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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I ain’t a super Linux user, but I find it crazy that so many governments aren’t scared to put their data in the hands of US corporations like Microsoft of Apple.
I work for the state in Geneva, Switzerland, and my employers gives me an iPhone and forces me to use Windows at work.
I know that developing your own Linux distribution or any other solution is difficult but my country is even using a foreign cloud service instead of a swiss one😨
People are so shortsighted about this. Spend billions on Microsoft products to prevent spending millions on a safe solution that will never be suddenly deprecated.
you're ignoring the very large elephant in the room known as "maintenance". r&d is only the first hurdle.
This won't end well...
Not because of Linux or Windows, but because India's government is one of the most corrupt in the world, and everyone is just going to get bribed into saying "this is great" and it'll get implemented without any flaws being addressed
India's space program is doing more than fine.
Not really...
They use the same propaganda tactics as Russia. No matter what the result is or what they said before any mission starts, they declare everything means they succeded and that their now a world super power.
Exactly.
Thanks for the example!
They didn't accomplish their main goals or any research they said they'd do. But because it continued to orbit for longer than the mission (that failed) would have taken... They celebrate as a success and "proof" that theyre a world power.
I really don't think you meant to, but this is exactly what I was talking about.
TFA says India was the first nation to achieve Mars orbit on the first attempt. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all, but still... that's surely an exceptional feat?
Is it better to set the bar high and fail to achieve every goal, or set the bar low and achieve less, but be able to claim 100% success?
I dunno, man... I kinda feel like putting something in Mars orbit on your first try deserves some respect and recognition.
The very fact that they can send working spacecraft is already an accomplishment. How many countries can do that?
They are not yet a world power even if they claim to be. No doubt about that. But they are projected to become one in the not so near future. No doubt about that too.
No, any country that wants to pay for it can.
India prioritized it over other things like this:
India's latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which shows that children in several states are more undernourished now than they were five years ago, is based on data collected in 2019-20. The survey was conducted in only 22 states before the onset of the pandemic - so experts fear the results will be much worse in the remaining states, where the survey began after the lockdown ended.
In places such as Dahod, however, the problem seems to have begun earlier. The district has seen a steep rise in the proportion of undernourished children compared with 2015-16, when the last survey was conducted.
Stunting among children under five in Dahod is up from 44% to 55%. And the proportion of severely underweight children in the district has risen from 7.8% to 13.4%.
Most Indian women are anaemic and poor women, especially so. And since undernourished mothers give birth to undernourished babies, experts say the worsening rate of malnutrition could be a result of women struggling to access nutrition benefits.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56080313
I'm not going to clap because Modi decided a pointless space mission that might trick people into thinking India was a world power is more important then the worst childhood malnourishment rates in the world.
He's letting children starve and develop life long issues so people like you do what you're doing right now.
what made you think India prioritised it over those things?
the budget for ISRO is much, much lower than the budget that goes towards programs to fix poverty related issues. ISRO is 0.27% of the indian budget.
the remote sensing satellites have helped farmers, fishermen with actual food production, weather satellites with predicting disasters and saving lives.
for us its worth the investment even without factoring in the nice to haves like finding water on the moon or launching private satellites.
The article says this will be “based on Ubuntu” but it will probably actually just be Ubuntu with custom defaults, pre-installed software, and maybe repositories.
This just makes sense in my view. The cost relative to the number of machines they must deploy will be miniscule. If they do not mess with the core system too much, they can outsource almost all the admin and expertise to Canonical in terms of security and packaging. People saying this will blow up. Why? It does not sound like they are really creating a full distro from scratch. Is Ubuntu not viable?
In terms of why crating a custom version instead of just using actual Ubuntu. Again, the cost of customizing a distro can be dramatically less than making even simple configurations on every system after the fact. They can standardize what the desktop will look like and set key defaults. They can choose what applications are installed by default. They can remove applications from the repository that they do not want to be installed. The can ensure that localization is done well, etc.
I remember when Ubuntu was just Debian with custom defaults, pre-installed software, and their own repositories. Basically what every new distro is in the beginning.
And yeah creating dpkg packages isn't really all that difficult. Don't know why people are saying this will be a disaster. There's a lot of technically proficient people in India that could handle doing QA, and putting a dpkg on a server that gets automatically picked up by all the various systems that need it. Hell, they could develop their own applications and package them up and distribute them around much easier on a Linux system than a Windows system.
"home grown" Ubuntu spin, got it
'home-grown'
Well, it was the headline in a National newspaper and I just quoted it.
Very cool! Always good to see more countries get closer to embracing FOSS. Really helps with the collaborative benefits that FOSS can have, plus allows for organizations to have more control in their digital destinies instead of simply being customers.
Hope the best for the project!
This is 100% a nationalism thing. They want to be able to say we make our own operating system. That's it. It's going to be a disaster when they inevitably fuck up because they are doing g it for the wrong reasons.
How is controlling the package repo for your gov a bad thing?
Because they aren't doing it to control the package repo, they are doing it to score nationalism points.
People bitching about it being based on Ubuntu or "just Ubuntu", I'll take Ubuntu over windows and macos any day.
Finally something done right by India (just my rough impression, I remember them like banning VLC and then encrypted apps, idk exactly what they do.)
Yeah, they banned encrypted apps thinking that only terrorists require encrypted messaging.
I think they are just stupid lol
Another fríggin' Ubuntu distro. Can't somebody just commit to Debian instead... please?
Meanwhile, in NixOS land:
I don't think NixOS "hates" Docker, in fact Nix has its own tools to build Docker images. There are some examples at https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/build-support/docker/examples.nix
Hopefully they pull it off for real and it will not get bogged down by bureaucracy and red tapes.
My main concern is support and delay b/w security patches the OS will introduce. I'm making a wild guess, but I think they should have lot older hardware devices and from performance pov, they should benefit given latest Windows are not that great on older devices and older win versions have already reached EOL.
If they do get it right, they probably need to retrain their staff to be able to use other apps like Libre Office and more.
A lot of schools and colleges in Kerala (Indian State) use Ubuntu. Kids are taught how to use software like GIMP and Audacity in schools. It has become part of the syllabus in public schools.
12 th standard students have to do maths practical in GeoGebra.
Interesting because to airlines, using a Linux-based RTOS is a major security issue to the point where most airlines use homegrown RTOS solutions. But this isn't the first national government switching to Linux for operations I'd argue are equally if not much more sensitive.
Can they do it? Yes. Can they do it with a reasonable level of support for many different desktop hardware so it’s cheap to implement? Probably, though it won’t be as comprehensive as windows. Can they get a 1:1 replacement for windows that has the same level of security as windows? No, because many national governments collaborate on windows security. But! They’ll be safe-ish from NSA back doors in windows (if you think there are any)
The likelihood that windows doesn’t have a back door for the US government is irrelevant.
No windows user can guarantee every part of their OS is clean.
Linux users have the advantage of Open Source.
If you run Linux, you can audit the code. Can’t do that for windows.
Haven't there been issues with other governments maintaining their own distribution? Why not just maintain a repo thats added with a script or something.