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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."

28 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    2014, the year of the Linux desktop!

    Wait ... what's a desktop?

    1. Re:Finally! by ArcadeMan · · Score: 5, Funny

      A desktop is that thing you put your tablet on when you don't use it.

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      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    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 binarylarry · · Score: 2

      My fortune cookie says Year of the Penguin, biiiiitch!

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    4. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Where you need to do a fair amount of processing, isolated from a server so you don't need to share.

      Or just where convenience of typing is more important than mobility. So, basically any office job.

    5. Re:Finally! by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      No, we still have the days of the PC.

      The difference is, we don't need one PC per family member anymore. One PC per family would satisfy most families around - techies will probably go with one PC per adult.

      And we're seeing it where PCs are basically stagnating, sitting in the corner unused while tablets and smartphones serve as the daily use model for most people. For the odd task that they don't satisfy, the PC is there.

      But I don't see the PC fading like the mainframe. First, mainframes were relegated to special data centers and owned by a few. Whereas most families (at least the ones that matter) have 2 or more PCs - one for mom, one for dad, one for the kids, etc. And that model will change to probably one for everyone to use when they need it - e.g., school work.

      The PC still has its uses, but the need for everyone to have their own "personal" one over sharing one has dropped significantly.

    6. Re:Finally! by mlts · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Linux as a desktop instead of Windows can bring some advantages. However, China has some problems to be solved:

      1: Windows has one big advantage -- Active Directory and GPOs. It is relatively easy to manage tens of thousands of desktops with the tools provided. Yes, one can use Puppet, Chef, etc... but Windows's GPO provisioning is still ahead and the expertise is available almost anywhere to deploy this.

      2: F/OSS alternatives to AD and Exchange that are scalable. This means a mail server that probably sits on top of PostgreSQL or MariaDB and uses that for its main mailbox engine, with full replication, hub/edge nodes, the ability to send out SMTP externally, but keep things in the DB internally, backups, restores, different mailbox replicas in different geographic locations, etc. Exchange handles so much communication, and is pretty much the only game in town for large scale messaging except for Notes. Google Apps doesn't count in this instance.

      3: An easy mechanism to push out patches, check logs, ensure policies are set, healthchecks, etc. Again, standard fare in the Microsoft world, but not often used on the UNIX side. Similar to #1. There are tools for this, but Windows has all of this built in.

      4: Better/universal file sharing permissions. All UNIX variants have additions past user/group/other, but there will need to be better UI tools to allow a group in one domain access, but disallow people in another domain access (due to separation of duty), and have that go down the directory structure. Again, doable, not not as seamless as in Windows.

      5: File-based cryptography. We have BitLocker and such, but UNIX doesn't really have a file-level encryption protocol like EFS that encrypts on a user/file granularity. One can use CFS/EncFS and mount directories, or TrueCrypt and mount volumes, but there isn't anything that one can select a file, encrypt it, and have it only accessible to a set of users/groups in AD/LDAP.

      6: Enterprise level recoverability. LUKS is a good encryption protocol, but part of a large scale desktop need is being able to store recovery keys, similar to how BitLocker keys are stashed in AD. This isn't impossible, but would need some programming to do on a large scale.

      None of these are major hurdles, but because UNIX tends to be a server or appliance OS, there hasn't been as much a focus on a desktop infrastructure compared to the Windows ecosystem, since the NIS/NIS+ days at Sun.

      In a way, I hope China can solve these problems, as it would mean some action in the desktop arena, a place that has been stagnant for decades now.

    7. Re:Finally! by mlts · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The "desktop PC" is sort of morphing into a server or a media hub. It won't go away because tablets, e-readers, and smartphones are great media consumption devices, but for media production, there isn't anything that is going to replace the role of a decent monitor, large desktop hard drive, keyboard, and pointing device. It might be a tablet in a dock, but the role of a desktop in a home isn't going to vanish anytime soon.

    8. Re:Finally! by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2

      If you lump laptops and desktops together, I don't think it's time to say those days are 'over'. It's just when:

      the hardware you can get for 400 dollars at Walmart is relevant for running 99% of all the applications the average user wants
      the hardware you can get for $900 dollars can pretty much run the next 4-5 years worth of games at pretty much maximum resolution and quality
      There is virtually no incentive to upgrade.

      Compare this to the late 90's and early 2000's Year on year the performance gains of GPU's and CPU's was pretty much exponential. A computer could very much be outdated within a year.

