Linux Grows 27.1% in China

piracy by Anonymous Coward · 2006-04-09 02:13 · Score: 5, Funny

The adoption rate should be higher, but it's not taking into account the people in China who pirate Linux.

in comparison to.... by eggoeater · 2006-04-09 02:21 · Score: 4, Informative

I'd like to see the growth stats for pretty much everything else in China....

I'm willing to bet that MS products grew a lot more than 27%.
My brother has to go there for business on a regular business. He says they're building the equivalent of New York City every year.

This is also why we in the US will be paying $5/gallon for gas soon... not because of our demand but because of Asia's demand.

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Re:in comparison to.... by jawtheshark · 2006-04-09 02:36 · Score: 3, Funny

This is also why we in the US will be paying $5/gallon for gas soon...
See if I care: I *already* pay $5/gallon *now*...

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Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:in comparison to.... by jawtheshark · 2006-04-09 02:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well, with my current job I have to do 100km/day too... That adds up, especially because I was dumb enought to buy a sports car six years ago. (When prices were still acceptable and I only had to do 60km/day) With the fuel efficiency of about 25MPG my car has, it hurts... badly... (I manage to get it up to 27.6MPG by driving like a grampa)
In the US, there seems to be a myth that in Europe one can rely on public transportation all the time. This is true in the big metropolitan areas, but most people still live outside such areas. Going to my work with public transportation would take over 3 hours. With my car, I can make it in an hour in peak times and in less than 40 minutes out of peak times.

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Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Re:in comparison to.... by Kjella · 2006-04-09 03:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's different. Most places in America, you can't live normally without driving. Sad, perhaps, but true.

For two reasons. One because you're probably the most obese people on earth, which doesn't get any better by you sitting in cars and at desks all day. Getting to the public transportation is tiresome because you don't get the exercise of using public transportation. The 10 minute walk to/from public transportation actually makes a difference.

Secondly, you don't have much of public transportation because noone would use it. Why should you, your car gets you where you want at almost no cost at all, and I admit the convienience of going exactly when you want it to go, to exactly whereever you're going is an advantage. In order to run it at any profitability, there must be people willing to use it regularly, not as a last ditch emergency when the car breaks down. If you expect public transportation to act as a taxi service on demand, it's not going to happen.

If you tell me it can't be done, bullshit. Our population density is *half* of yours, we pay about $6/gallon already. Sure, the people in the outskirts need a car but you don't even have proper public transportation where you could. In fact, everything there seems to be designed for driving. Let me take a small detail, last time I was there we bought some stuff in a grocery, and the plastic bags were completely unsuited for carrying. They were barely usable enough to get them out to your car in the parking lot. So if you're stuck in a corner, I'd say that's because you're painting yourself in there. Other countries cope, if you can't you need to blame something else than geography.

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Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:in comparison to.... by dalutong · 2006-04-09 04:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

You forget one more point -- Americans have left the cities for the suburbs (and now the "ex"urbs) over the past 50 years. American's are big on property and personal space. I grew up in China and got very used to always been within a couple of feet of someone. When I came to America in '99 I was chastised regularly for walking or standing too close to someone.

I also noticed the envy people had with large yards -- something you can only get far away from cities (for affordable prices.) I think some of this is the "keeping up with the jones'" effect -- everyone in america feels they are middle class, and so no one accepts that they can't afford a house with a yard. so they find a place where they can.

That and people here like bargains. They are happy to drive 20+ minutes to go to the discount shops.

And T.V. I can't remember what the exact numbers are, but the average household has the T.V. on for something like 8 hours. But when you live in the sub/ex-urbs... what else is there to do? You can play in parks, I guess. But you can't really walk anywhere else.

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Re:in comparison to.... by Knuckles · 2006-04-09 06:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

In fact, everything there seems to be designed for driving.

The car culture creates a pull towards car-friendlyness. If people have cars, distances grow. Studies at the Technical University Vienna have shown that the average time we spend for transportation is pretty much constant. If you can go faster, you go farther.

