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China Looks To Linux As Windows Alternative
Bismillah (993337) writes "Once again, after the Red Flag Linux effort that petered out this year, China is considering Linux to sort out its pressing Windows XP issue. The Windows 8 ban by China's government procurement agency and promises of official support may help."
2014, the year of the Linux desktop!
Wait ... what's a desktop?
Figered the chinaez wudad this alredy?
This shouldn't affect Microsoft's bottom line much because 99% of all MS Software in China is pirated.
Torvalds raging at Asian kernel patches in 3.. 2.. 1..
Good. They should be considering Linux. We all should be.
Sounds familiar...
This is dumb. They shouldn't be considering alternatives to a locked in OS. They should getting rid of the entire premise and going OS Agnostic. Then they can switch OS's at will.
The upstarts with lower cost and equal or better OSs will take the customer's business. No surprise. Bundled deals to keep the price up will also fail.
Microsoft has no choice but to lower prices, significantly. That is the real world of competitive business.
Considering that XP is pirated in China to a significant percentage less than 99%, you're missing that if everybody is using Linux nobody is going to be buying MS anything at all. Effectively total market lockout. Which can affect the NSA as well.
Truthfully, this probably won't affect anything.
You think NSA didn't backdoor Linux?
I currently disallow usage of my software by people owning Che Guevara T-shirts and other items bearing the scumbag's liking. Perhaps, it is time to make the license more encompassing by prohibiting all Communist-sympathizers...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
MS will not allow this. Look for them to give China whatever they have to, including a few billion in bribes to keep Linux from becoming the official OS.
They can just use the POS registry hack to get support. ;-)
Given the fact the NSA is in everybody's business these days. From Google, Microsoft and Apple. I think China moving to Linux might be a way to avoid the nasty spying of the NSA and its American partners. Yes, I truly believe the big tech companies are in bed with the NSA. Does this mean Linux is going to take over desktops and laptops? I highly doubt it. But given the fact some of America's companies are still using XP like Cummins diesel technology which I happened to notice the other day. Only makes me wonder how easy it probably is to steal American technology from companies like Cummins who still cling to Windows XP.
It boggles my mind how America that once was the technology giant of the World has companies who still today use XP. We have no reason or right to laugh at China when our pathetic industries are just as bad or maybe worse about adopting new computer technology. At least China might be thinking since Linux is free and that China could develop its own national distribution of Linux that it could be a good way to stay current with a OS. While the US is still working to spy on all its citizens, China is looking at disconnecting to some extent from the mercy of the Microsoft's, Google's and Apple's of the world.
And Lucy pulls the football away again. http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/21/5737366/china-bans-windows-8-from-government-computers-over-security-concerns
The desktop will never go away for a handful of very simple reasons.
The desktop has a power and thermal budget that is virtually unlimited, when compared to mobile devices.
Because of the above the desktop PC can have orders of magnitude more computing power AND be less expensive at the same time.
The desktop PC beats all other platforms for work ergonomics.
The desktop PC has the most screen real estate, and can be easily expanded for multiple monitors. (This is a huge productivity booster)
The way I see this, it seems the better solution would be for China to throw a few million dollars at the ReactOS development team.
At the very least, I would be contacting the ReactOS lead developer 'Alex Ionescu' and sit down with him and talk about China's requirements and listen to what Alex has to say; he is a guru on the workings of the Windows operating system; he can give you (China) great advice.
There is a good chance that Alex might say something to China along these lines: ....If you offer us 'X million dollars' in support and supply us with 'X amount' of your own skilled software engineers, then we can achieve this goal very soon.....what you (China) get in return is a fully open source operating system which will natively run Windows software....the other benefit you (China) get from this is that ReactOS allows your IT Engineers and Security Experts to reverse engineer and study the workings of proprietary closed-source Windows software to a much greater detail, thus giving you the ability to root out back-doors and other hidden 'goodies' buried in the software coming from the West."
