Debian to be Marketed to Japan and China 173
darthcamaro writes "Thanks to Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux Systems Japan, Debian is about to get some major exposure in Asia according to a report.
Debian developer Matthew Garrett told internetnews.com that Debian has always been one of the most international Linux distributions. "It's wonderful to see initiatives that will increase our representation in countries with a growing interest in Linux," he added. "It's especially heartening to see this move coming from commercial enterprises, as it demonstrates that free software can work with business."" There's also a post on Newsforge as well.
all this linux (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:all this linux (Score:4, Informative)
From this and other recent articles on
Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Off topic a bit, but what is a good distro for servers in general? I've always picked Debian due to the fact it feels Unixish to me, and can be very cleanly installed. Local Community College uses Red Hat, and the SysAdmin swares by it. Any comments?
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah. They're both great distros. One's mainly corporate; one's mainly volunteer-based. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:3, Insightful)
For any debian users who don't know this; change all 'stable' to 'testing' or 'unstable' in /etc/apt/sources.list and run 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get dist-upgrade' as root.
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:2, Interesting)
But I agree totally about moving from woody to sarge. I've been running it on production systems for over a year and had no downtime.
Gambling with customers (Score:5, Insightful)
But "just run unstable in production environments" doesn't cut it for a lot of people.
Re:Gambling with customers (Score:2, Insightful)
If it is developer's desktop, unstable is perfectly fine. (At least you do not need to recompile like gentoo.)
But for hosting any service for others, I agree it does not cut it for a lot of people unless they QA every updates in advance in details.
What we need is more regular desktop release
By the way, I have to admit we have not so many active Asian DD when compaired to Europe.
Osamu
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:3, Informative)
Unstable is probably better than testing for a while after a new release, simply because testing gets almost no attention then, and it is very possible that something like a glibc update in unstable that doesn't propagate to testing to keep even security updates for large parts of testing from occurring.
That is not the case right now; Sarge probably has more attention now than it will when it go
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say, go for Sarge. The kind of bugs you're worried about turn up rarely in practice.
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:1)
This turned me off Debian (cannot for the love of god run Stable). I switched to Gentoo. No regrets.
It may be a good server OS, but completely worthless for a desktop imho.
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:2)
The Debian security team doesn't do security updates for unstable or testing, but the package maintainers are quite aggressive about security fixes for unstable, and they actually have an easier job. The security team has to backport their fixes in many cases, while the regular package maintainer can just grab the fixes and apply them, since the published fixes are generally against the latest release.
Unstable usually gets the security fixes as fast or faster than stable, but the security team can't guar
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:2)
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:1)
I like tinysofa enterprise server [tinysofa.org]. But I'm biased, since I created it and maintain it. But, in case you're bored and want to try yet another distribution, here's a description:
tinysofa is a distribution that's based on Fedora Devel/RHEL4 (with ABI compatibil
Re:Maybe they'll start moving a bit now? (Score:2)
CentOS [centos.org]. Stable and predictable releases as opposed to long drawn out ones which might happen or might not.
I love Debian but I don't use it much any more for servers. I grew tired of using backports and hearing excuses like "just use testing or unstable on servers" considering both those branches aren't supported by the Debian security team.
Well, I can see it now. (Score:5, Funny)
A: "Debian is all old!"
B: "Yes, but it's stable and it rulez in professional environments where you can't crash"
C: "Um, but Red Hat has pro support, if you're a pro"
B: "You can buy support from vendors"
D: "Don't people realize stable means stable, and testing means testing and it's wonderful that there are so many options?"
E: "My Gentoo system rox!"
A,C,D: link to sites like funroll-loops.org
F: Hypes up debian-based Knoppix.
G: Hypes up debian-based Ubuntu.
A: "Debian testing is still old, I need new"
B: 'You could try gentoo, you unfaithful kid".
yadda yadda yadda. It's funny, laugh.
