Korea Plans to Choose Linux City, University

thefirelane wrote to mention an ambitious plan in the works by the South Korean government. Work is underway to choose a city, which will become a place where open-source software will become the mainstream operating system. From the article: "The selected government and university will be required to install open-source software as a main operating infrastructure, for which the MIC will support with funds and technologies. In the long run, they will have to migrate most of their desktop and notebook computers away from the Windows program of Microsoft, the world's biggest maker of software. 'The test beds will prompt other cities and universities to follow suit through the showcasing of Linux as the major operating system without any technical glitches and security issues,' Lee said. "

Comments

Re:UNIX used to be the norm

[squoozer]

It's good to see Governments taking Linux seriously but it seems pretty clear to me why UNIX lost out in the first place: money. Windows was (and I would say still is) the better product and it's dirt cheap if you are installing thousands of copies and are an educational establishment. If open source / UNIX is to take back some of those installs it needs to become a lot simpler to use. I love my Debian box and wouldn't give it up for the world but I spend 10 times as long making it work than I do on my Windows install. In fact, I don't remember the last time I had to fix anything on my Windows install - it just works. I admit that if it (hardware mainly) doesn't work straight away under Windows it probably never will but the time I have spent trying to get poor supported hardware working under Linux... well lets just not go there.