. In Korea, Computer = Windows PC with IE by ThreeDayMonk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's my experience, too. Even if they don't require ActiveX, very few Korean websites will actually display properly in another browser - even fewer if you use a pop-up blocker. I don't think that anyone tests on anything else.

    Korean computer culture seems to be even more homogenised than it is in other countries. Everyone uses Windows; everyone's on MSN Messenger; everyone has a Cyworld Mini-hompy[1]. My iBook received interesting responses: those that had heard of Macs thought that they were tools for graphic artists.

    In addition, there's a big limitation in that SEED, a Korean 128-bit encryption system used in online banking since the days of US 40-bit-only export restrictions, is only supported in IE; although there are moves to port it to Firefox, it hasn't been completed yet, as far as I know.

    1. Mini-homepage, a sort of personalised blog/music/photo-sharing site. They are literally miniature, too: even on a large monitor, the 'mini-hompy' is limited to a few hundred pixels in each direction in the centre of the page.

    --
    If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
  2. Re:A mixed bag by Daengbo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All my male, teen students do in their free time is play Starcraft. When I go to a restaurant near lunchtime, the TV is always on OnGameNet (AKA 24 hours CS / Starcraft). The female teens all play MAple Story (online MMORPG). The young adults that I know spend their evenings playing Kart Rider (online racing). Everybody wants to be a progamer when he or she grows up.

    As much as I want Linux to succeed here in S. Korea, HanSoft's 3.2 version is already free, and it isn't doing their market share any good.

    Not a chance of this happening in the private sector.

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    Put identity in the browser.