Re:Well, I can see it now. (Score:2)
H: "...in Japan!"
and the obligatory... (Score:1)
Re:Well, I can see it now. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well, I can see it now. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well, I can see it now. (Score:2)
Finally and export to China... (Score:5, Funny)
People's Republic of the World ---- 1
United States of the World -------- 0
they forgot one... (Score:5, Funny)
Debian to be Marketed to Japan and China
Meanwhile, Korea wonders if it should use its powers of invisibility for good or evil...
Re:they forgot one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:they forgot one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:they forgot one... (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way - learning proper grammar structure would help. What you're to say is obscured by your illiteracy (s/can fit/people/, s/americans/Americans/).
Re:they forgot one... (Score:1, Insightful)
How about you RTFA.
It's about a Japanese company and a Chinese company teaming up together to work on Debian.
"Ignorant Americans" has nothing to do with this. Mentioning Japan and China but not Korea is not ignorant, it's accurate reporting.
Of course, information gets lost once posted on slashdot, and their readers who don't RTFA stretch it way out of context. Thanks!
Re:they forgot one... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:they forgot one... (Score:2)
Meanwhile, Korea wonders if it should use its powers of invisibility for good or evil...
So which one of the Tokyo-based VA Linux Systems and Nanjing-based Sun Wah Linux should be marketing in Korea?
Great (Score:1, Funny)
Hardly seems community based (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hardly seems community based (Score:2, Insightful)
No you are right on this one. Its not really community based and I am no fan of commercial distros, but the question is how much are they going to give back to the community. I believe CJK support has a lot to catch up on compared with the rest of FOSS projects. So much so that anything is better than nothing.
In the CJK world there aren't enough i10n developers for the amount of work that needs to be done. (Yes there are some exceptions like Mozilla that is lucky enough to have whole teams of active i10
Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, OO.o and all that is available, but MS has a head start with their stranglehold, and everyone just uses what everyone else uses. Price isn't an issue. For home users, support isn't an issue either since computer hardware shops that sold you the computer will do the support for you (whether that copy of Windows is licensed or not). Basically, what a typical home user does when his box is messed up is take it to the shop, and some bored technician will just reformat and reinstall things.
For big businesses, they want a "reputable" brand and therefore go Microsoft. MS has a lot of mindshare, plus they have a monopolistic stranglehold on the iT industry anyway, so Windows and MS is accepted way of running computers.
It's not all bleak though... OSS is getting momentum around these parts. In Malaysia, there has been a drive by the government [star-techcentral.com] to OSS-ify their IT infrastructure (this made a few Microsofties cry
Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption (Score:2)
Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption (Score:1)
Right now it's just too easy to get away with piracy, but that could change the moment governments decide to crack down on it.
Re:Piracy in Asia hurts OSS adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the selling points of OSS businesses is that it's (usually) cheaper than proprietary closed-source software, but that point is negated by the fact that piracy is so rampant here that every piece of software is "free".
I doubt parent knows what his talking about. First of all, when the cost of using FOSS in business is concerned, it does not only refer to the initial purchase price of a piece of software. It refers to the TCO (total cost of ownership), which includes such fun items as damages incur
Enterprises (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh Well, I am sure some MBA formula can show me I am wrong.
Re:Enterprises (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, I have seen this happen quite a bit.
Re:Enterprises (Score:2)
Re:Enterprises (Score:2)
Re:Enterprises (Score:2, Interesting)
In order to illustrate this point I take the example of debian's un-scheduled releases:
Me: When do you release the new stable?
Developer: When it's done
Enterprise Software (Score:1, Interesting)
As an Enterprise software application developer, when I hear the word 'Enterprise', I think 'massively overpriced, buggy piece of crap' - because that's what every single enterprise system I've seen or worked on is.
Enterprise software is just software that is slapped together as quickly and cheaply as possible, but sold with the most expensive sales and marketting that can be found - because Enterpri
other resources (Score:1, Redundant)
LWN.net: VA Linux and Sun Wah Linux Join Forces Around Debian [lwn.net]
LinuxWorld.au: VA Linux, Sun Wah team on Debian Linux [linuxworld.com.au]
Martin Michlmayr(Debian Project Leader)'s comment [debian.org]
What branch would they use? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stable? Sadly, not an option due to its complete lack of support for modern hardware or moderm features. It's a marvelous example of what computing should have been in 1997.
