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Revolutionary Chinese take on Linux
oneeyedman writes "Maybe this will give support to the people who
think that Linux is a communist plot. Salon has an item about
an article called Anti-Microsoft 'subculture'"
that ran in the China Youth Daily. In this reading of the situation, Linux users are angry peasants rising with pitchforks aimed at Microsoft's "hegemony." "
josepha48 wrote:
.doc file formats. If you're lucky, you can sometimes even avoid Word then.
If windows 2000 doesn't cost $2000 and it were to sell for $50 and has all this and included MS Office, and Dev Studio, and IIS, and a built in scripting language, and all that Linux has and 200 days of uptime it may be worth buying.
I disagree, since Linux (or FreeBSD for that matter) would still have three big benefits over such a Windows system: It's better written, more stable, and Free.
Fact is the only reason anyone is tied to Microsoft is becuase we almost all use Office and Word.
Speak for yourself. The fact is that many of us don't use Word except for those times when we have to deal with some bozo who insists on sending everything in one of the many Microsoft
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Posted by generic kewl tech reference:
I was expecting something along the lines of "Arise, you cramp-fingered proletariat coders! You have nothing to lose but your licensing agreements! Cast off the chains of the imperialist running dogs at Microsoft and stand blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight of revolution!"
Man, you just don't get Communist movements like you did in the old days anymore...
Though everyone seems to be joking about this, as a chinese Linux user, i do think this could be an important step leading into Linus' World Domination plan.
;)
;)
China is one of the biggest, if not *the* biggest market in the computer industry right now, if Linux can really penetrate into the Chinese market, well, half of the world would be using Linux on their desktops
Linux has already won in terms of price in the budget-conscious chinese entrepeneurs against NT (heh, free unix vs. $5000+ NT) . Linux is slowly getting more popular in Hong Kong already(that's where i am from) and hopefully that would continue into the Mainland China.
I think one of the biggest tasks we should work on is getting better Chinese support within Linux/X. Avalible GNU chinese inputs kits released by taiwan's Linux User groups are a good direction that we should work on.
If Linux's chinese support gets to be as good as its japanese support (the japanese linux/*bsd hackers are amazing), i think Linux would be well on its way to world domination...
duncan
I guess the question is how important is getting technical support these days?
Well lets see. With Linux you send an email to a mailing list and in most cases you get a response within a day (or same day) and often a solution to you problem or someone experiencing the same problem willing to work with you to solve it.
With most technical support you pay for the product, you pay for the support, then you pay for the phone call and have to press lots of buttons to get support (try calling M$ tech support). Then the solution can often be somewhat costly. Often it is just a matter of downloading a new patch or verion of the software (what I had to do for my scanner with NT). Sometimes it is you must buy this to fix the problem.
Also with Linux for $50 you get the operating system which can be used on SMP, you get a desktop enviroment with X, you get Apache, you can get office tools, and lots of utilities. You get a C/C++ compiler and perl, Fortran, and lots more.
If windows 2000 doesn't cost $2000 and it were to sell for $50 and has all this and included MS Office, and Dev Studio, and IIS, and a built in scripting language, and all that Linux has and 200 days of uptime it may be worth buying.
Fact is the only reason anyone is tied to Microsoft is becuase we almost all use Office and Word. If there was a version of Word that ran under UNIX and LINUX I think we'd all stop using Microsoft products.
Hmmm, another project ot take on.
Only 'flamers' flame!
As I see it, the advantage of Linux over Windows isn't that it's less expensive. It's that Linux is a better operating system. China may prove to be a valuable test: if price isn't a consideration, what would people rather use?
Internationalization becomes a major selling point here. It may be that Micros~1, recognizing that it won't actually sell much software in China on account of rampant piracy, may not bother investing much in making Windows friendly to a Chinese audience. If that's the case, Linux may win by default.
Journalists in China have a problem Western ones don't: they have to search hard to find things to write about, since many, many subjects will annoy someone in authority somewhere. You'll see lots of articles in mainland Chinese papers that aren't really news - archaeology is popular I think. This piece is another.
