Citing the recent havoc caused by worms and security holes, three Asian powers are considering jointly developing an alternative to the Microsoft platform, probably using an open source OS as the foundation. From the Reuters story: The plan is to be proposed by Japanese Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma at a meeting of economic ministers from the three nations in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, it said, adding that agreement was seen as likely.
I hope they DO base it on Linux or BSD… no reason to make an entirely new OS, take the best aspects of the ones that are currently available and just build on them like Apple did.
Detroit mid 70s was uncompetitive and producing cars that handled like boats consumed an ocean of gas. Oil embargoes hits and detroits was screwed. Japan inc. kicked butt with fuel efficient reliable and responsive cars. Why because the US had an uncompetitive car market.
Same deal for the US OS market. it is uncompetitive. Why? Because it is controlled by a monopoly who gains favor (buys) with the US leading elite. So what happens? you abuse too much and someone comes up with a response. Way to go bush and gates. You just lost over 1 billion potential users. Greed always nips you in the butt in the end.
Now that we’re all used to the OS equivalent of driving Pintos and Gremlins, and we marvel at how they can stay on the road okay and only break down every few thousand miles, what will happen if all of a sudden the Honda Accord or Lexus comes on the scene?
Well I would have thought RedFlag? distro would have been picked already but just imagine if the resources that might be made available even a tiny percent of, were made available to the OBOS teams. Surely a much friendlier base to start from even if the underlying base is still Linux. I thought BeOS was some what popular in Japan.
Think if I was a citizen of one particular country, I don’t think I like to be forced to used the governments choice of OS though, can you imagine what sorts of things that might be added without most people knowing.
I know that the guys from Zeta BeOS were in Japam and Hungary not a long time ago and now they are hiring two new programmers. Maybe they have been told to hurry up because they are interested. It is true that BeOS was very popular in Japan and I think this is the right time to put it out in the market.
Windows is crap, no doubt about it…Nac is awesome but expensive and still the Japanese love it. Why not Linux or BeoS? or maybe Amiga OS 4? Amiga OS 4 is not ready but ey, if those countries are going to pay something they better show that their programs can handle the situation. I am pretty sure they can be a real option to Windows. BeOS, Amiga, Apple, Linux…it doesn’t matter which one but I think is the perfect time for a change.
-2501
ps: I heard that Sony(PS2) and Toshiba were working on a new OS for the Playstation and other electronic devices. They hate Windows…maybe they could help too.
I’m going to assume that a Linux based OS is what is being considered, but I’m not sure why the governments think it is necessary to start *another* Linux distribution. I don’t know about China and Korea, but in Japan alone there are already at least 3 Linux distributions that I can think of off the top of my head.
Anyway, according to the Nikkei:
“the recent spread of computer viruses targeting the Windows system was one reason behind the plan, as it has awakened governments to the need to reduce their dependence on Windows operating systems.”
Again, working on the assumption that they are looking at Linux based OS, this reasoning doesn’t work for me. Seculity is a problem regardless of whether you use Windows or Linux. I realise this when I look at seculity advisory lists each week. The solution thus isn’t to switch to the other to get away from seculity problems, but to learn what you need to be responsible for as the user for your given OS. Personally I find handling Windows XP security dead easy. The Windows OS is the only Microsoft software I use though, no Outlook or IE means I’m pretty much a hidden target for most of this stuff.
Nonetheless, Asian language support for Linux is no where near as good as it is for Windows XP, so hopefully they can catch up.
OBOS would be a good choice but my money is on some sort of linux distro. It is cheap and could be prepared for market quickly. OBOS would take a lot more time but who knows. After all both japan and korea play a large roll in teh consumer electronics market, which would benefit from the multimedia aspects of obos (that is if they deliver). OBOS would require a lot more time than using linux.
I ultimately think that the security issue is only part of the problem. I am quite sure that they are sick of paying the microsoft tax as well.
but they do say “developing an alternative to the Microsoft platform”, since linux is already in full development process and a fork is unlikely, I would say something like reactos, with binary compatibility, a windows clone or something like that, but most likely this is just a “get your act straight” warning to microsoft.
I think it will be Linux – they do not have to develop from the ground up, which would be very expensive and time-consuming.
It’s more likely that they put their effort in extending Linux’ desktop capabilities and support for asian languages.
