Red Caps Adopt Red Hat

China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers to death, now looks set to encourage them. In this article from the South China Morning Post, Red Hat says it will establish a beach head in the rapidly industrialising sleeping giant to push Linux before Microsoft makes its move. We reported in November that Linux was to be China's official OS. I can see Red Hat stock jumping skyward if a billion communists suddenly decide Linux is their desktop and server platform of choice.

Comments

Sensationalism

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Usually when something like this happens, I bite my tongue and let the other naysayers come out of the woodwork. However, I would expect better from Slashdot not to use a sensationalist headline like "Red Caps Adopt Red Hat," and I would hope that the editors would know better than trying to stir up flames by pointing out their (not really that recent) sentencing of crackers (isn't this the same news site which is constantly trying to distinguish between a hacker and a cracker?). It seems that whenever things involve China or other non-English-speaking nations, Slashdot gets nice and sensational, showing only one side of the issue even when that side is relatively irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Thanks, Nathan, for putting a sour taste in my mouth tonight.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Windows does beat linux for I18N

[poopie]

Developing nations *can* afford klunky M$ products. Pirated CDs with MS software cost the same as linux cds. I do not endorse piracy, but there *are* thousands of shops that sell pirated software in Asia and they do it publicly.

So, price isn't an issue. Maybe copyright compliance is, but not price.

The biggest problem I can see to increasing linux use in Asia is internationalization. I'm willing to bet that many millions of people would rather use windows in their own language than linux in english.

I know, for european languages, you can set LC_ALL , and I know that there are localized version of linux in Thai, Japanese, Chinese, but until we have a single distribution of linux that can imput and display all the major languages in every app, we're not finished.

There's more to it than meet the eye.

Do you have any idea how many different ways there are to type chinese? (at least 18 different imput methods if memory serves me)

Do you have any idea how many different and incompatible character sets there are for Chinese? (at least 3 completely different ones)

Do you have any idea how few of the total chinese characters are even represented in a complete UNICODE font? (I think unicode font includes about 20,000 Chinese, Japanese, Korean glyphs while Chinese has over 80,000 characters)

add on a batch of other languages with accents above, below, or on either side of character, and then start thinking about right to left text input. (arabic, hebrew, ...)

sadly, X wasn't designed with these in mind. The GNOME folks are working on pango to address these issues... seems redhat is putting a lot of work into internationalizaion...

Here's a link to gscript

Here's a gtk internationalization whitepaper

Shame on you, Nathan!

[Bruce Perens]

I got so pissed off by this story that I've had to type in this comment three times just to get it right.

I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true for the most part, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again. Did Jeff and Rob decide to fly to California and leave Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter?

• The nation of China has not made Linux its official operating system. The story to that effect was a hoax.
• The Red Caps are not adopting Red Hat. They never said they were.
• One billion communists are not adopting Linux as their platform of choice. That is speculation.
• Exactly one thing in the story is true. Red Hat is opening an office and going after the Chinese market, like a lot of other capitalist companies.

But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.

Bruce

The War in Asia for Linux

[Conspire]

The War Ahead for Linux in Asia

Hello All!

I am an expatriate living in Asia and running a trading/consulting company.

I recently switched our network over to a RH solution from NT4.0. I did this for the following reasons:

1. I did not want to fork over upgrade fees for NT4.0 and Office 2K next year.

2. I installed sp5.0 on our NT4.0 Alpha server a couple months ago, crashing the entire server, losing lots of valuable information, and forcing me to re-install from step 1. I decided on that day that I want a stable Unix based solution for our enterprise server.

3. I had played with Linux (RH6.0) on my workstation, and found it easy to install, configure and use. I then installed on another employee's computer, and he found it to be ok for application use. The stability of the kernel is VERY GOOD (Thanks to all you developers out there!!! Drinks are on me when you are in town!)

4. I believe in Open Source as a defense against possible dangers to the free world caused by proprietary network solutions and protocols.

