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LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 16, 2013

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International House of Penguins (Wired)

[Posted August 16, 2002 by ris]

Wired looks at the international flavor of this year's LinuxWorld. "Most prominent was the announcement of a Chinese government-sponsored Linux distribution called Yangfan Linux. Built by a coalition of government, universities and private companies, the distribution will eventually replace Windows on all government computers."

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Aug 16, 2002 21:01 UTC (Fri) by Sage1 (guest, #3287) [Link]

This is exciting news, for us all! In 1999, the nephew of the leader of China, at Peking U. started working on the Chinese adoption of Red Hat Linux, now called Red Flag Linux, with it's own office suite, I understand. Sells for about $12 US.

This week, I learned of the 'Chinese 2000' Linux retail boxed set, retailing in Hong Kong, but obviously intended for China, for $18 US. Linux Journal, Sept, 2002, p10, quoting http://www.culturecom.com.hk

Now, Yangfan Linux.

Plus, the Korean Hancom Linux, with Hancom Office, is also a 'Big Five' Chinese version. 'Big Five' refers to the five major Chinese languages.

So, I am already aware of four distros of Linux, in China! Can 1 billion users be wrong? No wonder BillG promised $750,000 in educational aid ('loans'?) to Chinese Schools, after the Taiwan Microsoft contractor lost their ten year contract, in the bidding for the future Beijing government contract, six Red Flag Linux contractors won the support contract!

"Let's see, kid, ummmmm, I'll give you this first bag of crack for free...you just try it out, and, if you like it, well, there is lots more here that came from." One of the large contractual requirements was for 'no more Easter Eggs in the GUI, that said things about Mainland China, in Chinese, that cannot be repeated on the air'.

International House of Penguins (Wired)

Posted Aug 16, 2002 22:48 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I don't understand a single Chinese word, but cannot Yangfan just be "Red Flag"? Or maybe it's just another name for one of the existing distributions?

I don't see many contibutions from Chinese developers to the projects I'm working on. Even questions are rare, let alone patches. Either Linux is not really popular in China, or the language barrier is too hard to penetrate, or the Chinese developers don't care about contibuting their changes to the projects.

International House of Penguins (Wired)

Posted Aug 17, 2002 6:45 UTC (Sat) by JCP (guest, #3304) [Link]

"YangFan" in Chinese means "set sail", and "Fan" means sail.

International House of Penguins (Wired)

Posted Aug 19, 2002 18:49 UTC (Mon) by robot (guest, #3346) [Link]

from the article i find they are working more on applications than the basic o/s, and that field needs loads of work to over come the silly reasonings of microsoftie suporters , the fact they are making loadable applications means a lot.ya kno security fer the money hungry types