And it would be stupid to do a fork, or break compatibility, ’cause you would lose quite a few applications and developers…
cant say that i blame them, not one bit…
Ryan’s reply says it all, (took the words right out of my mouse & keyboard) necessity is the mother of invention
<<< By ryan
Detroit mid 70s was uncompetitive and producing cars that handled like boats consumed an ocean of gas. Oil embargoes hits and detroits was screwed. Japan inc. kicked butt with fuel efficient reliable and responsive cars. Why because the US had an uncompetitive car market.
Same deal for the US OS market. it is uncompetitive. Why? Because it is controlled by a monopoly who gains favor (buys) with the US leading elite. So what happens? you abuse too much and someone comes up with a response. Way to go bush and gates. You just lost over 1 billion potential users. Greed always nips you in the butt in the end.>>>
..with improved support for Asian languages this time.
Not very interesting. It’s pointless to build an alternative OS based on Linux. Because mainline Linux will be better than this alternative OS in no time. Not even three governments together can keep up with the development speed of the global OSS community. They will end up with patched / hacked up KDE 3.x with some extra adim tools and improved Asian language support while the rest of the world will be running KDE 5.x already which has almost all the features they patched into 3.x and a lot more. Kinda like the Xandros etc. situation.
If their OS is not really different from Linux their is no point and if it is it would make no sense to use Linux as a base. If they want to use Linux as a base they should rather contribute patches to the open projects instead of trying their own thing.
Really it’s too sad. It would be nice if some alternative OS except Linux would get bigger support. I hate Linux. Its design makes me sick. Drivers being compiled
into the big fat monolithic kernel, dependency loaded apps (because their is no standard GUI toolkit etc.) that require something like apt to make software installation even just half-way standable, the slow ugly bloatware called X, and all the horribly outdated UNIX designs from the 1970s.
Hopefully we will have an alternative some day.
They should say “new distribution”, indeed.
The Kyodo News runs the story as breaking the economic dependence on Windows.
The probable planis to develop a non-x86 architecture and lock out Wintel from the home markets as much as possible. This will build a base to expand offshore – exactly like their car industries.
Japan and South Korea are notoriously protectionist. Any South Korean who attempts to purchase a foreign made vehicle is ruthlessly tax audited. Expect local companies, in these nations, who refuse to switch to the new OS to face (subtle) difficulties such as being refused government contracts and excessively audited.
Looking at what would best serve the three languages in Multilingual capabilities and Unicode support, they might end up using Mac OS X. I think there are few OSes out there that handle double-byte languages and the likes as well and easliy as OS X does.
Also switching the OS and all applications to another language is a matter of seconds (and also the Application names and some user folder names switch languages on the fly), it’s just there, one or two settings in the preference panel and by hitting command+space you’ll switching on the fly between typing in Chinese (trad./simp.), Japanese, Korean, Devanagari, Hebrew–you name it.
For example, I prefer to use a German interface, but due to the Japanese keyboard I’ve got on my Mac I usually use the US keyboard layout (except when typing German, then I prefer the German one, so I can type Umlauts directly), still I can switch to Japanese input method by hitting one key shortcut.
That’s where I found Linux lacking. Yes, it does provide support for most languages, but it doesn’t provide for such seamless switching and moving back and forth between languages and keyboard layouts and input methods.
hmms i dont think osx will be the answer these countrys do
produce alot of home electronics i dont think they will chose an os that locks them to a spesifick hardware vendor.
if they do use linux i dosent need to mean that they are going to use xfree. it would be nice if they did it on directfb or something simular. it would also be nice if they chose just one toolkit qt or gtk pherhaps create some wraper if they port other applications.
it would be nice with a distro that didnt need to concern itself with 100% backward compability they could do some great new stuff
Linux and BSD will succeed or fail in the marketplace in these three Asian countries (my view is that they will succeed). What the government’s do will have only marginal (but perhaps significant) effects.
While the story is vague, here’s what I think:
1. They will not develop a new OS.
2. They will talk about setting standards for handling Asian character sets.
3. They will probably fund open source development of applications needed by government users and Asian language localization generally.
