You have a few good points. Just want to make a few things clear (my links may require subscription):
Many Linux advocates use security , internationalization and "free-ness" as a major selling point.
For security, many users in the US care about spyware and etc. sending off their private data. Meanwhile I didn't see as much concern for private data in India (I assume the whole identity theft factor will take a major role which is why I mentioned that). That killed off the security selling point. This is also why I also mentioned about Windows Updates since it can make a computer far more vulnerable to spyware and etc. However, US and India seem to share the lack of concern in performance factor.
For Internationalization, there has been a notion that Linux has great international support. However, when I had users try KDE's Gujarati, I didn't see any kind of quick adoption to the language. In general, users tend to need to see quick results before being convinced a product is worth adopting. So KDE's Gujarati could be "the best" out of every other interface out there, but it is not good enough to convince them that "Linux has great Gujarati support" (thus killing that selling point).
As for Linux being free, the Indian small businesses (the ones I interviewed with) had a pirated version of XP as opposed to US where many small businesses have a legal version that came with their computers. This can come in to play when these companies deals with larger companies (or governments) that may require their assets to all be legal (you can see an example of this in Thailand). The small businesses I talked to didn't seem to have a concern about it. Therefore, the "free" as in beer selling point was killed off.
So I tried those three major selling factors of linux on a few small businesses in India and they all didn't work out well at all. So yes, a lot of what I said is not India specific but those where the problems I saw upfront for businesses migrating to Linux.
Sorry for not being clear. These interviews were in a corporate environment. Desktop usage is very important in corporate company since it suddenly becomes a requirement for employees to learn such an OS.
However, the companies that I interviewed were not nearly as big as the ones mentioned in the article (they were all less then 100 employees) and so there may be some differences between what I said and large companies like Rediff.
I did some research/interviews in India and I can assure you that Linux has a long way to go until it can get wide adoption for Desktop Computers (lets ignore servers for now).
- Almost everybody in India has a pirated version of Windows XP (which came with their computer, so its pretty much "free" for them) - Very few people I interviewed actually do Windows Update (probably because of the whole XP-Key validation) - Unless he/she is a software engineer, they would have never heard of Linux - When asked about spyware, they didn't seem to care. Most Indians didn't seem to care about the performance factor. They also didn't seem to care about identity theft as much either (the culture is such that most people pay just about everything in cash since most vendors charge a "service charge" for using credit cards or even a check) - Bill Gates is more of a hero in India than a devil (his charitable contributions are well known) - Tying in Gujarati in Linux (KDE) takes time and pratice to learn (I assume the same with other Indian languages) - Some "cablenet" ISPs in India require you to run Windows software in order to connect to the Internet. There is no support for Linux at this time.
Those are just a few problems that I can think of on top of my head. There are plenty more issues in Linux Desktop adoption in India.
I use Ubuntu. If I want to install a new package, all I have to do is type in the name of the package in to Synaptic and it takes care of the rest. Having the ability to browse though all available software is huge plus. It is also really nice to have all the updates to my software in just one place. That is the kind usability I found to be lacking in Windows so I switched.
For computer graphics class , Dave Swanson, the Director of Madden, gave us a lecture about the "process" of making a new Madden game. I decided to joke around and ask him "Why do you need to do anything? Don't you have a monopoly?". He replied saying that he actually still works as hard as he did before the monopoly; and that his current aim is to get people who were not intrested in the Madden series before-hand into the game.
He also said that all the stories in the press are mostly an exaggeration of what is really going on.
Oddly enough, they decided to re-compile all the Windows games like Minesweeper and Solitaire to 64-bit. However, they decided not to re-compile some important applications like Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker.
Atari did this. They, along with other companies, caused the great video game crash of 1983. However, we might see a different outcome this time since Open Source Software has a very different effect on markets than closed source.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a few good points. Just want to make a few things clear (my links may require subscription):
Many Linux advocates use security , internationalization and "free-ness" as a major selling point.
