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Windows Linux Technology

South Korean Government Planning Linux Migration as Windows 7 Support Ends (techrepublic.com) 144

An anonymous reader shares a report: With just seven more months of support left for Windows 7, the South Korean government is planning to migrate to Linux, according to the Korea Herald, which notes that the Interior Ministry will begin "test-running Linux on its PCs, and if no security issues arise, Linux systems will be introduced more widely within the government. The Herald quotes the Interior Ministry as indicating that the transition to Linux, and the purchase of new PCs, would cost about 780 billion won ($655 million), but also anticipates long-term cost reductions with the adoption of Linux. The report doesn't mention a specific distro, instead "hopes to avoid building reliance on a single operating system." "Before the government-wide adoption, the ministry said it would test if the system could be run on private networked devices without security risks and if compatibility could be achieved with existing websites and software which have been built to run on Windows," the report stated.
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South Korean Government Planning Linux Migration as Windows 7 Support Ends

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Unlike Windows which has AD and GPOs which make massive amounts of machines a manageable task, with the ability to delegate and sub-delegate, how can you manage Linux boxes? The CM tools on Linux are great if you have 5000 disposable web servers and follow the "cattle, not pets" methodology in DevOps, but there is nothing in the Linux arena that comes close to the tools in Windows.

    • by brickhouse98 ( 4677765 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @01:59PM (#58610134)
      What are you talking about? You can use config mgmt tools to keep things in line, you could use Landscape from Ubuntu, you could use a distro like Fedora Silverblue which is basically immutable, etc. I will agree- there is nothing in Linux that is such a gd shitshow like using GPOs/regkeys tools to control lots of machines.
    • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @02:00PM (#58610140)
      Maintenance will be outsourced to North Korea and performed remotely. :-)
    • I'm sure there's some friendly guy from India who will be happy to remote in and fix all the issues.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      somehow major corporations have been using linux for desktops for many years though. It's baffling!

    • Over ten years ago I was a system administrator looking after Linux servers for a Canadian government department. I managed the users using multiple LDAP, a master and multiple backup slaves. Similar machines were grouped together based on function and what network they were in. I could give a user permission to access a particular machine, something I rarely did, a machine group, or multiples of each.

      Previously each person was given a separate account on each machine. They would have to set a password on

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Narcocide ( 102829 )

      Fun fact: Chances are that AD server you love so much is actually just OpenLDAP because it's cheaper and does the same thing.

  • Cue MS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @01:57PM (#58610122)

    Cue MS to march in with "incentives" and "studies" showing how it would supposedly be cheaper both short and long-term to upgrade everything to MS-Windows 10....

    I hope South Korea succeeds. And not so much from a financial perspective, because I think that is secondary to freeing themselves from proprietary software. It won't be easy, but of all the large-government movements to replace MS-Windows with Linux, I think this one has the best shot, to-date.

    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

      I hope South Korea succeeds. And not so much from a financial perspective, because I think that is secondary to freeing themselves from proprietary software.

      Its the apps that are important not the operating system. They might use the Microsoft Office web app to maintain compatibility. Don't assume Microsoft will no longer be getting any money,

      • Re:Cue MS (Score:4, Interesting)

        by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @02:39PM (#58610348)

        >Its the apps that are important not the operating system.

        They are both important. Presumably, if Korea is willing to look at other operating systems, they might also be willing to look at other applications, too. In some cases, moving to web-based, in others, changing to an open-source tool, in others getting a vendor to port it, and in still others use emulation stacks or hosted apps.

        >They might use the Microsoft Office web app to maintain compatibility.

        Certainly an option, as long as MS tries to be open/inclusive. Not as much of a "win", though, but it is great to have options.

        >Don't assume Microsoft will no longer be getting any money,

        I am making no such assumption. Hopefully MS will be able to make money on products customers WANT, running on the platform of their choice, instead of things they feel are forced on them.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          ... changing to an open-source tool ...

          Moving to a "replacement" office suite, be it commercial or FOSS, is a little more complicated than most assume. Yes Office file formats are supported so in theory you can import export as needed. However in practice this is too often a little quirky. For reading Office documents, not much of a problem. But as a creator who has to share with others, or one who has to collaborate with others, things get more troublesome. There are often formatting and other minor quirks. Perhaps OK for casual stuff but it c

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          M$ is screwed and the US government screwed it. No other government should trust M$ because of targeted updates not anonymous updates that can be altered to hack computers that get the update based upon the user of that computer and from there and from notebooks et al carried into secure premises. The only way for governments to achieve any real security with an Operating Systems is to house their distribution on their servers and keep in up to date as they deem appropriate, after windows anal probe 10, M$

      • Re:Cue MS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @11:27PM (#58612238)

        They might use the Microsoft Office web app to maintain compatibility.

        Won't be necessary, Libreoffice is more than good enough, that is for the stragglers that aren't already using Googledocs and the like.