Oh no, not that FUD again…
Drivers being compiled into the big fat monolithic kernel
>>>>>>>>>
You *can* do this, but why would you want to? All the major distros today ship their drivers as modules that are dynamically loaded.
dependency loaded apps
>>>>>>>>>>
It’s called good design. Don’t reinvent something that already exists.
that require something like apt to make software installation even just half-way standable
>>>>>>>>>>>
Software is complex. Well written software (properly abstracted, properly componentized) is even more complex, but in ways that make it easy to focus on one small piece at a time. Something has to manage that complexity. Windows puts the hassle of doing that on the distributer, making application developers bundle the libraries they depend on. Linux follows an obviously more correct solution — letting a computer program (which are really good at micromanaging these things) handle the details and letting users do no more work other than simply picking the software they want installed. It really cannot get any easier than APT, because otherwise, the computer would have to read your mind to find out what you want.
the slow ugly bloatware called X
>>>>>>>>>
X doesn’t look like anything! Its about as good looking as GDI32.dll. And according to benchmarks, X is *fast*. There are synchronization issues, but they have little to do with X. I’m running KDE 3.2 (CVS) right now, and my system is about as fast as XP (more tearing and fliker, but just as responsive) on an unloaded system, and totally blows XP away when the system is doing heavy work in the background. The other day, I was emerging two programs and compiling the newest 2.6 kernel (simultainously), and I realized that I couldn’t even notice that the process was going on in the background. Meanwhile, XP gets jerky copying MP3s to my iPod!
and all the horribly outdated UNIX designs from the 1970s.
>>>>>>>
Oldies are goodies. Consider something like Lisp. It was made in the 1950s. To this day, mainstream languages like Python, Java and C++ are reinventing its features. GC? Check. Dynamic typing? Check. Macros (C++ templates)? Check. Just look at Stroustrup’s C++ XTI proposal and tell me you don’t see Lisp written all over it. It even has a prefix notation sub-language! Good designs are as valid now as they were when they were made. The fundementals of todays computer hardware has not changed sufficiently to obsolete the UNIX design. The UNIX design will remain valid until we get a major change in computer hardware (fuzzy logic, massive parallization, quantum or biological computing, distributed personal computers, etc).
PS> Of course, that doesn’t mean the UNIX implementation is still valid. Unlike good designs, good implementations are obsoleted all the time as better ones are devised. But of course, the algorithms in the Linux kernel are cutting edge. 0-day kernel logicez. Just count the major subsystems that were rewritten in the last two years.
I just posted an article over at slashdot about this.
Some people say “Why not make a Japanese Linux?”
The reasons are that Japanese people won’t accept this is that Linux is too nerdy for them. Here in Japan PCs in general still have a nerdy stigma attached to them. That’s why so many more services are available over keitai (cell phones) than over the internet. MACs do have a following as does BeOS because they are user/goal-oriented and not hard to use but Linux is only used by hard-core PC freaks here.
The blaster worm had a hard effect here. Imagine the kind of people I described above who would rather use a cell phone than their PC getting the Blaster over the almost ubiquitous ADSL lines most have (I have 26Mbps at dirt cheap flat rate and so do many others here). Korea was probably even worse hit than Japan. Most people didn’t know what to do and since there aren’t so many PC savvy people here (yes, you heard me, the ratio of PC savvy people no non-savvy people is so low that the clean up job is arduous) it was pretty hard hitting. A lot of lost productivity in a country with pride in its work ethic and efficiency. Japan is just now starting to shed the nerdy PC image and had the worm hit in 3 years from now it might not have been as big a deal. But it hit now.
This is no show either. The Japanese govt isn’t trying to scare M$ into selling cheaper/free or anything. M$’s days are now numbered in Japan. A few more virii and worms is all it takes to make windows a thing of the past over here.
http://www.tron.org/index-e.html
Tron has been in development for over a decade, you guys have probably used something that has Tron in it.
Almost all Japanese developed devices use it.
It supports multiple languages
It is field tested to be stable.
It’s been limited to embeded systems, but they want to branch it out to a full OS
I have a feeling you will be seeing more of this
This is pretty much what BTRON, the ‘business’ version of the TRON platform, was designed to be. Unfortunately, it never really took off. Too bad, because from what little English information I could find it seemed like a pretty nice platform.
They could probably bootstrap a decent BTRON system from the existing open source ITRON systems (eCos, perhaps) fairly quickly. But they won’t. Oh well.
Windows has backdoors for certain – I’d bet my life on it. And even if windows didn’t have backdoors, it has more holes than swiss cheese – truly shitty software.
Sounds far more plausible than a linux clone.
