this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
137 points (96.0% liked)

Technology

34720 readers
374 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Based on Ubuntu. Interface and functionality like Windows, users will not feel much difference. BRICS countries committed to their own Linux distributions. South Africa has been the exception.

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Makes sense on an operational level to go Linux. Feels like most of ITs job in large organisations is to lock the OS down as much as possible. Ending in an even worse windows experience then it already is

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So would it be open source? Is ubuntu under GPL 2.0 also?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No; it depends on the individual package whether it is open source of nor. Ubuntu uses a lot of Open Source software (including the Linux Kernal) and packages but is not entirely open source. It derives it's own package base from Debian, and then adds it's own flavour to things as well as commerical tools it pushes.

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu derivative; its sounds like the Indian Government would be doing the same thing. Basically like Mint, they would use Ubuntu and it's packages as the basis of their system and rely on most of it to be updated & maintained by Ubuntiu's teams upstream, but then build their own repositories that contain other software or their own perferred modified versions of things originally taken from Ubuntu. They can build a version of Linux that they control including what software is installed, and when it is updated.

They would not have to make their distribution freely available, but if they modified any open source packages they would have to make those available as open source packages (depending on the license of the open source software). However that can be very difficult to inforce, and if it's done in a closed military system you'd never even know a modified version of the software exists if they chose not to share it.

Although Ubuntu contains a lot of "open source" software, it doesn't mean the Indian Governments version would necessairly be open source. But the big benefit to India would be potential complete control of any part of the software chain, and no reliance on big tech companies like Microsoft for the OS and core software like Office. That saves a lot of money and is also potentially more secure (in a national security sense), depending on how much people trust the US government not to interfere in american Tech companies. There has been talk of forcing backdoors into US software in the past which would make any big nation nervous about being reliant on their software.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

God I wish someone would just throw me the keys and say take it all to Linux.

It's not like 2/3 the company couldn't get their job done on a Chromebook.

But trying to pry office out of the cold dead hands of the CStaff... And then emulating Adobe and Autodesk for Art isn't always trivial.

I'm pretty sure it would just be pain after paying after paying but it would be an enjoyable pain.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

I dont think this is a good move as india rely on American tech heavily. I should clarify the whole world relies on our tech. Hope when trump gets elected he will put india in the blacklist for pulling thi stunt. We dont care about your military because we have the most powerful military in the world.