        • Haha. Go do my job as a senior support analyst with VPs that freak out if their precious freebusy or shared group mailbox doesn't mount in Outlook?

          A government as huge as SK has lots and lots of MBAs who do sophisticated financial analysis with spreadsheets over 200,000 rows easily!

          • Congratulations, you're a museum piece, got to hang you up on the wall by the neck with a brass plate underneath "Last of the Excel Diehards".

    • if it's just a negotiating tactic then yeah, back to Windows they go after Microsoft gives 'em a discount.

      But they might've decided a foreign company running the software on their gov'ts computers is bad juju. In that case they'll complete the change unless Microsoft starts bribing politicians, which might be hard in S.K. given their recent history with bribery.
      • When South Korea decides to do something they generally carry it through all the way. Obviously, they had enough of Microsoft and assessed that Linux will work better for them. Really it's not necessary to enumerate the reasons why.

        • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Only south korea is hopelessly locked in to internet explorer, so chances are what they've decided to do is publish a story to try and get a discount from microsoft...

          • Which Internet Explorer would that be? The one that was end of lifed years ok, or the one that is basically Chrome? :-)

          • I would think the 1997 ban of encryption requiring IE 6 specific activex controls for any commerce or banking has long been replaced due to the populations use of smart phones.

            No one wants to turn business away to a competitor

  • ActiveX Controls (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheZeal0t ( 5132333 ) on Friday May 17, 2019 @01:59PM (#58610136)
    Hopefully, that will help rid the South of those horrible ActiveX controls that (at least used to) infect their pages! They were stuck with IE for the longest time because of a legacy SSL implementation done in ActiveX because of the export ban on crypto. My wife's favorite video website now seems to be rid of them, so I'm hoping to move her to Linux soon.
    • That had to be replaced a half decade ago by now? SK beats Western countries in smart phone adoption which would require SSL and HTML5

  • Calling it (Score:1, Flamebait)

    Should be great. It worked out perfectly in Germany after all...

    In 10 months time, I will link to this post when the article title reads "South Korea to switch from Linux to Windows 10".

  • How will they solitaire on their computers now? Microsoft Windows is THE BEST OPERATING SYSTEM IN THE WORLD for playing solitaire!
  • The idea of switching is great, but the biggest hurdle will be getting the IT support staff up to speed and competent enough to handle the switch. You cannot just flip the switch from SCCM to Chef/Puppet/Ansible. Windows and Linux administration is very different. In reality if you think switching to Linux is cheaper in the long run you are mostly fooling yourself. However if you are hoping for a different vendor and distribution model, then switching makes sense.

    In the end, running O365 on Linux through C
    • the biggest hurdle will be getting the IT support staff up to speed and competent enough to handle the switch.

      Ever noticed how the vast majority Windows admins are button clicking droolers, while Linux admins actually know what they are doing, and are invariably make better Windows admins than than the so-called Windows admins do, if they choose to go slumming that is.

      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Because for years their marketing pitch has been that windows doesn't require the expensive admin staff that are needed for unix or novell. And people believe that, so you have lots of people with minimal knowledge who claim to know windows but don't dare touch linux.
        Anyone claiming to be a linux admin usually has plenty of experience to back up that claim.

        The reality however is that windows is actually far more complex than linux once you look below the surface, so all these cheap incompetent windows admin

        • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
          The reality however is that windows is actually far more poorly documented and full of legacy options than linux once you look below the surface, so all these cheap incompetent windows admins are able to do is basic point and click which results in a highly unstable and insecure environment.

          FTFY.
  • Aren't they developing TmaxOS [youtube.com]?
  • If they haven't started migration already - and the article says they are only starting testing with 7 months of complementary support left - I doubt this will make much impact - as at the end of the year the quick fix for most of their customers (gov employees) will be to leverage the existing infrastructure and simply migrate to Windows 10.

    I think most enterprises like ours are 90% migrated off Windows 7, but we started a year ago and only have 10,000 endpoints it's probably not going to happen this year

  • This is most likely a threat to get MS to give them a better deal. They won't actually go through with it.
    • > This is most likely a threat to get MS to give them a better deal. They won't actually go through with it.
      br> Well, when Munich tried to move off Microsoft, Ballmer had to move their European Headquarters there in order to bribe the local government. ref [theregister.co.uk]
  • Microsoft calls the White House, the White House calls Pentagon, Pentagon calls South Korea, and suddenly Linux is no longer on the table, for various "technical reasons".

  • What does "if no security issues arise" even mean? Security issues arise every day, in any OS.

  • They'll find they have too little time to upgrade until Windows 7 goes out of maintenance, and then they will scrap the project and buy Windows 10.

  • How much do they figure is going for new computers to replace the Windows 7 ones? Seems like their new distro is a real resource hog. My newest PC is 6 years old.

  • Watch this July. MS will throw in a free Office365 tennet and consulting similar to how Munich got a sweet deal lol.

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