South Korea is switching to Linux ahead of the Windows 7 shutdown

Soulstorm brew

Weaksauce
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Will be interesting to see if they can make it work.

The biggest impediment in the office environment to making the switch is usually the fact that we live in an Ms. Office world, and people get pissy when they open documents they have been sent in Libre Office and they don't render exactly the same.

This is why - I think - Munich ran into problems when they did it. They were just one city trying to go it alone and dealing with an Ms Office world.

Now if the entire country does it, they may get enough critical mass that it winds up not being a problem.

Time will tell.
 
they'll fail. they wont be able to open the docs they need and will need to expand their help desk capacity by x9999999. "Cost concerns". this is where i get pissed off. its NOT free with dusted hands, your org should be a patron of any projects that allow you to run your business or fill your mission. im not a huge linux guy but this is what burned us in 2014/2015/2016 with openssl.
 
I wish them the best of luck, but I honestly think that somebody has vastly under estimated the actual costs of the project and the training and the in house development that will be required to make this work. But with all things if they are willing to invest the time and most importantly money into making this happen then I have no doubt that they will pull it off.
 
Will be interesting to see if they can make it work.

The biggest impediment in the office environment to making the switch is usually the fact that we live in an Ms. Office world, and people get pissy when they open documents they have been sent in Libre Office and they don't render exactly the same.

This is why - I think - Munich ran into problems when they did it. They were just one city trying to go it alone and dealing with an Ms Office world.

Now if the entire country does it, they may get enough critical mass that it winds up not being a problem.

Time will tell.

Well it is a county with very good internet pipes. The difference between 2019 and 2006 is MS now sells and pushes office as a cloud product.

There is nothing stopping them from running a mix of Libre and Office no matter what OS there on. At that point for gov. anywhere Linux makes much more sense. More secure, easier to lock down.... and they can still do business with MS on office if need be.
 
Well it is a county with very good internet pipes. The difference between 2019 and 2006 is MS now sells and pushes office as a cloud product.

There is nothing stopping them from running a mix of Libre and Office no matter what OS there on. At that point for gov. anywhere Linux makes much more sense. More secure, easier to lock down.... and they can still do business with MS on office if need be.
Yeah with Office 365 and the web versions they could switch over to iOS if they wanted too, the bigger issue is going to be their other programs, payroll, accounting, and other stuff like what ever their DMV, Public Housing, Subway systems, etc are all running. Yeah productivity software is a big part of the management side but what the poor grunts on the front line are using is what matters most. Then again with Citrix they could virtualize and centralize a lot of those operations if needed.
 
Yeah with Office 365 and the web versions they could switch over to iOS if they wanted too, the bigger issue is going to be their other programs, payroll, accounting, and other stuff like what ever their DMV, Public Housing, Subway systems, etc are all running. Yeah productivity software is a big part of the management side but what the poor grunts on the front line are using is what matters most. Then again with Citrix they could virtualize and centralize a lot of those operations if needed.

I have a feeling a lot of those systems where already using a lot of Linux. Its also a very tech heavy country so I would imagine a ton of their software was custom... if any country is likely setup to switch easily its south Korea.
 
I have a feeling a lot of those systems where already using a lot of Linux. Its also a very tech heavy country so I would imagine a ton of their software was custom... if any country is likely setup to switch easily its south Korea.
Linux for what ever SQL/FoxPro/ProIV database they were connecting to maybe but the actual application itself with all the menus and screens that they are using on the day to day are probably a combination of Win32 and god forbid ActiveX for IE6+. Custom software makes the transition potentially harder not easier depending on the design requirements those engineers were given out the get go, and further depending on how many of them still work there, and how good their notes were.
 
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It is rarely the prime office suites that cause all the problems. People figure out how to get those to render close enough fairly quickly. It is the many special applications that cause the most grief. The ones purchased for specialized applications from small companies that barely support the Win 7 version. Or for that matter, stopped updating when Win98 was still pretty fresh. Also that odd printer device used one a year for some mandated program.

They can probably pull it off as long as they are willing to settle for a 90% switch over and are willing to accommodate the weird special stuff staying on Windows perhaps behind a locked down firewall appliance. Often, given time, the need for the weird stuff declines as folks retire or laws change.
 
Linux for what ever SQL/FoxPro/ProIV database they were connecting to maybe but the actual application itself with all the menus and screens that they are using on the day to day are probably a combination of Win32 and god forbid ActiveX for IE6+. Custom software makes the transition potentially harder not easier depending on the design requirements those engineers were given out the get go, and further depending on how many of them still work there, and how good their notes were.

