Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux | Hacker News Reader

Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux

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154 pointsbensummers45 comments

Putin already has enough money from gas'n'oil, he doesn't give a shit. And it's not about money, it's about power.

Talking bout piracy - there is majority of illegal software in business, universities and schools. Not to mention homes. I'm talking about Windows, Office, Photoshop, Games. Even the biggest Russian social network (vKontakte) is currently largest unlicensed mp3/video storage.

I always wondered, what they need OpenSource for.. Maybe it's like Medvedev's obsession with Skolkovo - the new Silicon Valley, which will never ever happen. While there obviously are bright minds here - they tend to leave the country.

What exactly do you bribe a guy estimated to have 40 billion in liquid assets with? It's funny because I am sure a corrupt Russian politician must have a strange existential crisis when they get that much money. It's like that guy who built the $300 million dollar custom yacht because you literally can't spend that much money on a house if you tried. There's this website EnglishRussia.com where they have regular features on $500,000 Bentley's that have been abandoned in a ditch somewhere. It seems these corrupt politicians have all this money and don't know what to do with it all and are just buying expensive cars and crashing them in some sort of nihilistic denial that there is any other point to life than acquiring loot.

> ...that guy who built the $300 million dollar custom yacht because...

Because it is one of very few ways of moving the money out of the country. Having 300M in Russia does not exactly compare to having 300M in a Swiss bank, and Russia has severe capital export restrictions. They were established by none other than Putin himself, so rest assured they are very well enforced. One can still hoard a huge pile of money, but it will stay in the country unless you manage to find a way to spend it abroad on yourself. Say, by building a yacht.

Um, I'm pretty sure there are better ways to transfer 300M out of country without making everyone notice it.

"...you literally can't spend that much money on a house if you tried." Well this Idiot is building $2 Billion house. http://www.mwilliams.info/archive/2008/06/twobillion-dollar-...

Considering recent developments like stuxnet worm, Chinese cyber attacks, the fact that cyber crime was one of the main topics discussed during latest NATO summit I think its more about strategy and security than about money.

There is no doubt that this is a matter of securing important infrastructure. Had it been a money question something like the education system or the administration would be more obvious choices.

There have been numerous attempts to move to open source in Russia. Most of them failed.

Example: Linux in schools.

1. Teachers don't know much about linux

2. Computers aren't fast enough to work with GNOME (which is default in most packages they install)

3. Kids don't get it. Open office is the only familiar-looking application there.

4. They won't be able to apply their skills anywhere

add: 5. Microsoft makes some generous discounts. Simply because something is worth more than nothing. Piracy is very widespread here (this part is changing on corporate level, though).

I can see those being setbacks, but on each point:

1. I'm not sure on the situation in Russia, but in the US, a lot of teachers don't know much about Windows or OS X either, but unless something breaks they wouldn't have to.

2. Gnome's memory footprint is rather large, sadly. Depending on whether the Russian authorities roll their own custom distro or image though, they could use XFCE instead.

3. As things move more towards the cloud, I think that kids would mostly just have to learn how to use a web browser. Those are mostly the same on all modern platforms.

4. Having to learn something new is not a useless skill. Being able to use more than one platform demonstrates the ability to adapt to change. That's a useful skill to have.

I've worked in education, and if something in Windows breaks the teachers wouldn't know what to do anyway.

From Neal Stephenson:

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Yup, every point is solvable. Thinking of how life changed between 2007 and now, I can imagine how in 2013 we'd have linux in bigger cities, but not earlier.

1. I believe you still need someone to maintain the system and someone to teach how to use it. This makes a requirement of at least one unix specialist (informatics teacher) per school. Takes a lot of time to train them but not impossible.

2. Probably faster hardware and unix specialists could make a distro fast enough for education (is edubuntu such a distro?)

3. Most schools have some crappy connection, though (128 kbit/s). Some schools don't have internet at all; however, those aren't very well equipped with computers anyway.

4. You're right. However, some people expect a person out of school to have some computer literacy and experience with whatever they use at work. And most of "them" use microsoft solutions for office.

5. I added a point to the initial comment. It is probably cheaper to have microsoft products now. Especially, considering support and retraining costs for open-sourced software.

1. we had a Linux specialist in a small town high-school in Eastern Europe in 1998, a time when we barely had Internet access

5. I never saw a comprehensive costs analysis of Windows versus Linux that wasn't sponsored by Microsoft, which makes me believe this is a myth perpetuated by people too conservative to change even small habits (if it wasn't for the social factor, I would home-school my child)

    2. Gnome's memory footprint is rather large, 
    sadly.

It is?

I do quite a bit of work inside an ubuntu installation on VirtualBox that is setup for a maximum of 1gb ram and it seems to work fine (I haven't seen a computer with less than 1gb of RAM installed in years, but I've also never been to a Russian school, so who knows).

A default ubuntu installation with the gnome desktop loaded up shows about 800mb free out of that 1gb, and I am sure a nice chunk of those 200mb include stuff other than gnome.

Pretty sure it would be a bit sluggish at times, but it would probably still be very usable even if you only had 512mb of RAM.

Yeah I keep hearing this too, but it's not accurate now and probably hasn't for some time. I run Gnome/Debian on a Toshiba Laptop Satellite 1600 with 384 Mb of SDRam with Gnome running and Chromium WebBrowser v10, HTop shows 267/384 Mb being used. This is with Gnome/Metacity. With Gnome/Openbox it's even less.

On my 256 MB notebook I wasn't able to install Ubuntu with Gnome. I could be that 384 MB is enough, as I had better luck with 512 MB computer. As far as I know Windows XP can install on 64 MB, that's six times less than 384 MB.

Yes, but practically how many of us use a computer with 64mb of ram (or even 256mb)?

Also, if you're ok with installing an older version of windows there is nothing stopping you from installing an older distribution of linux (I used linux on a 100Mhz Pentium with 16mb ram just fine back in the day).

> there is nothing stopping you from installing an older distribution of linux

We argument here if Gnome needs "too much" memory so that you need a relatively new computer to use it, and I gave the arguments for that, narrowing down the amount of memory needed and comparing it with still very useful and widely used XP.

Yes, but a debian version from several years ago (with gnome!) is also still very useful and would probably not demand more resources than xp.

The question was - why is it legitimate in this argument to use an old version of windows but nut an old version of linux?

> why is it legitimate in this argument to use an old version of windows but nut an old version of linux

Again, please don't change the topic, we are talking about Gnome, not about Linux in general. Linux kernel runs on my router with 16 MB RAM without any problems. Gnome is simply made without enough attention for configurations with limited resources, it's just so. There are other managers, of course. That's why huertanix mentioned XFCE.