      N=1 example, my family bought a 486/66 with 8 megs of ram in 1995. By 1998 we upgraded to a Pentium 233 (MMX? fuzzy on the exact specs) with 32MB of ram, and some kind of Riva video card. Nowadays a 3 year old computer could likely play just about any game you throw at it, and the latest OS.

      People (and especially businesses) are not buying new PC's because they don't need to upgrade.

    9. Re:Finally! by tepples · · Score: 2

      One PC per family would satisfy most families around

      Unless multiple kids need to type up homework. Or would most families have multiple tablets each with a Bluetooth keyboard?

    10. 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.

    11. Re:Finally! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      My fortune cookie says Year of the Penguin, biiiiitch!

      Fortune cookies are American, not Chinese. Since they were first made in California, they have spread to other countries, but not to China. Most Chinese have never seen one, or even heard of them.

      This is similar to the situation with Cinco de Mayo, which most Americans consider a Mexican holiday. But the celebration on that date originated in the United States, it is still primarily celebrated in the US, and most Mexicans have never heard of either the celebration or the obscure historical event being celebrated.

    12. Re:Finally! by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That is true... however, in the US, Canada, and other places, bandwidth isn't increasing, but fees are, so having everything in the cloud can get very pricy. This is why the LAN/WAN model will probably be around for a while. LAN-wise, having a machine have the role of the desktop and the server. With the current climate of ever decreasing data caps, it may end up pricy enough for even "landline" service that one is just better of not using any cloud services whatsoever and having the backups and such handled by a device on the LAN with removable hard disks or a tape drive.

      I can see one device taking up multiple roles. For example, a MS Surface can function as a tablet, a server (when docked and some drives attached), and a desktop (when docked or used with a Bluetooth keyboard.) However, until WAN bandwidth becomes inexpensive, the role of a server on the LAN may not go away anytime soon.

  2. Poor Linus.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Torvalds raging at Asian kernel patches in 3.. 2.. 1..

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

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

    1. Re: Good. by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 2

      Rinux?

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    2. Re: Good. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2

      Actually, I doubt it would even work, *unless* they honored the GPL. They need it to work on all sorts of different computers with different devices and what not. There isn't a good way to do that with linux, without providing the source.

      Individual small manufacturers can get away with not releasing their source code for their customized version of linux, because it has a small scope and doesn't need to be supported on anything else. This would need to be supported for a long time, on a wide array of devices.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    3. 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.

    4. Re: Good. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Rinux?

      The R/L confusion is Japanese, not Chinese. In Chinese, R and L are distinct, but some of them have problems with phonemes that don't occur in Chinese, such as "th" and "v". Of course, most native English speakers also mangle Chinese when first learning to speak it.

    5. Re: Good. by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 2

      China's a big country with like a dozen languages and accents of the same language. In some of them, L and R are closer together than they are in English. In others, W joins into the mix.

  4. Not Gonna Happen by amiga3D · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Time to change the terms of my licensing... by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Somehow, Nazis got a press so bad even Wolfenstein won't show a swastika, yet we have hammer&sickle proudly displayed on major government parades, Stalin and Lenin widely worshipped, and so on. It's scary how investing in some propaganda can whitewash even the most murderous ideology in world's history.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  6. Deja Vu by ikhider · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  7. Re:Time to change the terms of my licensing... by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Somehow?" The difference is: Hitler lost the war and Stalin won it. He was very popular with most of the people he was oppressing during his own lifetime. Political prisoners in Siberia would write letters to him asking for help, sincerely believing that if only he knew what was going on... Not sure what to draw from this, except the idea we were given as kids that Chinese and Russians secretly envy us and can't wait to throw off their shackles are mostly baloney. And that people really love leaders that make them feel strong.

  8. Re:Time to change the terms of my licensing... by farble1670 · · Score: 2

    um, what? the hammer & sickle is a labor / union symbol. of course it was used as the symbol of communist USSR, but they hardly have a monopoly on murderous ideology.

  9. Re:os agnostic by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 2

    Ooh! I know. They should use Oracle Java (TM)! That's multiplatform and not subject to vendor lock-in on any particular OS!

  10. 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.

  11. Re:well i've got news for you china by walterbyrd · · Score: 2

    In linux, the source code is visible, makes it harder to hide stuff.

    In my experience - and I have quite a lot - linux is *far* more secure than windows.

    Closing ports, or whatever, is ridiculously simple. Finding hidden code in a binary distribution is much tougher.