Handheld/mobile devices are widespread and cheap in all three countries.
The PC/keyboard concept isn’t very good for languages that rely in ideogram charecters (Japanese + Chinese).
The high levels of very fast broadband uptake in Japan and Korea means that an OS must be intrinsically very secure without user intervention (I spent several hours on the telephone over the weekend helping a friend remove a worm and secure his PC).
Yet another Linux distro. Neat. I think i’ll go puke now.
Otherwise tehy would be defying the purpose of it. If they base it off bsd it means taht a company will probably just steal it from them.
The good news is that, unlike the GPL, BSD can be reclicensed under almost any license. So no one will be “stealing” it.
Software is complex. Well written software (properly abstracted, properly componentized) is even more complex, but in ways that make it easy to focus on one small piece at a time. Something has to manage that complexity. Windows puts the hassle of doing that on the distributer, making application developers bundle the libraries they depend on.
Hmm, that seems logical- the developer would know best what libraries and what versions are needed. And I believe making your program run “out of the box” is job of the developer.
Linux follows an obviously more correct solution — letting a computer program (which are really good at micromanaging these things) handle the details and letting users do no more work other than simply picking the software they want installed.
That’s simply untrue, and you konw it. APT reads a config file, which tells it how to install. Windows programs just come prepackaged. They do not require work by a third party to make it “ready to use.” APT requires a person to sort out the dependencies to make the package. Windows programs do not.
It really cannot get any easier than APT, because otherwise, the computer would have to read your mind to find out what you want.
Ummm.. It can get much easier, that’s why front ends for it were developed, like Synaptic. And of course it’s not just “apt-get blah”- you have to set it up.
* /etc/apt/sources.list : replace the content by the following
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ potato main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ potato main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US potato non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US potato non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ potato updates/main updates/contrib updates/non-free
“Handheld/mobile devices are widespread and cheap in all three countries. The PC/keyboard concept isn’t very good for languages that rely in ideogram charecters (Japanese + Chinese).”
Then what do Japanese users use to send text-messages to each other via cellphone? I am aware of the qwerty-style keyboard nightmare problem in Japan (I heard that handwritten paper memos are still very, very common over there because PCs are just awkward to use – and voicemail useage is also huge there, for cultural reasons).
…for Apple to come out with i386 version of their OS. Few hundred millions copies could be enough to make them do the thing finally.
Wow this is interesting news.
I do hope they choose a modern system design like OBOS and rather try to be different than doing another bloated Linux distro.
Sure Mac OS X clone would be interesting, by why not use a winning concept instead. OBOS is is doomed to succeed =)
Go for it asia!
Hmm, that seems logical- the developer would know best what libraries and what versions are needed. And I believe making your program run “out of the box” is job of the developer.
>>>>>>>>>>
The job of the OS distributer is to make the lives of developers and users as easy as possible. Instead of incurring all the bloat and hassle and danger of making the developer bundle all dependencies, why not make his life easy and let him just specify the dependencies and let the packager handle them? If it doesn’t make things more complicated for the user, then its a win both ways.
That’s simply untrue, and you know it.
>>>>>>>>>>>
From a *user’s* point of view, it doesn’t get any easier than APT.
APT reads a config file, which tells it how to install. Windows programs just come prepackaged.
>>>>>>>>>>
What do you think a Windows installer executable is? Nothing more than a package.
They do not require work by a third party to make it “ready to use.” APT requires a person to sort out the dependencies to make the package. Windows programs do not.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Note that in the APT model, the application distributer and the developer are different. This is serves an important purpose. Debian runs on 10 different architectures, and requires extensive integrated testing for each package. It would be onerous for individual developers to do all that when making packages. Thus, the developers just do what they’re good at, writing the code, and the distributers handle what they do best, packaging software. In the Windows world, the developer and the packager are the same. However, a developer on Windows still has to do all the work of the packager. He has to (through the InstallShield program) specify dependencies installation locations, shortcut paths, registry entries, etc. In addition to all that, he has to dig up and package all the dependencies as well. A Windows developer probably does less work than a Linux distributer, but only because he doesn’t have to deal with 10 different platforms.
Ummm.. It can get much easier, that’s why front ends for it were developed, like Synaptic. And of course it’s not just “apt-get blah”- you have to set it up.
