South Korea's Government Explores Move From Windows To Linux Desktop (zdnet.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In May 2019, South Korea's Interior Ministry announced plans to look into switching to the Linux desktop from Windows. It must have liked what it saw. According to the Korean news site Newsis, the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Planning has announced the government is exploring moving most of its approximately 3.3 million Windows computers to Linux. The reason for this is simple. It's to reduce software licensing costs and the government's reliance on Windows. As Choi Jang-hyuk, the head of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, said, "We will resolve our dependency on a single company while reducing the budget by introducing an open-source operating system."
How much? South Korean officials said it would cost 780 billion won (about $655 million) to move government PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. [...] Windows will still have a role to play for now on South Korean government computers. As the Aju Business Daily, a South Korean business news site, explained: Government officials currently use two physical, air-gapped PCs. One is external for internet use, and the other is internal for intranet tasks. Only the external one will use a Linux-based distro. Eventually, by 2026, most civil servants will use a single Windows-powered laptop. On that system, Windows will continue to be used for internal work, while Linux will be used as a virtual desktop via a Linux-powered cloud server. This looks to eventually end up as a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) model. The report notes that the Ministry of National Defense and National Police Agency are already using the Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS-based Harmonica OS 3.0.
"Meanwhile, the Korean Postal Service division is moving to TMaxOS," reports ZDNet. "The Debian Linux-based South Korean Gooroom Cloud OS is also being used by Defense and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security."
How much? South Korean officials said it would cost 780 billion won (about $655 million) to move government PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. [...] Windows will still have a role to play for now on South Korean government computers. As the Aju Business Daily, a South Korean business news site, explained: Government officials currently use two physical, air-gapped PCs. One is external for internet use, and the other is internal for intranet tasks. Only the external one will use a Linux-based distro. Eventually, by 2026, most civil servants will use a single Windows-powered laptop. On that system, Windows will continue to be used for internal work, while Linux will be used as a virtual desktop via a Linux-powered cloud server. This looks to eventually end up as a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) model. The report notes that the Ministry of National Defense and National Police Agency are already using the Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS-based Harmonica OS 3.0.
"Meanwhile, the Korean Postal Service division is moving to TMaxOS," reports ZDNet. "The Debian Linux-based South Korean Gooroom Cloud OS is also being used by Defense and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security."
This is only to prevent workers from playing SC2 (Score:4, Funny)
This move is only to prevent government workers from playing SC2 at work.
Oh Never mind....
https://www.reddit.com/r/starc... [reddit.com]
announcements (Score:5, Informative)
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Ah. "Doing a Newnham".
Re:announcements (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a significant change. The US government has been exposed using US corporations to hack other governments for extortion information. So the majority of governments that are capable of managing a Linux Distribution are securing their own systems away from US government control. Allied, well, frenemy countries (only allied to the US when it is to the US's advantage otherwise, fuck that treaty) and just being polite about kicking out US corporations.
The worst possible thing Trump could have done to US tech corporations was to try to cut Huawei off from US tech, the outcome was inevitable. Huawei Linux somewhere down the line and pushed by all the other Chinese tech companies to make them independent and safe from future US government led attacks.
How effectively will Huawei take on M$, well they can pretty much ban it in China and subsidise against it in other countries reliant on Chinese support to rebuild their infrastructure and grow their economies, so without doubt, they will get the numbers, billions of users.
US tech companies can simply no longer be trusted, they have all behaved way to badly and quite publicly, any country that trusts them is foolish and so Linux will grow, as the desktop shrinks (M$ will die with the desktop market). Smart terminals for business networks tied to Linux servers with cheap Linux notebooks for communications.
About time for a Windows entrenched ecosystem (Score:5, Interesting)
It is about time.
For those who have not heard it before, the entire online banking system in Korea is based on Internet Explorer and ActiveX! Yes, you can only do online banking on Windows.
Here are articles on how their online banking is stuck in 1996 [forbes.com] and pondering whether Korea ditch ActiveX [nationthailand.com].
If they move to Linux, that would finally end this absurd decision that has gone for too long ...
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Leverage (Score:3, Insightful)
It's probably just a threat to get MS to agree to a lower pricetag.
2020 is the Year of the Linux Desktop! (Score:5, Funny)
2020 is the Year of the Linux Desktop!
Red Star (Score:2)
There is already a Korean Based Linux, Red Star [wikipedia.org], so they are half way there.
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Right, South Korea will most probably go either Ubuntu or Debian, depending on whether they intend to customize their own distribution, which would favour the latter.
Microsoft is VERY POORLY managed. (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
Multiple Problems Reported With New Windows 10 Updates. [forbes.com]
Windows 10 Warning: Anger At Microsoft Rises With Serious New Failure. [forbes.com]
Quote: "... such problems are ruining the company’s reputation..."