"...We are not far away from totally reverse engineering the Windows operating system functionality
Yes, if I was China I would do the above first, before thinking about a Linux solution (which is good too mind you, but not quite now).
I thought this was a Slashdot story from years ago when China was supposed to ditch Windows...so here we are again and China still has no viable homegrown distro. I thought years ago they phased out Windows and used GNU/Linux. Not so. I know a Chinese insider who tells me that the Government handed out bales of cash to develop a GNU/Linux distro of their own and all Red Flag Linux is, is Fedora with a some Catonese/Mandarin. It was a scam of public funds. They really did not develop their own GNU/Linux distro properly. was interested because, in a racist way, I thought--wow, Asians doing GNU/Linux, it must be AWESOME and kick the other distro's ass. Asians are hard working and fastidious and the distro will intall without a hitch and it will be great. Not really. One of the issues with investing in China when it comes to business are corrupt officials and lack of accountability. In China, you pay off the right people, you do what you want--until you get caught and are made an example of for the press. Linus Torvalds mentioned something about how GNU/Linux could not really come out of places like India and China as the peole are far too concerned about trying to survive, and Linux is something that came about 'just for fun'.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
The more people adopt Linux, the more incentive there is to exploit it. You'll have three-letter gov agencies working their asses off to find and even insert vulnerabilities. The linux community was ecstatic when one German municipality decided to deploy it on all their city gov workstations. Imagine how much more important linux will become when the Chinese gov does the same thing. And by important I mean 'ripe target'.
The version of Ubuntu Linux for smartphones looks good: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone
At this point it seems like the holy grail of Smartphone/tablet computing is having a tablet/smartphone that can dock and have a graphic chip good enough to power a higher resolution monitor as well as an OS that can make the switch. Although the current 1080p isn't too bad for most desktop type use.
I don't even understand why china, of all places, is not 100% Linux wall to wall already...
People forget. One of the biggest reason businesses have for sticking to MS is that their customers use MS and they have to be able to exchange documents in MSs latest format. Well, with China using Linux companies are going to have to use document formats friendly to Linux.
Goodbye a large chunk of vendor lockin.
A concerted government initiative to adopt Linux is great, but what about reverse engineering Windows? You also have to consider compatibility with the Windows applications that already exist in greater numbers than comparable Linux/Unix applications. The Russians did something similar with the reverse engineering of DOS back in the late 80s and early 90s. They developed a closed source DOS for their military and industry. This might sound fanciful, but I'd be more excited about governments (not only China) supporting open source projects like ReactOS than yet another Linux distribution that will get needlessly forked with disparate programs and toolkits in userspace. Maybe it's a good idea to consider a reverse engineered Windows compatible OS as a way of compelling people to adopt open source. Some people here on Slashdot may not like the idea of shifting development towards clean reverse engineering of Windows, but I think it's closer to what people want. Many non-programmer professionals will never adopt Linux and they will hate you if you impose it upon them. It's not the OS that's the issue, it's the ecosystem. Windows ecosystem > Linux-based ecosystem. ReactOS or something similar is far more utilitarian then yet another Linux distribution.
Why is there not more adoption of the BSDs? In all honesty, BSD development is a much saner process than in Linux, is arguably more stable from my personal experience, and the license is much more forgiving.
Jokes on you China! NSA invented SELinux, which is considered the defacto way to ACL your shiznit. Also, don't mark me as a troll, but Linux platforms when not constantly maintained can be more susceptible to attack than Windows machines. Especially since most Linux boxen expose many ports by default, including but not limited to ssh, ntpd, bind, etc. Oh, and our glorious government helped pick the software and hardware random number sources.
I think what China should actually do is spend a lot less time trying to find ways to reduce dependency on U.S. technology, of which exists in almost everything, and instead just try to improve relations. Our economies are closely tied, so it's time to kiss and make up. Unfortunately, it takes a big boy not to pout. And, to come to the table and eat their vegetables. They've been hacking the shit out of the U.S., they shouldn't be that surprised it runs both ways. Ultimately, this is a diplomacy issue more than anything. A world where massive super powers can't at least act like they're getting along isn't acceptable.