>>>>>>>>
Synaptic is actually harder than using the CLI apt-get. It only exists because it provides CLI-phobic newbies a way to install packages without dropping into the CLI. Even then, merely double-clicking on the program you want to install is much easier than going through the lengthy InstallShield process each Windows app comes with. As for setting this up, you only have to do it once, and there is a nice pseudo-GUI chooser thingie for it during the Debian installation.
If they like to develop a new secure operating system then it would be time to say good bye to C/C++ languages. Windows, Linux, Beos, Unices and others are all based on C language which is main reason for buffer overflow problems.
If they like to develop a new secure operating system then it would be time to say good bye to C/C++ languages. Windows, Linux, Beos, Unices and others are all based on C language which is main reason for buffer overflow problems.
These types of operating systems have existed for years. OpenVMS was based off BLISS, MACRO and a small amount of assembly.
“Then what do Japanese users use to send text-messages to each other via cellphone? I am aware of the qwerty-style keyboard nightmare problem in Japan (I heard that handwritten paper memos are still very, very common over there because PCs are just awkward to use – and voicemail useage is also huge there, for cultural reasons).”
Having shared houses, here in Australia, with both Japanese and Korean people I quickly learnt about the extreme subtleties of each culture. No Japanese or Korean would dream of sending the sort of informal emails or text messages that are the norm in the English speaking world. I doubt whether spam is much of a problem in either Japan or Korea.
We in the English speaking world assume everyone wants to be like us. The French are very happy with their Minitel phones. The Japanese probably want a voice or pen driven handheld device – basically a far more advanced Apple Newton with powerful network capabilities for sending videomails etc. This is nothing like desktop Linux.
I doubt that apple would ever want to ship a i386 version of their OS – apple sells mainly hardware, if they were to sell their os for the box standard pc – there would be no more reason to buy apple hardware, somehow i don’t think that is what they would want.
The job of the OS distributer is to make the lives of developers and users as easy as possible. Instead of incurring all the bloat and hassle and danger of making the developer bundle all dependencies, why not make his life easy and let him just specify the dependencies and let the packager handle them? If it doesn’t make things more complicated for the user, then its a win both ways.<i?
If the job of the OS distributer were simply to make the lives of developers and users easier, I believe there would be a standard package format usable across all distributions. I know that is offtanget, but… This would make the work for developer much easier. I also respectfully disagree about not including libraries. I don’t think it’s fair to distribute a program that cannot function on it’s own. And it does make things more complicated for the user. There are a myriad of Linux distributions, not all of them will have packages available for their distro of choice. Their choice will be effectively to switch distributions (just to run an application) or to learn how to make a package themself. I know this is kind of going in a weird direction (not targetting an individual distribution like you were), but I do think it is important. By removing the job of packaging from the developer, there is no longer a guarantee (sp) that there will be a package available.
[i]Synaptic is actually harder than using the CLI apt-get.
I have not used Synaptic, so I will take your word on this.
Even then, merely double-clicking on the program you want to install is much easier than going through the lengthy InstallShield process each Windows app comes with. As for setting this up, you only have to do it once, and there is a nice pseudo-GUI chooser thingie for it during the Debian installation.
No, following a setup wizard is not significantly more difficult than apt-get whatever. A significant difference is having to manually resolve dependencies, be they shared libraries or dynamic link libraries. The difference between apt blah and setup.exe next next next, is incredibly trivial, especially compared to the traditional ./configure, oh crap it doesn’t compile, and then the user just gives up. And considering that apt does require some text editing to set up the repositories, I would think that the difference to the end user is neglible if not slightly in favor of Windows because the CLI is not required at all.
And about the other paragraph that I did not quote. Yes I do understand the quite clearly the seperation between packager and developer. But, I think this is just another part of developing software. You have to spend 10 minutes to create a nullsoft install script to make an install wizard for Windows programs. I understand that it is not currently feasible/practical to make a binary package that would work across all Linux distributions, and it is something that I think should be worked on (like autopackage).
You should check out Gentoo’s Portage. It calculates and installs dependencies for you. Installing a program is usually as easy as typing in “emerge KDE” and it will calculate and install graphics drivers, X, or whatever else it needs. It is available for other Linux distributions as well, but not nearly as well tested.
I would much rather prefer modularity to bundled packages; it allows for much more power and flexibility. As libraries that packages depend upon get faster, more secure, and better, you can update them and all packages that depend upon them get updated as well.