Ok, the war is ahead, and there are MILESTONE battlefields that must be crossed before anyone using, developing, selling, or banking on Linux and the open source movement can cheer: THESE BATTLEFIELDS ARE:

1. A STABLE INTERNATIONALIZED BROWSER. Netscape is half a load short of bricks for Linux. We all know it. It crashes all the time and drives me nuts. Options? Not Opera, which I have tried in beta form and find flaky. Not Amaya, which I can't even read WIRED.COM with. And surely not Lynx, which I like using now and again but find just a little too much like gophering for the year 2k. What do I do if I want to read a Chinese Big5 charset page in English Linux? If I am running M$, I can do this, and read Arabic, and read Japanese, without any glitches. LINUX NEEDS A GOOD STABLE BROWSER WITH INTERNATIONALIZED READING AND INPUT CAPABILITY. The future is the internet, and this is the key to having any market share on the desktop of the future. MS may realize this one day and just release IE for Linux. They may be working on it now, and if it were out tomorrow, I would pay for it.

2. STABLE INTERNATIONALIZED OFFICE APPLICATIONS. Running Office 97 English under NT4.0, I could read a Chinese big5 business plan submitted to me. Now, I have to go to one of the Chinese NT4 Workstations to read one. And why are there still Chinese NT4 Workstations in the office? Well, because there IS NO CHINESE APPLICATION software for Linux. That's right NONE. So the NT workstaions gotta stay, and I will have to pay M$ for upgrade fees sometime next year for NT5 and Office2K. I would much rather pay for a Chinese version of StarOffice, or Applix or even Office2K for Linux! The Chinese employees refuse to use English office apps, as they don't even speak fluent English! IF LINUX WANTS TO CONQUER THE DESKTOP, IT WILL NEED TOOLS TO DO IT. As this is a world market, Linux needs tools for worldwide use. There are posts about this above this one, so I will not go into more details here.

3. WORLD DISTRIBUTION. M$ is used on 90%+ desktops in China, and of those probably 90%+ are not paid licenses. M$ does not care, because this creates a barrier of entry to competitors' products at the present and in the future. WHEN the average Chinese user can afford to pay for the M$ License, which is much sooner than most of you who have never been there think, THEY WILL PAY FOR IT. And, they would rather pay for it than pay the time needed learn a new OS and Office Application Platform. This is the economics of software gentleman and ladies, and we are living in a single market world economy. M$ is available at every single software store, both legal and illegal, in China. What about Linux? It took me 4 hours of computer shop hopping and alotta "duh, what is Linux you freak?" looks before I found a book with RH6.0, RH6.1, CLE0.8 and some local disto CD all included in the book for about 12.00 $USD. I could have got a pirated copy of NT4.0 and Office97 for the same price, in about 2 minutes of shopping!

4. PROFITABILITY AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE. Wall Street can be very understanding and kind in the beginning of a relationship. Unfortunately, as time goes on (not much time et'all), investors start looking at the value of their investment and the overall profitability of the enterprise. RH, LNUX, and all the latest Linux IPOs companies will need to prove their value in bottom line numbers in the coming year. Anyone of you involved in Open Source based Companies, please remember, PROFITABILITY IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE FIRM, and you must be profitable to survive the years ahead and win the war. I hope that RH, LNUX and the others are very profitable and bless their shareholders, but it will be tough to beat M$. Per employee perhaps the most profitable company in the world, M$ buys new revenue streams with that income, and hence my next battlefield-M&A.

5. MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS IN THE LINUX COMMERCIAL COMMUNITY. Giants rule the modern corporate world with market share and profitability. Niche markets are for small players, and small players will get acquired in time. In order for Linux to compete, there will need to be a consolidation in the industry. Fortunately, M$ is distracted by the Justice Dept at present, and can not consider an open Linux buyout. Now that Linux related shares are a commodity, they are for the picking by the giants if they want it. It is only a matter of time UNLESS the Commercial Linux Community itself begins consolidations through M&A and grows into a giant itself. I was very disappointed to NOT read "Corel and RedHat finalize merger deal today" during 1999. Applix would make a great buyout target for RedHat. Get wise gents, and get together to get big.

Well, just a few humble opinions. Sorry if some stuff is repeated from above posts.

If I were a developer, I would be contributing to Linux in every way I could. Since I am not a developer, all I can do is educate and encourage friends to try Linux, and prepare them for the revolution that may or may not happen. I hope it happens, and Linux and the Open Source movement in general have my cheers, 100%.

By the way, did anyone figure out that chess move Knight takes Rook checkmate move #5? It's got me stumped!