Unstable? Far too likely to break at the next apt-get upgrade.
Experimental? Same as Unstable, but worse.
Testing? Probably the best bet, though still not recommended for production use by Debian.org.
Ubuntu: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ubuntu: (Score:1)
I just got my ubuntu CD's the other day: free shipping rules! I believe they'd ship [ubuntulinux.org] to Asia . . .
Re:What branch would they use? (Score:3, Informative)
If you're worried about security updates but still want modern stuff on top, there's always backports.org
Re:What branch would they use? (Score:2)
Interesting? MOC!
The parent is an obvious troll. Woody (the current Debian Stable) was released in the summer of 2002, [debian.org] so he is demanding that in 1997, the Debian developers should have provided software which would only have been written half a decade later.
Re:What branch would they use? (Score:2)
Re:What branch would they use? (Score:2)
This should be interesting to watch (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, with Asia's help, maybe we can finally solve the problem of people following false editors and settle on the one true editor -- nano!
Re:This should be interesting to watch (Score:2)
Im sure thats true for proprietary products such as windows but why is this a problem for Debian which is freely available and downloadable both in source and binary forms from a variety of places?
The Big Business of Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Big Business of Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting to note that IBM sinks $billions into Linux devleopment and Dell gets 50% of their revenue for basically doing nothing. Let's all see who can race to the bottom fastest!
Public Service Announcement (Score:2, Funny)
now mod this +3 informitive, or i'll cower in the corner with my fedora2 install.
Huzzah for Debian (Score:5, Informative)
1. Good news. The more the merrier. Debian, the distro of choice for hardcore users and developers, certainly needs a push and some TLC over here. The developer community is sorely sorely lacking in profile, heroes, and most of all corporate support.
2. Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux are known within the community, but are bit players in the market as a whole. Red Hat has majority shares in Japan, is very strong in Korea, and is the corporate default linux for China. Meanwhile, Novell is non-existant in Korea, and is making a big push in China (they are so-so in Japan). Just as in the US, Debian will be hard-pressed to go against these guys
3. The drive for this-- a purely community-driven distro-- is welcome to the ears of government buyers. The asian governments hate sending their tax yen/yuan/wan to Redmond, but they would hate it just as much to send to Raleigh or Boston. This is (was) the impetus behind Asianux. unfortunately, Asianux doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
4. Turbo seems to be making somewhat of a comeback. If Debian can make some headway, then we may have some more play over here, and that is good for everyone.
Shameless plug: you track these kinds of stories, events, and opinions at OpenAsia.org [openasia.org]
fonts and input (Score:4, Interesting)
- eye-easy fonts and fonts engine, the asia fonts structure is complex. In 10-12px web page they just look horrible
- out of the box input methods: intelligent phoenetic type input or chanjei should be enabled as default. (Common newbies cannot install it themself)
I know that some improvement is progressing like firefly-arphic fonts and iiimf. Unless they become mature things won't start right.
Re:fonts and input (Score:2, Interesting)
To give the problems a bit more perspective:
Re:fonts and input (Score:1)
www.study-area.org/apt/firefly-font/
cle.linux.org.tw
www.oaka.org/freefonts
freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fCJKUnifonts
The input method is another issue yet we have all kind of gui working together.
If people cannot see and cannot write, they would just turn back immediately. At this rate th
Another piece of so-called news (Score:2, Interesting)
The submitter has no clue about Linux in Asia, but then again, that's why we have editors (perhaps replacing one of current editors
a) Linux I18N still sucks (you don't need Unicode support on a DHCP server, but still) so it's not like they're not using Debian because they like Windows (or Red Hat).
b) Everyone knows what kind of user base Debian has - it's certainly not "enterprise". Academic, department, small & medium enterprises, individuals - yes. Enterpri
Re:Another piece of so-called news (Score:1)
Ubuntu plug! (Score:1)
Well, *somebody* had to do it, right?
