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China Looks To Linux As Windows Alternative

Posted by Soulskill on from the going-for-a-billion dept.

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."

5 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good. They should be considering Linux. We all should be.

    1. Re: Good. by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course I don't know, but I think it's likely that they will eventually honor the GPL to some extent because of the inherent non-legal punishment for not honoring the GPL: increased maintenance costs.

      If I take your code and build my own version, making changes, and then you make substantial improvements to your code, then I'm left with 4 choices:

      1) Ditch my changes and use your new code.
      2) Go back and re-impliment my old changes on your new code, possibly needing to rewrite my changes to account for changes in your code.
      3) Live without the improvements of your new version.
      4) Submit my code to your project so that they become part of the parent project, and then I can continue to get updates from you without additional work.

      Unless you have some reason to keep your changes secret, option number 4 is actually pretty attractive.

  2. Re:Finally! by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That was point I made a while back.
    Linux for the desktop will only take over, after the desktop usage has declined out of the hands of average user.

    The days of the Personal Computer is gone, the Desktop is now a serious Business workstation, reserved for the likes of Engineers, Programmers, Architects, and Finance. Where you need to do a fair amount of processing, isolated from a server so you don't need to share.

    Not the end of the Desktop, but a cut in its usages and move towards more serious jobs.

    This trend is similar to the Mainframe. Desktop PCs and Desktop based servers took over a large chunk of the Mainframe, Mainframe operators touted simular arguments about how you need a Mainframe for real work and these PC are just toys for kids. However over time as the PC got more powerful, it proven itself to be a good replacement for most of the tasks.
    The Mainframe is still around, and it has been relegated to very particular type of work. The same thing will Happen to the Desktop, and in probably 20 year the same thing will happen to mobile devices.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Re:Finally! by dannys42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is also why the GNOME's insistence on designing for (what I call) "the mythical grandmother" was always flawed.

  4. Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense? by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Certainly not true in my case.

    I think windows, especially after XP, is a total POS. Linux desktop blows it away in terms of speed, security, reliability, and everything else.

    Although I hardly use it anymore, I constantly have to muck with win7 on my laptop. Badly behaved apps put crap in my start up - making the boot time even slower. Every time I boot up, or shut down, I have to wait for updates. Sound stopped working for no apparent reason, had to fix something in the registry. On and on, one thing after another.

    Linux just works, and work well. After using windows, linux is like a breath of fresh air.