As for the joint effort between the Asian countries… I am very intrigued and hope it is successful.
I do know the benefits of this kind of packagement arrangement. I use FreeBSD daily and I do like the ports system. But I do prefer the simplicity and near infallibility of a simple binary “setup.exe.”
Just curious (honestly), does portage offer binary packages for most popular programs?
———–
Having shared houses, here in Australia, with both Japanese and Korean people I quickly learnt about the extreme subtleties of each culture. No Japanese or Korean would dream of sending the sort of informal emails or text messages that are the norm in the English speaking world. I doubt whether spam is much of a problem in either Japan or Korea.
————
Simply untrue. The use of cell-phone e-mail and text messaging is ever so common in Japan, especially with younger people. One only has to ride on the trains for
a few seconds to see people sending messages. Some are
even downloading and playing Java games. My mobile phone
has 2 types of built in messaging, internet mail and
text messaging that can be relayed to one or two other
carrier’s phones. I also get spam on my cell-phone,
usually so called ‘dating services’ There are also call-
back services that charge high rates per minute. Sometimes the phone rings only once or twice and if you call back
the number to see who it is you are greeted by a recorded message and a large phone bill.
Well, IBM blew it when they crawled into bed with M$ and
caved in on preinstalling OS/2 onto their own machines to
get cheap Win95 licences. OS/2 up to Warp 4 was very
popular in Japan and the last of about 3 or 4 magazines
devoted to the OS stopped publication in 2000. There are
still a few die-hards but lack of native apps doesn’t
make it a worthwhile proposition anymore. I suppose most
OS/2 users moved over to Linux where at least there is a
native Japanese Open Office and boxed Sun Star Office and
others did the inevitable and went to windows. You can’t
even buy the OS from IBM Japan anymore even though their
page has Warp 4 listed at over $400 US! If you try to
purchase a SoftWare Choice subscription the links take you
round in circles and you end up at IBM USA where Japanese
NLV is not even a choice. Also, several years ago Hitachi preinstalled BeOS on some of their machines here. That again was short-lived. Anyone who uses Linux is a guru in Japan
Yes, Gentoo 1.4 you can download on 2 cd’s which comes with pre-compiled packages like kde and openoffice.
The Japanese are morally and politically corrupt. A
few well placed ‘sweeteners’ here and there will kill
this before it ever gets off the ground.
Hmm, judging a whole culture off of some uneducated opinion? Are you sure you aren’t CooCooCaChoo?
I think they will make a completely new OS, maybe based upon Tron or all new from th eground up. The design of the nixes is quite Old and somewhat outdated. It will be hardly Opensource because the want to make money with it, but it will ave well designed interfaces for it allowing different companies to make compatible imlemetations. The technology has developed very fast in IT and relying on a old design is only a performance hit. I even assume they will create their own hardware completely new from the ground up, like a workstation derived from the PS3 design, so no x86 compatiblity is needed. They want to produce all by their own using their own technology. They have many foundries why should use ill designed foreign processors. Further they have the power to push the new OS and its applications in their home market very quickly. Once the homemarket is eteblished the will export the OS to other countries, as i am sure it will far better for the end user as any existing OS now
“Quoting sources close to the matter, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) said that, if the plan matures, the three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system.”
Ryan hit the nail on the head. few years from now windows will be just like ford, something which gets you halfway to work, then you have to call the tow truck. as far as I know the top five cars are made in Japan and Germany ,and ford seems like it is still in the shop to be worked on. now with the help of China which developed it’s own CPU and uses Linux as it’s #1 OS Japan will get the job done, just remmber a lexus is a better car but it takes more money to buy.someway somehow they will tell you it’s luxury and you will have to pay extra for it.it sounds like money will get once again in the way of Linux as we know it today.so get ready to pay top $ for linux if you want a luxury OS, and if you don’t just download a free copy the hard way or get your windows at the shop once they fix it.
————-
Hmm, judging a whole culture off of some uneducated opinion? Are you sure you aren’t CooCooCaChoo?
————-
Im my 17 years of living in Japan I’ve seen their bright
ideas come and go along with their countless prime ministers
and I take anything they say with a truckload of salt.
This is OT, but seeing the level of racism here and on Slashdot disgusts me.
