South Korea to move to Linux not Windows 10

[crosscourt]

This one floored me when I read it as South Korea is one of the top 3 tech countries in the world. Their government didnt want to move from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and instead made the announcement that they will shift to Linux. No info on which version they will use but South Korea is already very Linux heavy because of their mobile phone dominance and sales of pcs/laptops with Linux.

Stay tuned as we see how this develops. Ill be curious to see what up front costs there are versus what they will save big time down the road after the move.

https://betanews.com/2019/05/18/korea-linux/

[crosscourt]

The comment I dont understand in the article is, why will they need extensive hardware upgrades, when Linux can be run on much older hardware.
It should work fine and up front costs, I think if they are smart on how they approach this they can avoid the problems other cities have had trying to make the move. Very little training will be needed and given the huge number of apps available that work in a similar manner to their Windows counterparts, I think they may be surprised.

I hope this starts a trend towards moving to Linux with more countries.

Gartner in a recent report said that only 75% of professional computers will be running Windows by 2021. Ive also seen other surveys that report even lower numbers like 60% by 2012-22.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, I was reading this. I'm hoping they stick with it, unlike many of the other switches in recent years.

With chromebooks now starting to slowly get some traction in business, I definitely could see the 75% by 2021. However, I'd bet it won't be linux machines replacing it. It'll be MAC and ChromeOS. Obviously there will be some (especially non-gaming developers who favor linux already) linux, but overall, I feel linux will still play a back-fiddle to other, more cohesive OS's.

[crosscourt]

The initial cost to switch of $500-600 million is nothing compared to the overall savings down the road.

[crosscourt]

As long as they dont screw around like Munich did, this should go fine.

[crosscourt]

It appears Samsung has been trying to go down this road for quite some time and move completely to Linux.

[crosscourt]

Arirang is reporting that the move to Linux is in fact confirmed and partially fueled by a move by some of the larger tech companies in South Korea, not just the government.

[crosscourt]

China is also moving away from Windows and Japan has been talking about it for quite some time. A few very large provinces in India are also moving to Linux, so its beginning to look as if East Asia may be moving away in general eventually.

[tlmiller]

If Japan moves, that'll be a watershed moment for linux. That'll kinda validate it as a real choice in the desktop, and could potentially spark further conversions.

[crosscourt]

Right now in Japan there has been a move towards Linux for quite some time and the government has been discussing it for most of the last year. NHK reported that a possible move away from Windows was possible and when you here rumors from Taiwan and Malaysia, I tend to take that as a good sign.

I was informed by a friend of mine that sales of Linux based Dell pcs in Japan has grown over the last two years, not to mention in South Korea and China.