/.; this article will be seen as just another example of Western arrogance and illogicality, probably just what its writer intended.
Bashing the West is also pretty safe ground, and that's why this article was written. Remember that the impression it'll create in China is somewhat different to the impression it creates on
It's a good job most people don't read the official press any more and get their content smuggled in from Hongkong.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
The biggest obstacle to Linux in China is the
fact that, for many, if not most people, Microsoft
software costs the same as Linux: nothing.
Piracy is everywhere.
On the bright side, though, the pirate CD vendors
have started selling bootleg copies of the latest
Red Hat releases, and Linux is gaining ground in
the growing ISP industry.
I prefer to use the analogy of the Russian Revolution to Linux.
A Monarchy that censers the populus. Small groups of intellectuals fighting for the freedom of the people. Multiple failed attemps to usurp the government before the revolution of 1917 where several groups all with a good chance of victory striking at an opportune moment.
If it is really looked at there are some striking comparisons. Apple could be considered the Socialist Revolutionsaries, or SR's. The BeOS people, originally helped by Apple now thrown out due to conflicts of interest sort of fit the Left SR's who were too radical to be really considered by the SR's, and who were simpathetic and helpful to the Menshevic and Bolshevic groups. *BSD fits very well with the Menshevic group, very radical, good ideas, intellegent, but no really strong single leader (by really strong, I mean very noticeable).
Which leaves Linux with the Bolshevics. A good fit in my humble opinion.
Let's look at the comparisons.
The Bolshevics were a small radical group that were originally part of the same group as the Menshevics but broke off due to a dispute. The Bolshevics were more radical than the Menshevics.
Linux in a sense breaking away from UNIX, being newer and similar but more radical.
The Bolshevics had a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow the people to rule themselves if they wanted to.
Linux has a strong ideology. Fight for the ultimate freedom of the people. Allow for the people to change their OS as they please, while still allowing for those who choose not to rule their OS to still have a lot of freedom.
The Bolshevics had a very far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Lenin. Strong central leadership is argueably the reason why the Bolshevics won. Lenin knew when to fight and when to run. He also was able to adapt so that control that was gained was not lost, ie abolition of the death penalty in 1918 and the New Economic Policy (1).
Linux has a far sighted, open minded, brilliant leader, aka Linus. Having a central leader to regulate the code that goes into major improvements in Linux has been a key to the ability for Linux to become what it is today. Plus the ability to adapt has been a major necessity to keep alive.
The Bolshevics gained popular support quickly due to ingenius propaganda techniques and due to the inability of the other groups to connect with the populus. The Bolshevics showed themselves as a group of the people. The other groups, especially the SR's, were eccentially decendents of the Populists, who, although dedicated to helping the people, couldn't relate to them because of their up-bringing in different society. Although the Bolshevics also were brought up in a different society they were able to adapt to draw in the masses.
Linux is the fastest growing OS, and partially due to great coverage in the news, and partially due to the fact that our word spreads quickly. Although the other groups, Apple, BeOS, *BSD, UNIX, are all great they are all very separated from the general populus. They have their supporters who are all out to make life better for people but all have some sort of hang-up with people. Apple is "seen" (seen and truth are two different things! ok!) as overly basic, simple, and generally underpowerd. BeOS isn't know of very well outside the respective community of well, us. UNIX and *BSD are still "seen" as text based and very complicated. Linux has been able to adapt.
There are a great deal of other similarities that I don't want to go into right now because I have already been too long winded.
(1) The New Economic Policy actually allowed for some capitalism, as sort of a transition over to Communism. Lenin saw this as a necissary to help rebuild and stablize. In a sense the idea of selling Linux as a product is like that. Use it until people get used to the idea of free software being powerful and useful.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Maybe I should dust off my childhood copy of The Fat Dead Guy's Little Red Book.
:)
"Childhood"? "Fat"? "Red"?
What does Santa have to do with the Linux revolution?
OH! I get it.
Santa => 'Giving presents to all the little boys & girls' => Communism => China.
Got it.