[Quoting Kilian]
Looking at what would best serve the three languages in Multilingual capabilities and Unicode support, they might end up using Mac OS X
I do like Apple and OS X. However, if the need is to cut dependence on a single party that develops pretty much everything you are using, Apple might be quite worse than Microsoft if they control both software and hardware. As an individual I might consider Apple is a righly choice, but if I am trying to push a generalized movement from the government, no way I am rising another company that might be just as happy having the same market share and monopoly that MS sports.
Nobody beats TRON ( http://www.tron.org/index-e.html ) in asian language support. No other OS comes even close.
I’m fed with Linux everywhere. You know there’s Syllabe, SkyOS and probably some other…SkyOS is pretty advanced, seem to work well and to be devellop really fast(Robert… when do you sleep?
).
I really hope it’s not going to be another fucking distro. If they want to use Linux as a base, ok, perfect, but fork. Use and advanced version of Directfb, add a real gui, some gui config tool for what’s important like configuring device and so on.
Hey guys awake, Linux is far from perfect for desktop use, are not in any way foresee from the ground up for desktop use… so why not an open source OS, but why not a real deskstop system! I dunnot want an OS for geek nearly only, I want something that I can use everyday without prior tweaking of an inane amount of file : I want something that work. Punto.
How about it being an ASIAN Morphix.
They could fund the morphix project.
Morphix can be the base while they can use their own layer on top of it.
Just a thought.
#1 it is open source
Yea it’s open source, Problem is most of the info is in Japanese.
#2 It supports multiple languages now not maybe later
Your multi-region DVD player is probably running it.
#3 Many engineers in Asia already use it/know it
Why introduce a new OS when you have one that you engineers know.
#4 It’s field tested
Tron has been out 10 years
You mean something like this?
http://www.woodfox.net/glyoung/linux/knoppix-zh/
“Having shared houses, here in Australia, with both Japanese and Korean people I quickly learnt about the extreme subtleties of each culture. No Japanese or Korean would dream of sending the sort of informal emails or text messages that are the norm in the English speaking world. I doubt whether spam is much of a problem in either Japan or Korea.”
BWAHAHA! One of the biggest problems with mobile phones here is spam. I average at least 5 a day everything from airplane tickets to girls for “hire”……come on up here to Taipei, Tokyo or Seoul for a couple of months. Ride the MRT sometime and watch how half the women are SMSing their friends.
Take alook at this report from Singapore:
http://it.asia1.com.sg/specials/phones/thumbgen20020325_001.html
I hope they DO base it on Linux or BSD… no reason to make an entirely new OS, take the best aspects of the ones that are currently available and just build on them like Apple did.
Exactly my thoughts.
Now all you OSS losers can help export American jobs and revenue, along with your favorite little OS…
By looking back few years ago, I remember Japan already initiates a home OS project called Tron (University of Tokyo, Ken Sakamura). The motivation of this researcher was to allow Japan OS-independence. He thinks using only one OS (ie DOS/Windows) is dangerous so that the American gov could paralyze Japan through it (in this words more or less). At this time, the Japanese government denied any support to this project and the Tron development continued quite slowly, with limited impact.
Now, the situation is really different. Good or Bad? If we have the choice, I do think it’s good!
It is difficult to forecast any choice from these three challengers, but they will probably exploit their respective past experience. Another is the Dragon Chinese CPU with its Linux-like OS…
Anyway, we might have exciting surprises!
Okay so they want to develop a new os, so what? Do know why windows is soo popular, its because its has a huge base of DEVELOPERS who create a ton of APPLICATIONS, and GAMES for the windows platform. In the end its all about the Applications.
it won’t matter one bit, if these asian countries develop a new OS, because they won’t have the developers or applications to make their OS popular. I also highly doubt that they would invest billions of dollars creating useful apps for their OS,.
You may all hate Microsoft, but atleast microsoft spends billions of dollars investing in applications and supporting developers. Microsoft also spends billions in donation to Universities, something i doubt the asian counterparts would do.
“what will happen if all of a sudden the Honda Accord or Lexus comes on the scene?”
Funny you should ask… by strange and woderous coincidence we have discovered, just now, that Honda and Lexus are directly connected to Bin Laden and 9/11.
Uncle Sam
C/O the C.I.A. and Defense Dept.
–There will be any collaboration with China and the sources that M$ showed them in hopes of keeping China in their corner…or if this means we’ll see an upswing with the ReactOS project any time soon?