IBM's Interest in Red Flag Linux 97
eldavojohn writes "For those of you unfamiliar with Red Flag Linux, it's an OS for the growing Chinese community of Linux users. Interestingly enough, IBM is looking to support Red Flag Linux as the next distribution of Linux that its more than 300 applications will run on. Support from a huge vendor like IBM certainly raises the rate of adoption of a distribution of Linux so this is certainly good news for Red Flag Linux and also the Chinese open source users. IBM currently supports Red Hat and SUSE Linux, which creates twice as much testing for each of their applications. Will Red Flag Linux cause them to require three times the amount of normal testing?"
This is a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
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China only has a potential market 5 times larger if you are selling rice...If you are selling anything else, the POTENTIAL market is exponentially smaller than the U.S...even if you extrapolate out 20 years.
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Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)
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LSB (Was: This is a good thing.) (Score:2)
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If people want to release source code, they'll do it anyway, and people will port it. But binary applications, which are allowed by the GPL, are impossible unless you have things like LSB. You'd need a lot more of course, like being having a stable ABI with enough libraries to build GUI applications.
If some vendor has an application which they won't (or can't since they don't have rights to redistribute libraries as source code) release as source code
Never Make It - Censored Code (Score:1, Flamebait)
2 cents,
QueenB
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that is so java!
There's only one problem with Red Flag Linux (Score:2, Funny)
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Chinese food. (NT) (Score:2)
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Red Flag and Open Source (Score:1, Interesting)
Editorializing... (Score:2)
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-nB
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On the other hand, I think the underlying assumption the blurb makes is the bigger problem. Who says that supporting two Linux distributions takes big blue twice as long as it would to support one? For my part I consider that ridiculous on its face. The second system you test on should never ta
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Also, if you've ever worked within ANY large organization, there's always waste and resources that could be put to better use. No company will ever achieve a theoretical high in productivity, at least not for long periods, it's just part of human nature. That said, improvements in management,
Also interesting in TFA (Score:1, Interesting)
"We thought that if IBM was in the market as an 800-pound gorilla, it would have a negative effect on the Linux market. We won't do something that sets us against the community," he said.
Thoughts?
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One might have expected IBM to put its resources behind a distro with a better-than-average "internationalisation"
if it wants to be able to grow in international markets. Too bad they haven't been paying attention to Mandriva.
"When one door closes another one opens (but maybe not for you
Asianux (Score:5, Informative)
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Not that any of that really means much, but it's useful historical context to keep in mind.
times as much testing? (Score:2)
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"Ok, let's test this on OS A, and if there are errors fix them, otherwise, see if the program also runs on other OSes and that's it".
Sorry to dissapoint you, wrong! You need a test plan [wikipedia.org]. The test plan specifies how to tes
Over/Undersimplification (Score:2)
Sorry if I am missing something...
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Actually... no, it isn't. I was doing Java development this summer (on Java 1.5), and I did that a few times by accident, and it doesn't work. It asks whether str1 and str2 are the same String object, rather than asking whether the strings contained in them are equal.
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Well, aside from the fact that all three operating systems mentioned are Linux and thus the platform dependent issues you mention are rather moot...
Most of the errors that come up during testing are not platform dependent, but occur on any operating system. Thus you will find most of them on the first OS you test on, and it will account for most of the effort used in your testing. And furthermore, much of testing is usually automated, so aside from setting everything up, you only have to work on it once.
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"Becuase if you did, you would know that there are a lot of things you cannot test simply with JUnit"
Please tell me where I said you could automate everything. In fact I said no such thing. I specifically said you could automate a lot of it, thus a lot of the work does not have to be repeated for each platform. Thus adding another platform does not double your work.
Red Flag...LSB compliant (Score:2)
Would'nt it be strange if a communist party inspired Linux distro ended up influencing Linux developement?
Re:Red Flag...LSB compliant (Score:4, Informative)
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i thought all you open source guys were members of the communist party.
[/humor]
I havn't seen any Linux in China (Score:5, Interesting)
In the markets I have seen the entire office suite going for 10 Yuan (1 US dollar = 8 Yuan). This was not one of the little markets that we hear of being raided, this was at one of the largest chains in the country.
As far as Apples, I have the only one that I have seen here. In a stor with, literaly, hundreds of MP3 players, I saw one iPod. It was priced out of line with the local economy.