Potentially.. but I find it unlikely they are running anything in ActiveX. If it was an American state gov I would agree... but South Korea. I bet the custom stuff they had was/is already using open source APIs and converting to Linux binaries will be a simple recompile. It is the home of Samsung with the fastest internet in the world... their average internet speed was at 28.6Mbit/s 4 years ago. I bet even at the Gov level a ton of their in house stuff already had Android tie ins...

Like I said if any country is situated to easily transition its them. So it should be interesting to see if we hear any horror stories. I'm betting not. Samsung has been taking some heat from the South K gov for not creating enough jobs. So who knows if need be they can always lend a hand rebuilding software that needs it.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Bu...s-to-Samsung-for-help-on-jobs-and-North-Korea
I'm sure if the Gov needs... Samsung might be more then willing to create a few jobs and give them a good deal.
 
Pretty light-weight article, I'd like to see the source information. A couple of things stand out to me:

SOUTH KOREA has become the latest country to look at "deWindowsifying" as it sets out plans to migrate government systems to Linux....The document doesn't talk in terms of timetables, nor of which Linux distro or distros are favoured.
All this tells me is that SK is looking at the switch and coming up with a plan, but have not yet decided to switch.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety has confirmed it is making the change over cost concerns, as well as trying to stop the current stranglehold of a single operating system (ie Windows).
short-sightedness to look at the cost factor, as paying a vendor for commercial support contracts makes Linux at least as expensive to maintain as Windows. Unless they plan on doing all in-house support, which would require massive labor expenses. The latter reason mentioned, they would only be breaking the "stranglehold" of Windows to go into the "stranglehold" of Linux, and that of one distribution. I'm certain that trying to support multiple desktop distributions is out of the question.

It was fairly inevitable that we'd get some switch-outs over the coming months, given that Windows 7 machines will need to be upgraded to Windows 10 (at cost) during the rest of the year, ahead of the older OS reaching end-of-life in January.
I think this is just opinion on the part of the author, as if it were based in fact of the SK's implementation of windows, it would mean that SK was not using Enterprise licensing and instead using retail or OEM licenses for each installation. Very doubtful that is the case.

Another thing, the article does not specify if this is a wholesale migration to Linux on all systems, or if it is mainly a plan to substitute Windows servers for Linux servers. The logistics of such a switchover makes the latter option more likely, given the projected costs.
 
So after some digging, I found the source article
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190517000378
This answers a few questions

The Interior Ministry said the ministry will be test-running Linux on its PCs, and if no security issues arise, Linux systems will be introduced more widely within the government.
This indicates a partial, not wholesale switch.

The transition to Linux OS and the purchase of new PCs are expected to cost the government about 780 billion won ($655 million), the ministry said.
How much of this cost is the cost of new PC's? This certainly is not factoring in much cost for transition and re-training.

Before the government-wide adoption, the ministry said it would test if the system could be run on private networked devices without security risks and if compatibility could be achieved with existing websites and software which have been built to run on Windows.
How successful will the tests be? Before anyone gets excited, better wait until this phase is complete.

The ministry’s digital service bureau chief Choi Jang-hyuk said the ministry expects cost reductions through the introduction of the open-source OS and also hopes to avoid building reliance on a single operating system.
Again, they can't wholesale switch to Linux and claim to not be reliant on a single operating system. Means they won't be switching everything over to Linux, as much of the commentary has suggested.
 
giphy.gif
 
SSK Linux, official South Korean distro, whipped into shape by Samsung employees paid with a government grant.

a copy of the latest version on every new Samsung memory product.

A full on attack on windows for desktop computing supremicy.
 
The entire country? Wow. I wish them luck.
Well, since so much computing now is remote... It is becoming easier and easier to do away with windows... The front end OS so to speak is a lot less relevant when what you do in the computer is pretty much connect to a server or website.
Don't know if they CAN do it, but i think it should be way easier than it was maybe even 5 years ago, surely 10.
 
need more entities to do this... then perhaps MS will go back to making the OS only and quit spying on us
 
Back on topic South Korea has a decent chance of making this change stick. Having the capacity to dual boot to windows OS's in some case will be fine.

Where they will run into a roadblock is if they try to get off of windows server OS's. MS has Zero interest in making their server side OS have open source DLL/API calls that they will make available in Linux. Stuff that needs to be on windows will continue to need to be hosted in windows.

Personally they have have seen the writing on the wall to consider core updates to their desktop level OS's to allow greater flexibility for end users on what OS to run.

Of course if those libraries are used it will also increase the target area for Malware creators.
 
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