Another quote: “That’s Microsoft’s underlying tactics all along: sneak questionable mechanics into Windows with updates, backtrack only if someone noticed them, reported them and if that creates a big enough public outcry,” commented one user.
Latest Windows 10 Update Problems and How to Fix Them [maketecheasier.com]
Quote: "You’d think that someone at Microsoft HQ would’ve made it an explicit resolution to get 2020 off to a get start when it comes to Windows 10 updates. Clearly someone didn’t get the memo, as the year has started off with a major update bug, as well as lingering issues from previous updates."
The overall issue seems to be that Microsoft managers lack social ability. They don't seem to realize they are damaging Microsoft's reputation.
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Yeah, but we went through much the same thing when we jumped to Windows 7. And XP. And 2000. Don't even bother discussing Vista or ME.
And yet, they're still the dominant desktop computing company. Microsoft's reputation might be $417, sure. But it keeps getting used at workplaces. And I got flat-out disciplined for pointing out how flawed the software design was and told it was putting the management's decisions into question. Like we weren't all doing that already anyway.
It doesn't matter anymore and it se
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Nah, 2000, XP, 7 Vista were nothing like this.
Even ME could easily be avoided.
Windows 10 is all the bad stuff that was warned about in previous releases but never really happened with no way out.
EOL of windows 7 is the best thing to happen to Linux and Apple in decades.
LinkedIn (Score:2)
Man, 20 years ago,Slashdot have news for nerds and stuff that matters months before it was show in mainstream media.
I see theses on LinkedIn last week.
People here should do something about this
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Like what? The editors mostly stopped posting user submissions in favor of writing their own dupes.
word processing and spreadsheet (Score:2)
Really hope they throw some of those savings towards libreoffice. last update was within a hair of replacing ms office, someone needs to push it the last mile.
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I work in BI, and even if I always work with Excel because firme politics, I always have Libre Office Calc under my hand, it's so overwhelming better than Excel for ETL stuff !
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I would love it now, but there is a long standing bug where random numbers remain constant using the equivalent of data tables which makes it useless for pretty much everything I use excel for. not got round to checking if thats been fixed yet. wasn't in 6.2
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1) Ensure documents compatibility (i.e. don't do MS specific, need to be LibreOffice compatible)
2) Get rid of Outlook
3) Migrate file servers (if MS)
4) Ask users to move local data to file servers
5) Prepare a Linux master version, install it on new SSDs
6) Replace SSDs in PCs, keep the old one (to be connected via USB if necessary)
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7. - Rewrite every single Windows-based management utility.
uh... we're not in an hospital or in NASA!
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If anyone is going to do it, it will be the Koreans. This is the country that decided to target Japan's key industries one by one and defeat them. Having made the plan, they carried it out methodically, successfully defeating much of Japan's semiconductor industry, steel and heavy construction, consumer products especially TVs and computer monitors, and have made serious inroads against Japan's auto industry. It would be a mistake to dismiss this report as pure posturing. Korea is famous for doing what is b
Good for them. (Score:2)
A good operating system does not need Adware, Spyware, Phone-Home-Technology, or any of these other special services. One should not have to "lock down" a windows machine to prevent these things.
A good OS serves up files nicely and handles a couple of other functions one can call if needed. Phoning home should have gone the way of E.T. in 1982.
--
How do you explain school to higher intelligence? -- Elliot
Not a bad idea... (Score:2)
...as long as people can send and receive email [slashdot.org].
Munich did that, then moved back to Windows (Score:4, Informative)
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We... We don't talk about Munich.
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Re:Munich did that, then moved back to Windows (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft wheedled and pried and spent tons of money for years to get Munich back in the family. But it's a finger in the dike kind of thing. Good luck making it stick permanently in the country with the highest Linux adoption in the world.
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As for why Microsoft did this, it's also blindingly obvious; They wanted to nip any move away from it's OS business at the bud.
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFS:
Eventually, by 2026, most civil servants will use a single Windows-powered laptop.
When they said they want to save on license costs, they weren't kidding.
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From TFS:
Eventually, by 2026, most civil servants will use a single Windows-powered laptop.
When they said they want to save on license costs, they weren't kidding.
Unless Microsoft figures out a way to license the use of official Microsoft-compatible Linux VMs/containers in Windows.
That's a nice 3rd-party VM you have there, it would be a shame if it didn't perform well.
Bring back the Terminal (Score:1)
Oh come on, a scam to get MS software cheaper! (Score:2)
Been seeing these stories for well over 15 years now and they all end the same, MS flies a load of PR bods or even the top bods themselves to meet the local precurement team, MS offers the buyer a discount they could never have imagined and it's all smiles. MS looks like they care, Linux is pushed back into the shadows again. I reckon MS will have already been on the phone and I bet they have promised at least 75% discount on all desktop software and possibly the sweetener of a ton of free Azure support and