For security, many users in the US care about spyware and etc. sending off their private data. Meanwhile I didn't see as much concern for private data in India (I assume the whole identity theft factor will take a major role which is why I mentioned that). That killed off the security selling point. This is also why I also mentioned about Windows Updates since it can make a computer far more vulnerable to spyware and etc. However, US and India seem to share the lack of concern in performance factor.
For Internationalization, there has been a notion that Linux has great international support. However, when I had users try KDE's Gujarati, I didn't see any kind of quick adoption to the language. In general, users tend to need to see quick results before being convinced a product is worth adopting. So KDE's Gujarati could be "the best" out of every other interface out there, but it is not good enough to convince them that "Linux has great Gujarati support" (thus killing that selling point).
As for Linux being free, the Indian small businesses (the ones I interviewed with) had a pirated version of XP as opposed to US where many small businesses have a legal version that came with their computers. This can come in to play when these companies deals with larger companies (or governments) that may require their assets to all be legal (you can see an example of this in Thailand). The small businesses I talked to didn't seem to have a concern about it. Therefore, the "free" as in beer selling point was killed off.
So I tried those three major selling factors of linux on a few small businesses in India and they all didn't work out well at all. So yes, a lot of what I said is not India specific but those where the problems I saw upfront for businesses migrating to Linux.
Sorry for not being clear. These interviews were in a corporate environment. Desktop usage is very important in corporate company since it suddenly becomes a requirement for employees to learn such an OS. However, the companies that I interviewed were not nearly as big as the ones mentioned in the article (they were all less then 100 employees) and so there may be some differences between what I said and large companies like Rediff.
I did some research/interviews in India and I can assure you that Linux has a long way to go until it can get wide adoption for Desktop Computers (lets ignore servers for now).
- Almost everybody in India has a pirated version of Windows XP (which came with their computer, so its pretty much "free" for them)
- Very few people I interviewed actually do Windows Update (probably because of the whole XP-Key validation)
- Unless he/she is a software engineer, they would have never heard of Linux
- When asked about spyware, they didn't seem to care. Most Indians didn't seem to care about the performance factor. They also didn't seem to care about identity theft as much either (the culture is such that most people pay just about everything in cash since most vendors charge a "service charge" for using credit cards or even a check)
- Bill Gates is more of a hero in India than a devil (his charitable contributions are well known)
- Tying in Gujarati in Linux (KDE) takes time and pratice to learn (I assume the same with other Indian languages)
- Some "cablenet" ISPs in India require you to run Windows software in order to connect to the Internet. There is no support for Linux at this time.
Those are just a few problems that I can think of on top of my head. There are plenty more issues in Linux Desktop adoption in India.
On that note, does anybody know any cell phone providers that allow their customers to upload music or applications from their own computer for free?
I use Ubuntu. If I want to install a new package, all I have to do is type in the name of the package in to Synaptic and it takes care of the rest. Having the ability to browse though all available software is huge plus. It is also really nice to have all the updates to my software in just one place. That is the kind usability I found to be lacking in Windows so I switched.
For computer graphics class , Dave Swanson, the Director of Madden, gave us a lecture about the "process" of making a new Madden game. I decided to joke around and ask him "Why do you need to do anything? Don't you have a monopoly?". He replied saying that he actually still works as hard as he did before the monopoly; and that his current aim is to get people who were not intrested in the Madden series before-hand into the game.
He also said that all the stories in the press are mostly an exaggeration of what is really going on.
After 30 years, they finally made it.
Oddly enough, they decided to re-compile all the Windows games like Minesweeper and Solitaire to 64-bit. However, they decided not to re-compile some important applications like Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker.
Does anybody have some informal performance benchmarks between 4.0.0 and the last version? (particularly the runtime of the application)
Yup, there is.
Why can't they use ESM ? That should save them bandwidth.
Atari did this. They, along with other companies, caused the great video game crash of 1983. However, we might see a different outcome this time since Open Source Software has a very different effect on markets than closed source.
Are they going to start selling Beowulf clusters iPods?
Somebody has already done something similar.
Here is a mirror to the video.
Do I have to deal with 2 core dumps for every SEGFAULT?
If you want to hear some of his songs, go to the Adult Swim website and download some mp3s (note that only one of the songs is MC Chris').