What's in a name... (Score:1)
Yes, Debian sounds amazingly like the mandarin word for "shit"...
what a load of bull... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sorry but that just bull. The reason why there is more microsoft products in asia is because they microsoft market them well. There are lots and lots of opensource projects that have started from asia just not popular in the US and Europe.
I think its a really good initiative. This is what Open Source and Linux really needs, letting people know what is available to them.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:5, Funny)
Well that eliminates Microsoft Windows as an option. But what else do they have that would fill that need?
Perhaps Linux backed by IBM. That gives reliability and a strong "manufacturer".
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:4, Interesting)
A large part of the push is making sure Linux support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean character sets and translations is robust and well developed - think of it as a massive scale localization project that reaches down as deep as they can get it.
How this current Debian push fits into the grand scheme of things (part of the larger project, at least in some sense, or just an independent push) is not clear to me, but regardless it represents a growing desire in Asia to move to a more flexible system that can be adapted to their specific needs. This isn't an attempt at promotion so much as a growing interest from China, Japan and Korea. Expect to see more such stories over the next 5 to 10 years.
Jedidiah.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Informative)
If you take a look at almost any debian.org webpage there are already quite a few translations. The rest of the distro is similar in that not only does it support many different hardware platforms, it also has support for most major languages
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently China is on board with Linux. [sfgate.com] And the vendor is big evil Linux-hating Sun Microsystems! (thousands of trolls' heads explode over this paradox)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:2)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the basis for this comment? Open source wasn't working too well in <insert country name here> in 1995, yet 10 years later it seems to be catching on, despite "the <insert country name here> mindset". Maybe mindset has nothing to do with it and it's just that open source is still ramping up in Asia?
Regarding the AC's "kiasu" crack, English has a word for "greed", does that mean we are all greedy? Some countries
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Informative)
I'm confused. From my point of view a large part of, for example NetBSD's developers are from Japan. I don't think you need to start a movement there. They are starting it already. I remember that, when googling for some IPv6 topic, I always see dozens of sites in Asian character sets.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:5, Informative)
People see characters displayed in a browser and they assume there's no more issues left, but that's far from the case.
I think the key is definitely getting decent support in Debian and having that extended into LiveCDs like Knoppix.
I've been playing around trying to get an i18n environment set up on Knoppix 3.7 with this klik system that lets you add on the clunky but functional xcin character input system. Unfortunately, since the fonts are in
However, a decent LiveCD that did have it working would be soooo nice. That would do more to help Debian in China than anything. I am one hundred percent sure of that.
Now, I've used what does exist already in terms of Chinese LiveCDs and as far as I know that consists primarily of BV1AL and a few others. I went to go check the names and for some reason linux.nctu.edu.tw seemed to be down. But there's an assortment of them there that I have been using and distributing to people here in Taiwan for several years.
The problem is that none of them is really current. The Knoppix scene is going crazy with innovations to the point that every release brings radical new improvements and yet the Chinese enabled versions are all radically stripped down and outdated. BV1AL is the most functional in terms of the Chinese my experience, but the actual desktop is quite a throwback. I understand that there's the size of the fonts to consider, but I also understand that you can get a keychain USB drive that will add a lot of expandability space to a LiveCD distro at a price that will work in the Chinese market.
I say, this is where the attention needs to go. In fact, this is what I was up till dawn doing last night.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:1)
I thouhght about making toy UBUNTU live CD variant with SCIM. That should be good for Asian people. I have no time. Any volunteer?
Osamu
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
The asian mindset doesn't exist. If it did, there'd only be one language, one country, one party, and no murder. Cops will then go unemployed since everyone agrees with each other.
The truth is, if you take a survey of ten people, there's bound to be a disagreement on something. Some get open source (does Ruby mean anything to you?), most have never heard about it.