Therefor in a car culture, the shops move to the outskirts where they have less costs, and get away with it because people can drive there for the cheaper prices. The shops offer bigger and bigger packages of household goods, to be chearper, and because people drive there as rarely as possible. The parking lots are huge. The local shops go bankrupt. Suddenly you can't go shopping without a car.

Other example: cars make streets deserted. If people use cars a lot in a city, it gets lonely on the streets. Instead of walking together, people drive by each other. In addition, the noise makes the residents turn away from the street. They close windows, try to be in rooms away from the street. Given time, the architecture will change and turn inwards, presenting cold walls to the outside, with only bathroom and hallway windows. The bed and living room windows face to a courtyard or similar.
These changes slowly make the streets uncomfortable and possibly dangerous, and gradually more people switch to cars. Soon there is no space for pedestrians any more, let alone a sidewalk, or anything to walk to.

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Re:in comparison to.... by MadUndergrad · 2006-04-09 08:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

Gore also wanted to impose a $0.50 per gallon gas tax. Personally, I think that that is the best idea I've heard from a politician in a very long time. That would have the effect of lowering the demand for gas, thus hastening the adoption of policies and practices that would reduce our need for gas. It would also be a good source of revenue for our government which has the fiscal acumen of a flock of teenage girls with daddy's credit card.

heh by popeguilty · 2006-04-09 02:29 · Score: 5, Funny

[obligatory joke about how Free Software == communism]

Server or Desktop by CSHARP123 · 2006-04-09 02:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

This article do not have much information. Is the server software or the desktop software that is gaining hold there? Linux has always grown in server market. IMHO, Growth in Desktop market will be a great deal as that helps the growth of the Linux much faster than server growth.

Which pills are they using? by Mr2001 · 2006-04-09 02:38 · Score: 3, Funny

I don't read Chinese, so I can only respond to the email advertisements I get in English, but I've tried them all and *I* sure haven't grown 27.1%... maybe I should hire a translator.

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Purchase Linux by suv4x4 · 2006-04-09 02:58 · Score: 3, Funny

After long, exhausting and expensive research, China has found out how to buy a free product.

Re:Generate? by canuck57 · 2006-04-09 03:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

How does an operating system generate millions of dollars? Do they mean save?

Save would be in the billions. Say you have 200 million children and you wanted to give them computers. 200,000,000 times $1,000 for office, windows, email (servers and client), powerpoint, database, compilers and tools, etc. is not going to cut it.

One thing most of us don't understand is that they will not pay M$ prices, they can't. Linux probably runs $1 or less a copy. Saving, 199.9 billion. Comes with source and having a million programmers improve it is real and economical. It might take a generation but once established there will be no room for expensive western products.

Microsoft has a dilema, if they want a piece of the worlds biggest single market they have to license their entire suite for less than $20 to stand a chance. Explaining this to the western pricing models will send the market into kaos. And it still does not address the open sources issue.

It may not be just Microsoft that has issues, imagine what would happen if China produced a x86 chip that was 90% as fast as AMD or Intel but cost $10 or less.

Like most things, it is only a mater of time and North America will import database appliances and ERP systems from China for a fraction of current costs. It might take 10 years to be viewed as a issue but it is already happening. Linux in in almost every $49 wireless home AP out there.

In the end, every business that makes it will be services orientated. The OS is a commodity.

Mod parent up by claus.wilke · 2006-04-09 05:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

The parent poster is 100% right. It's sad how few people understand this. With the way the majority of contemporary American cities are built, it's essentially impossible to introduce efficient mass transit, simply because there are very few places that have sufficient population density to be attractive stops for mass transit. City planning has to be changed first, then people can use more mass transit and use their car less.

For more info, read "Suburban Nation" by Duany et al.

Also, as a counter example, consider San Francisco, which still has a traditional city layout, and functioning mass transit.

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