Novell Headed To Linux Enterprise Desktop In Asia

Bill Kendrick writes "Novell's Asia-Pacific division is working on Linux desktop trials in Hong Kong and Malaysia, with the expectation that Linux's adoption on enterprise desktops will continue to grow. They expect many more companies to start embracing it within the next 12 months." A spokesperson from Novell comments: "I don't see it as a watershed where everybody's running Linux desktops, but you'll start to see the emergence of some examples of companies that have embraced Linux and are going down that path."

More open source news for various Asian countries

[tcopeland]

...can be found at AsiaOSC [asiaosc.org].

They've got good info on each country - i.e., here's the page on Malaysia [asiaosc.org]. They also serve as a mirror for Open Office, various BSDs, multiple RedHat releases, and so forth, so they're doing more than just gathering news. No banner ads, either.

Re:Partnering for a domestic content rating?

[Vancorps]

Sorry but you're plain and simply wrong. Run on over to Novell's website and look at their press releases. Novell has been involved in creating the whole chinese infrastucture. Cisco and Novell have been making massive amounts of profits in China in the last few years which is what essentially has been keeping Novell alive, same goes for Cisco for that matter. Remember not long ago Cisco execs reduced their salaries to $1 to same 10,000 jobs at Cisco, they are back to full salary now and Cisco is hiring new people. China is not as nieve as you take it for. They understand that duplication of efforts to achieve the same result is wasteful.

That doesn't mean they won't build their own desktop where there is wiggle room for error. When it comes to servers China will stick with the products that have a reputation such as Netware and Linux and shy away from tarnished companies such as Microsoft and Sco.

Re:Apps for Linux desktop

[conway]

First, the antivirus and firewall utils are unnecessary for linux (yet) : no widespread virii for linux, and firewall config utilities come with any decent end-user distro.
(Since firewall is built into OS, no need for a separate SW package).

Realplayer has a linux version as well, and there are plenty of good alternatives, like Xine or GMplayer, which support a LOT of codecs.

For Kazaa work-alike, there's a bunch of Gnutella clients around

So the only thing that remains is tax software..

Re:Apps for Linux desktop

[BCW2]

I have asked Intuit to port Turbo Tax to Linux every year for the last three. The first time they emailed me and said thy were looking into it. I have been ignored the last 2 times. I don't expect a response this year either. When someone come out with something similar for Linux, Intuit will never get another dime from me.
Quasar from Linux Canada is nice accounting software. It can be used as personal for 30 bucks or upgraded to business far cheaper than any Win product I've heard of. Not free but useful and modestly priced.

Re:Apps for Linux desktop

[Pushnell]

You're absolutely right in that the "personal taxes" category for linux software is very vacant. However, while not quite geared to the home user, there are quite a few high-end financial app suites targeted at the real bean-counters. One I recently ran across is OSAS [osas.com].

When you buy the software you get the source, and they do allow customizations & modifications to the source as well, just no releasing of the code to the public. [note: this is all to the best of my understanding. If someone out there knows more about this app, please correct me.]

As to your other concerns:
Kazaa: There are several re-implementations of the Kazaa client for linux. I've also heard that you can run the real thing under WINE.
Real Player: Click Here [real.com]. Nuff said.
ICQ/AIM: Gaim.

Re:Apps for Linux desktop

[ArsonSmith]

Tax software. Is there a good tax package for Linux, allowing those millions of accountants, small business owners and middle-class Joe's like you and me file their taxes?

www.turbotax.com online. I've been using it for years now.

Re:Yeah, well...

[PCM2]

Of course you guys are trying to be funny, but it may be significant to note that both Hong Kong and Malaysia are countries where a lot of computing is liable to be done either in English or, at the very least, in a Roman character set.

English is the second official language of Hong Kong.

The official language of Malaysia is Bahasu Malaysia -- not "Chinese" -- and in written form it generally uses Roman characters.

I'd be interested to see what these desktops look like, but I'm betting Asian language support probably wasn't one of Novell's big motivating factors.

Re:It's 2004...

[Welsh Dwarf]

Where have you been these last 2 years?
To refute your posts, I will use examples from Mandrake 9.2 (some say there is a lot better, but it's always worked for my computer illiterate friends).

KDE? weird? I, and none of the above mentioned friends, have any trouble or any quirks. A lot of my friends actually appreciate stuff like the audio cd device that allows you to rip like you'd copy, and if there were a few bugs in 3.1.4, try out 3.2, the formula spell checker is bliss, no slashdotter should be without!!!

Application install/uninstall. hummmm, what's so hard about going to configuration, uninstall-software, and typing in what your program does to find it and remove it? got an rpm? just double click, enter root password and your done. One point I will admit defeat on though is package maintainers refusal to put icons in the menus though, which is a general UI sin in this day and age.

As for the Linux community elitisme, I'll accept that alt.os.linux.slackware is no place to ask how to mount, but OTOH alt.os.linux.mandrake is fine for newbe's, and really helpfull in general. Otherwise there's the mandrake forums.

Just to get the facts streight

David

Re:In Capitalism, man exploits man...[*]

[Vancorps]

These Principles [ibm.com] Watson was very specific about how the company should behave.

Re:Yeah, well...

[PCM2]

Oh yeah, and before you respond with, "But written Mandarin and Cantonese are the same," even that is not necessarily true. [nickyee.com]

From the article:

During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese characters were simplified so that they would be easier to learn and take less time to write. Because Hong Kong was still a British colony at that time, the writing system in Hong Kong remained intact, as it did in Taiwan because the Nationalists did not adopt the system from the Communists. So not only do Hong Kong children have to learn the traditional characters, they also have to learn the written language with no phonetic guide. Moreover, the written language does not correspond to their spoken Cantonese. And most of them are also learning English at the same time.

Recently, Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong have done something that no other Chinese dialect speaker has done. They have chosen to write out their spoken Cantonese, which is like writing in Ebonics but without the stigmatization because Cantonese is the dominant language in Hong Kong. In the process, many words that do not exist in Bai-hua were created specifically for written Cantonese. And many of the words in Bai-hua are used differently in this written language. Written Cantonese is very colloquial, full of slang and idiomatic speech. In short, it is utterly incomprehensible to Mandarin speakers, and speakers of other Chinese dialects, even though it is written with Chinese characters.

I leave it to somebody else to say what usage is actually accepted in Hong Kong schools, businesses, etc.