How Microsoft Beat Linux In China

kripkenstein notes an analysis up on TechRepublic detailing how Microsoft beat Linux in China, and the consequences of that victory: "With the soon-to-be largest economy standardized on Windows desktops, desktop Linux does seem to have an uphill battle ahead of it." "Linux has turned out to be little more than a key bargaining chip in a high stakes game of commerce between the Chinese government and the world's largest software maker... The fact that... Linux failed to gain a major foothold in China is yet another blow to desktop Linux. After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop."

Comments

Re:It's always been like this

[drooling-dog]

It's been ready for my desktop for years; in fact I stopped dual booting with Windows a long time ago and haven't looked back. Almost every week I read about some critical thing I'm not supposed to be able to do with Linux (like deal with .doc files), even though I've been doing it without problem or fanfare all along. Did I not get the memo, or could it just be misinformation and FUD?

I'm still amazed at the crap my Windows friends put up with on a daily basis, but they just regard it as the cost of doing business with their OS, I guess...

Re:What battle?

[westlake]

You can examine it for backdoors, concealed reporting etc, which you cannot do with a proprietary closed source OS

The Chinese government has had access to the Windows source code since 2003.

Now when China uses Windows in President Hu's office, or for that matter in its missile systems, it can install its own cryptography. How Microsoft conquered China.

Re:Big Picture

[kornkid606]

It's damned well time that we install a government that will protect the American consumer

Who is this we? I can't remember the last time that voting Americans installed a government that really gave two shits about the American people. And as far as protecting the American consumer, shit, not in this republic. In this republic the slogan is "Cash rules everything around me." Like George W Bush gives 2 shits about the American consumer.

don't get me wrong, I totally agree. It would be nice to see a government of, by and for the people. But chances are slim and getting slimmer all the time. As long as cut-throat capitalism rules the day, its every person for themselves. As such, big corporate rules our lives and administration and there is not much we can do about it.

Hopefully in time things will change, but I doubt it will be as soon as November '08 and it is going to require the American people actually speaking up and taking charge of their nation. But that's doubtful.

There's also Canada...

Re:The Problems w/ Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

"Linux security works at the OS level. If you're root on one system and you access a filesystem on another system over NFS you can modify files owned by root without having authenticated. That's a HUGE security flaw and it's been that way forever."

I beg to differ - If your running as root and accessing files as root on another system routinely, YOU ARE THE SECURITY FLAW.

Re:The Problems w/ Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Your description of Ctrl-Alt-Del is not correct and you should know it

1. You can ONLY kill your own processes (unless you are an Administrator)
2. Windows may disallow your attempt, even when you are an Administrator
3. a program may be in a state that will make it non-responssive to kill from task manager
4. You can not trust the "not responding" label on a program

"Best feature" ? Me think not.

SE Linux and several commercial UNIX'es do have ACL's, what's your problem ? You need a sexy GUI for it ?
SAMBA woks well (incl. security) in a Windows domain, i belive it uses Kerberos...
NFS require proper setup for working security... but so does a Windows domain...

Cutting'n'Pasting ? I do it daily across several applications (including applications running under wine)...

Re:The Problems w/ Desktop Linux

[filter_zero0]

Excuse me while I clean the coffie of my monitor and keyboard.
Nice piece of FUD dude.

Re:Well, that's a slap in the face!

[xoyoyo]

US GDP per capita = $39,319.40
China GDP per capita = $5,453.31

Or put another way: $150 dollars in China would be the same as charging $1200 for a Vista license in the US

Mark you I wouldn't be too outraged, if I were you. Vista Basic is 150 GBP here. That's $300.

is this even legal?

[totalctrl]

i thought what MS is doing in China should be called "dumping". other software companies in China should be able to sue MS according to WTO rules. $3 for a license would kill any domestic or international competitors.

Give Linux a good Chinese input method, first.

[Rimbo]

My in-laws are Chinese, and they can't stand Microsoft. The wife won't even put money into a mutual fund if she knows Microsoft's in it. Father-in-law can't stand 'em, either, and both have tried several different versions of Linux. I personally find Windows irritating to deal with, and use OSX and Linux exclusively.

But they all came back to Windows, because there are Windows input methods and word processors for Simplified and Traditional Chinese that kick the pants off of anything available for Linux. The wife doesn't even care so much for Mac OSX compared to the one for Windows. And the fonts for Simplified Chinese in Fedora are mediocre at best, and awful at worst. Looking at a Google.cn search in Firefox on Ubuntu 7.04 is hideous even to my untrained eyes -- you see many characters missing, and the characters that are there look like a mish-mash of multiple fonts.

So, if you care about this issue, this is what needs to happen.

1. Go check out NJStar on Windows. Make something like that for Linux, but better.
2. Go check out how the Windows Simplified Chinese works, and put that there.
3. And steal some decent fonts for Linux and make sure your favorite distro has 'em.

This is one of those times where we need to recognize that the better product won. And the only thing for us to do is to make ours better.

Re:It's always been like this

[pogson]

thegnu wrote:

There is NO reason for the average home user to install a completely new OS they've never seen. The hurdle for Linux is to get on enough work PCs that people are relatively comfortable enough with it, so that next virus they get, or next Norton Death Knell, they leap off their burning Windows install onto something stable.

For the 80% of "easy" cases where browsing/e-mail/word-processing are the important functions, there are several reasons to migrate:

• they can run 2007 software on machines that run stuff released in 2001 or earlier and cannot run Vista
• migration is relatively easy, see Jessimyn Installs Ubuntu (great fun)
• they can create pdfs
• they can be relatively free of malware
• they can pay what it costs to install the software instead of what the monopoly in the desktop market demands
• often, installing Linux is easier than installing/delousing that other OS
• even if they have never seen/heard "Linux" they can learn about it while researching problems with malware, the IT industry, headlines about anti-competion cases against M$, even the 10-Q or Analyst Meetings of M$ or just watching TV. Linux has been in the news one way or another heavily since about 2000. In 2000 when I did that, I read that Linux was hard to install but Caldera's installer was one of the easiest to use.
• before 2004 I had only met one person who was aware of Linux. Recently a much larger rate of familiarity exists even in persons who have never seen Linux. e.g. a high percentage of businesses use Linux on servers at work and a smaller fraction have examined FLOSS on the desktop and even Linux on the desktop see IDC survey presented at LinuxWolrd Summit 2006