Try to bundle two billion people's mindset into one, and there is no way you can succeed, no matter what your anecdotal evidence says.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nonsense. The real reason is that Linux/BSD currently have poorly integrated support for CJK characters. There are lots of different standards and programs, it's a pain to input them using the keyboard and everything is incompatible. You might need to lots of additional configuration to do a task as simple as editing a text file in the input method you prefer.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:1)
Asian countries are not contributing to Linux like some others (like Germany/France/..) because,
1. Talented people are already in US or elsewhere in universities or holding jobs there
2. Busy working for service companies (eg, India)
3. Consumer market is too less.
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
That, and the fact that piracy is so rampant here that practically everything is "free", makes it hard for OSS to compete.
Does that mean that one of the big reasons why Linux
is a strong competitor in the west is because it's
free & the competitors aren't?
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:4, Funny)
That's just not fair. You can't go saying things like that here. It's like dangling a marshmallow in front of a baby with a flamethrower. How the hell is anybody supposed to keep their karma with you saying things like that?
Why don't you just go moderate quietly over there?
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:3, Insightful)
BS (Score:2)
Most users care much more about the "free as in beer" part (or at least cheap) than about the "free as in speech" part.
That's just pure crap. How many Slashdotters do you think are incapable of obtaining free (as in beer) warez? It's not that difficult, you know. It's the other freedom (libre) that gets us on board the FOSS train.
Re:BS (Score:2)
What's that have to do with anything? (Score:2)
Most slashdotters run Windows. And yes, if Linux had to compete on price it wouldn't be able to.
So? My point was that those who use FOSS do so, not because it is free (gratis), but because it is free (libre). Claiming that we're just looking for free-beer software is a lie, because we're capable of obtaining just about any software we want for free but we choose to use FOSS. Your post does not address that issue.
Logic? (Score:2)
Man, if ever there was anyone in need of a course in logic...
Your arguments are all non sequiturs.
Slashdotters, grannies, truck drivers, whoever -- use FOSS because they prefer their software with a side of liberty, not because it comes without monetary cost. And using Windows doesn't preclude one from using FOSS. Last I checked, Firefox was available for the Win32 API. Check the post I replied to if you want to get your arguments back into context. You're just making pointless argument -- caviling, as it w
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:2)
Hmm... that's not in EDICT. Is it Japanese? It's got () kiyasui: (adj) relaxed; familiar; easy to access; friendly
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:1)
Re:Tried already with BSD (Score:1, Informative)
There are even jokes about it [asianjoke.com].
Re:Mozilla Thunderbird sucks (Score:3)
Re:heh (Score:4, Informative)
But I wonder how well Debian supports the asian languages. Will they be using the same tools?
Re:heh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:heh (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you're running stable (which really is better suited for servers than desktops), you're just spreading FUD. I run testing, FWIW.
Previously, I used XCIN for input, although I used SCIM these days.
It always baffles me when people are like, "Distribution X" doesn't have Y! Especially with Debian, which has nearly every piece of free software under the sun packaged. You just install the packages you want. Sheesh.
Re:heh (Score:1)
<ramble>
Eurocentric *what*? In my case, in GTK+ file dialogs, folder/object names with UTF8 characters seem to get truncated. Yes, I am in Europe. Not eurocentric - anglocentric. I believe the Japanese have invented a nice euphonic term for screwed-up encodings, called "mojibake" ("ghost characters", I believe), but around here, we call this phenomenon, loosely tran
Re:heh (Score:1)
with all the fonts I had available. 550M of fonts
- and 20 or so languages displayed on the help page . There should be support for multi-lingual xterms
or equivalents - and enough locales for anybody.
This tested using "testing" / sarge and "unstable" / sid.
Re:Big in Japan! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignorance is not always bliss you know. It can sometimes also be blushingly stupid. On the other side, it's always fun - to an extent - to read all the tons of crap coming from people who don't have a 2 ns experience with anything Debian.
Thing is, Debian SID is just as rocking