With this being the situation, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft will fail to dominate this market. There may be a small market for Red Flag, much like there is stil a market for SCO Unix; However, look in the stores, it is al Microsoft.
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Re:I havn't seen any Linux in China (Score:4, Interesting)
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But at $0 per copy I don't think that is what Microsoft (nor IBM) has in mind.
Seriously, until China has *and* enforces IP property rights and copyrights, all software is effectively "Free". So, why wouldn't China use Windows, along with all those free applications like Photoshop, Office, etc
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Come on! If they can afford the hardware they can afford the measley "Microsoft tax" - it's a small percentage of the cost of a machine. That said, I too thinkthat Microsoft is probably taking the long view with China (they are quite good at taking the long view, which is one of the keys to their success). They most likely will turn a deaf ear to the blatant copying in China with the hope that they can be (r
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Photoshop might be effectively free right now but that won't last forever. China has an opportunity to free itself from the Microsoft tax in the future by paying to support Linux now. It looks like really good value too if you consider that sponsoring local Linux will be a boost for Chinese levels of Linux support expertise. There
Prices out of line with local economy (Score:2)
If the yuan value was set on the open world market instead of by the party hacks in Beijing, that iPod would be a lot cheaper and the Chinese consumer would be a lot richer.
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Sorry, just kidding.
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Serious Question -- Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can anyone point to any contribution Red Flag has made to open source software? The company has released something like 2 distributions over the last four years or so while being heavily funded by the Chinese government. Neither distribution was usable (I've tried both). Their desktop version of Linux even removed a lot of usable software in order to cram in crippled language demo
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It's funded by the Chinese Government == lucrative government contracts == profit.
IBM is in the business of making a profit. If doing so results in a net contribution to open source software, then good for IBM & good for OSS. If doing so doesn't result in a net contribution to open source software, you'
its (Score:2)
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I know IBM are currently on the /. good guys list, but that doesn't mean they have always been on the side of the angels.
BTW, you are allowed to mention Nazis on the internet if it is relevant to the point in question, Godwin's law applies to off-topic flames.
More Red Flag info (and why IBM supports it) (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't speak for "IBM", but back when I was product manger for WAS Community Edition (WASCE) [ibm.com], I know that we decided to support Red Flag Data Center (RFDC) with WASCE right from v1.0 because o
Testing exponential (Score:2)
The Bigger question (Score:1)
Acer Desktops (Score:2)
IBM ? (Score:2)
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Linux good for China people (Score:1)
Another reason is Linux is an open source where it gain support from many experts to review code and fix bugs.
The price is cheaper and flexible compared to Microsoft. Most of people in China are affordable with it.
The most important is China goverment encourages it people to use linux and even provide financial support to Redflag Linux Software.
Conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Clearly, this is just a capitalist plot to make China dependant from IBM !
Having actually used RFL ... (Score:2)
written chinese character recognition (Score:1)
there is still no* written chinese character recognition for desktop linux that i can find,
specifically so that a pen and tablet or mouse can be used to write characters
(this would be an additional input method since emacs already supports
several keyboard chinese input methods but many people don't know 'Canjie Input')
This should not be an insurmountable tasks since there are many windows programs
that do this that are sold for very low cost
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I live in Hong Kong and see lots of people using tablets for entering Chinese
(as well as lots of people using keyboards for entering Chinese).
Also although there may be variations in stroke entry, the better recognition systems cope very well.
For example I use the Motorola A732 phone, which has excellent handwriting recognition even for
those who have very cursive writing, (several of my friends have very cursive
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I'm glad to hear that tablet handwriting recognition has advanced, though, that's good news. Obviously if such an input method is ubiquitous in HK th
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however it does mean that people can do it straight away without additional training.
I think that some of the input methods, such as the 9 key one which is supposed
to be pretty efficient may be patented as well, which doesn't help matters.
Character databases exist already, from the hanzilookup page
http://www.kiang.org/jordan/software/hanzilookup/ [kiang.org]
Don't know if this includes the 1000 odd HK official additional characters.
> Th
Red Flag should be effortless for IBM to support (Score:2)
Wrong market for IBM? (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:1)
IBM is a chinese company now??? Is it not??? (Score:1)