As soon as you reverse engineer windows, MS will change something so that your reverse engineered version is no longer compatible.
Look at MS does with it's ms-office formats.
May have an opportunity here.
Gotta think long term.
MS has been pulling the same scams for decades. Bottom line: you cannot trust Microsoft. Not now, not ever. MS is going to do everything it can to force people onto win8, everybody knows it.
Maybe China has finally wised up?
That's true, MS does have a vested interest in making reverse engineering more difficult. MS may even attempt to start a frivolous lawsuit. However, many legacy applications still continue to be used. Even if MS does introduce some crazy new API with the intention of thwarting reverse engineering, there are at least two obstacles in the way of MS: 1) Will third party software developers waste extra time, money, and capital to rewrite their applications for the new API? 2) How will the industry react if MS chooses to completely drop the old Win32 API in a new version of Windows? There are many old applications out in the wild that are still being used.
My point is that there is a limit to what Microsoft can do to thwart reverse engineering without also damaging themselves. Sure they can arbitrarily change formats, but can they change APIs and ABIs wholesale? Look at what happened to IBM when they tried to introduce the proprietary micro-channel architecture. Their intent was to stop the reverse engineering that Compaq and others pioneered in. The winners and losers of that battle are common knowledge among the tech community. Another example, the .NET framework. Is it being adopted by software vendors? Yes, but it's only a small minority. Most applications use the old, but mature, Win32 API. Microsoft cannot be too radical in their actions.
Despite the moving target, a reverse engineered version of Windows still has much utility, especially if it's open source. DOS may be a legacy (some would also say historic) OS, but some still use it in the form of FreeDOS, DOSBOX, or some proprietary version of DOS. The Windows ecosystem is huge and it has great momentum. Forking one Linux distribution and spending millions of dollars (or millions of volunteer hours) maintaining it is a waste, in my opinion. Forking and disparate APIs and toolkits is one of the major problems with Linux. Why not convince more open source developers to take on the initiative of reverse engineering Windows, despite the moving targets created by MS? Linux is great on the server and embedded devices. Linux is not so great on desktops/laptop PCs, especially if the person using the PC is a non-programmer who wants to get stuff done.
Unix of the Forbidden City ?
A concerted government initiative to adopt Linux is great, but what about reverse engineering Windows? You also have to consider compatibility with the Windows applications that already exist in greater numbers than comparable Linux/Unix applications.
Somehow that seems like the US reverse engineering the Trabant.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Something people who do real work on a computer use.
To be forgiving to those who close the source code is certainly not a benefit of BSD's license. Giving them that ability works against the BSD source code gaining bug fixes and enhancements.
It's like saying that some country is better because its penal system is more forgiving to murderers. Would that be seen as a benefit? Well, perhaps by the criminals themselves, but not by many others.
Ultimately open source gains its benefits from the code being open, so a license that allows closure is counterproductive.
After 6 month's of windows 7 use I had to reinstall it again, it was running slow regardless of defragging and cleaning out the registry, no viruses. It took about 4 hours for the setup and installing all the updates including sp1. Update and restart, update and restart, update and restart, update and restart, ect..... It felt like it would never end. Same with windows 8.1 on a second machine.
Linux is not at the same level as windows when it comes to multimedia, gaming, productivity applications, as well as being stable(DE's). But, the linux OS, application, and update installations is faster than windows. And I do love the live dvd's(or usb) which I use when my HD goes to the crapper. We need at least one linux distro that has a standard api(something similar to win32) that will attract commercial developers. If i want offline software installation for linux it's impossible(dependency issues) I have to use relinux to recreate an ISO with all the necessary software but with windows regardless how old or new the software is it will install offline.
China can't move to Linux, they will alienate the Windows MMO Chinese gold farmers.
they should just grab the latest copy of upper korea's wildly popular Red Star OS
come on china get auto configuration of multiseat linux to levels far greater than windows multipoint server
someone needs to do it.