CHINA, South Korea and Japan plan to set up a joint venture next week to develop and sell an Asian version of Linux software products, a Beijing-based software company said yesterday.
The joint venture, called Asianux, will be formally launched at a news conference on Monday, said Chase Fan, market manager at Red Flag Software Co.
The other two partners are Japanese Linux vendor Miracle Linux Corp and Korean Linux software vendor Haansoft Inc, said Fan, who declined to reveal the details of the venture’s investment structure.
The three companies announced plans to develop Asianux, which is also the product name, in 2004. The cooperation was supported by government authorities and industry organizations in all three countries.
Folks have been sneaking up on this for a spell and apparently they’re now ready to hit the street with 2.0.
Who cares.
There are 100+ Linux distros, splitting up less than 4% of the entire desktop market.
Some Asian companies get together and come up with a distro and it’s news?
Oracle might come up with a distro and it’s news?
What, are Asian companies now going to steal our powerful Linux leadership, putting America on the tail end of technology, and forcing us all to learn Chinese so we can use their Linux version? Or is Oracle going to destroy Microsoft and Apple with their new Linux distro?
The title of the article should be:
“Very slow news day… another Linux distro announced… why are we even mentioning this?”
Yeah, dude — ignore a growth market — they’re just furriners, anyway.
Awake — buy some more GM stock.
Actually this might *really* be news for a change, as opposed to the usual ‘another linux distro’ stuff we normally get – see Dvorak’s previous post about Oracle.
It’s really important to note that the people involved in this consortium are the people that *make the hardware* that we all use in our systems (ok, with the exception of the CPUs – and apparently China is going down that road at the moment). If they can get this off the ground they also have a potential userbase numbered in the millions – what if the Chinese authorities *mandated* that this os is installed on all systems produced for their home market – and that’s not a far fetched idea given the other things they get up to… makes you think. At some point in the near future we might be a in a Windoze/OSX/AsiaLinux world…
Somewhere in Asia…
Yin: Hey Yang look, a ChiKoJa (China Korea Japan) Linux!
Yang: Will it run Microsoft Office and games?
Yin: No.
Yang: Nevermind.
Yin: Hey look Yang, Windows Vista for $2.99!
Yang: Let’s buy that.
Is it just me or does that screenshot look suspiciously like a windows 2000 install with a nifty desktop background an custom icons.
Good news! If enough Linux distros are built we might get one that’s actually accessible. You know, a million monkeys on a million typewriters . . .
Linux gives off less heat than Windows. Use Linux and help curb Global Warming.
For mention:
India, Germany, 1/2 of Europe, the middle east, and ASIA…
The governments are tired of PAYING for everything from M$…
Upkeep for M$ is around $2000+ per year, not adding updates or changes, and the software doesnt count the EXTRA software that HAS to be made to do whats needed, WHICH costs more.
Office= OPEN OFFICE..for both MS and Linux…
Games=Can you guess that the OLDEr games were MADE under Linux and ported to MS?? And MOSt were never released in Linux…
But can I use my printer, digital camera, joystick, ipod, external hard drive, scanner, USB hand warmer on ChiKoJa Linux? No? Nevermind.
Only if the makers of the PRODUCT LET YOU…
IN the OLD days, they made drivers for EVERYONE…NOT just for MS..
But can I use my printer, digital camera, joystick, ipod, external hard drive, scanner, USB hand warmer on ChiKoJa Linux? No? Nevermind.
Printer? Maybe. Inkjets are the least likely but things are getting better.
Digital Camera? Probably. Both of our bargain brand cameras as well as my brother’s $1000 digital SLR are supported. Worst case scenario, buy a Linux-compatible USB flash card reader.
Joystick? Highly Likely. Every joystick I’ve ever heard of has an entry in the kernel config screen.
iPod? Yes. Use gnupod, gtkpod, KDE ipodslave, ipod-sharp, or write your own client with libgpod.
External Hard Drive? If it’s USB or SCSI, then yes because the drivers are standardized. I have no firewire experience, but probably the same thing.
Scaner? Maybe. Many of them use USB-to-SCSI bridges internally and that makes them easy to support. I just borrow my mother’s $80 (canadian dollars) CanoScan LiDE 20 when I need to scan something.
USB Hand Warmer? If it just draws power from the USB bus, then you don’t even need a computer. Just wire a molex connector on a pre-ATX power supply (so it doesn’t need a computer to turn on) into a USB connector.
And yes, I run Linux. In fact, I run only Linux.
If there’s one thing we need, it’s another Linux distro.
Does this mean we must all learn calligraphy? I suspect the keyboard of a Mandarin Chinese computer would be a strange and wondrous thing to the average clueless Westerner.
I tried an earlier release of Asianux, the experience wasn’t all that enjoyable as it had serious problems with hardware detection on the two systems I tried to install it on. I’m quite anxious to try this one out, but I’m not all that jazzed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last year as I’ve tried out around 50 Linux distros and many of the BSD variants listed on http://www.distrowatch.com is that none of them just work upon installation. Mepis and Ubuntu are the best all around in my opinion.
But for the average end user, hardware detection and ease of the installation of new programs are paramount. The hardware detection for Mepis and Ubuntu are superb, but if you try to get people into the command line (apt-get) or even a frontend for package installation (Synaptic) where they have to update repositories and contend with the occasional broken package or packages, you’re not going to see a mass migration.
Dapperdrake will be great for corporate use, but being open-source it won’t come preinstalled with codecs or the ability to easily install MS-based games. What is of greater interest is that Mepis (which comes with non-free codecs, proprietary ATI and Nvidia drivers, and programs to play MS-based games) has made the move to build their distro from Ubuntu sources rather than the standard Debian. That doesn’t just mean that the end-user will have everything they’ll need from a fresh install, but also they’ll have 3D hardware acceleration and even better hardware support.
Now if they could just put a little shine on Banshee or AmaroK (including a music store, better podcast support, and better Ipod syncing ) so that their would be a reasonable alternative to Itunes, there could be a movement to embrace Tux.
Hey Stephan, tone down your geek ranting or this Asian will cut off your ponytail.
About my USB hand warmer, it won’t work on your ATX plug whatchamacallit thingo whatever because it needs Window to run its software. Because the software controls the heat level
These “vanity versions” of Linux distros are all the rage right now. I read somwhere on Drudge Report that the Candians are developing their own Canada-centric distribution, they’re gonna call it CANNUX…