# South Korean government will ditch Microsoft Windows for Linux



## P4-630 (May 20, 2019)

_Windows 7 support will end in January of next year, and that is a huge problem for both business and home users that are still running the aging operating system. Can't these people just upgrade to Windows 10? Well, yeah, but many just don't want to. Windows 10 has extreme telemetry that many people consider to be spying. As a result, they simply don't trust Microsoft's latest operating system. Not to mention, for businesses and organizations with many computers, the upgrade to Windows 10 could prove to be a costly affair.

And now, as a result of the upcoming death of Windows 7 support, the South Korean government has reportedly decided to ditch Microsoft Windows entirely. According to The Korea Herald, the Asian country's government will switch from Windows 7 to a Linux-based operating system.

Unfortunately, it is not yet revealed which Linux distribution will be used. What we do know, however, is South Korea won't act blindly -- they will test Linux extensively before switching. It is likely they will try various distributions before settling on just one.

Moving to Linux will be fairly pricey in the short term, as it is expected to cost more than a half billion dollars (including hardware upgrades). With that said, Choi Jang-hyuk, Service Bureau Chief of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, is predicting a long term cost savings by switching to an open source operating system.

Whether the South Korean government truly saves money from this move remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure -- they will no longer be beholden to Microsoft. That could be priceless._









						South Korea will ditch Microsoft Windows for Linux
					

Windows 7 support will end in January of next year, and that is a huge problem for both business and home users that are still running the aging operating system. Can't these people just upgrade to Windows 10? Well, yeah, but many just don't want to. Windows 10 has extreme telemetry that many...




					betanews.com


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## Rahnak (May 20, 2019)

I've seen this story before. They're going to switch to some Linux distro and spend a lot of money/time training people how to use it. After 6-12 months they'll give up and spend some more money to switch back to Windows.


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## Frick (May 20, 2019)

With WSL 2.0 Linux will soon be EEE'd to death (sarcasm). So pretty useless move there, Korea.


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## micropage7 (May 20, 2019)

actually linux is promising but if we talk about what is more familiar, of course windows and one that i still dont like is although it's GUI some you must run through CLI and if you move into linux in like one department, how about the cost that needed


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## s3thra (May 20, 2019)

Like with any major enterprise software migration, it needs to be clear up front what the objective of the change is. A cost benefit analysis must be a significant deciding factor in the move, which in turn needs to be weighed up against things such as enterprise risk.

It appears in this case, Windows and Microsoft's approach to telemetry is a pretty big enterprise risk for the South Korean government, otherwise they wouldn't be looking to move.

Unfortunately for South Korea, and many other governments, organizations and businesses for that matter, it is VERY hard to move away from Windows. Windows is so entrenched in the enterprise space that it is damn near impossible to move away. I know in my organization, I've barely even considered the move due to various factors:

Software compatibility - our engineers need AutoCAD to work, our graphics designers need Photoshop and Illustrator to work, and our finance folk need Excel to work. And that's only a few of the scenarios. I won't even go into detail about all of the other moving parts - little niche bits of software that have been relied upon for years for very specific tasks which have become more or less mission critical to our organizational needs which will only ever be Win32 compatible.
User training - not just existing employees, but everyone coming out of the universities or people coming in from other businesses expecting to run Windows and knowing the basics of how things work. There's often no time to go through the basics, and organizations aren't geared up to train people on the basics as they walk through the door.
Administration - I'm talking about IT techs. I'd be okay, but I've been building enterprise Linux servers at work, and using Linux in the home for years. This simply isn't the case for a huge portion of the IT sysadmin community though.
Don't get me wrong, Linux is where it's at. It's lean, mean, open, private, configurable beyond belief, easy if you have the background knowledge, and hugely powerful. But unfortunately there are huge challenges involved if wanting to migrate an entire organization away in one fell swoop like South Korea are going to try to do.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out for them.


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## Athlonite (May 20, 2019)

Good luck with that South Korea


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## 64K (May 20, 2019)

I don't know very much about Linux but I wonder, since it's open source, if that would open up the South Korean govt. to all kinds of hacking.


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## dorsetknob (May 20, 2019)

"Don"  Satya Narayana Nadella  will make them an offer they cannot refuse ( or the Penguin's head is in the post ) ........(*capisce)*


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## s3thra (May 20, 2019)

64K said:


> I don't know very much about Linux but I wonder, since it's open source, if that would open up the South Korean govt. to all kinds of hacking.


https://opensource.com/open-source-myths


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## R-T-B (May 24, 2019)

64K said:


> I don't know very much about Linux but I wonder, since it's open source, if that would open up the South Korean govt. to all kinds of hacking.



Most likely the opposite.  Open source helps with auditing.



Athlonite said:


> Good luck with that South Korea



Most distros today can do anything I picture a government needing to do fine.  I don't see them having much or any issues provided they don't game... lol.


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## johnspack (May 24, 2019)

Any version of Ubuntu will do far better than any win 10 installation.  Easy to use,  free,  and doesn't spy the f* out of you.  Win,  win.


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## blobster21 (May 24, 2019)

it's just the governement making this move, not the inhabitant, so we're talking about what, 10000-100000 computers affected by this migration ?


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## ShiBDiB (May 24, 2019)

Speaking as a government employee (US) I know that if we switched from windows to a linux flavor we'd be screwed... Teaching some people I work with how to sign into their email or connect a printer is a struggle on an OS that does it for you.


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## 64K (May 24, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> Speaking as a government employee (US) I know that if we switched from windows to a linux flavor we'd be screwed... Teaching some people I work with how to sign into their email or connect a printer is a struggle on an OS that does it for you.



Where I work there are around 7,000 employees and we have an IT dept capable of maintaining around 10,000 PCs but we would have to hire an outside firm to retrain all of the employees on Linux and it's just not in the budget to do so. In addition, new hires would have to go through some training because most people only know Windows and MS Office. We are stuck with Win 10 and MS Office.

Almost all of the employees have a Bachelors degree and some have a Masters or a Doctorate but that doesn't necessarily equate to picking up new tech quickly.


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## Ferrum Master (May 24, 2019)

64K said:


> Where I work there are around 7,000 employees and we have an IT dept capable of maintaining around 10,000 PCs but we would have to hire an outside firm to retrain all of the employees on Linux and it's just not in the budget to do so. In addition, new hires would have to go through some training because most people only know Windows and MS Office. We are stuck with Win 10 and MS Office.
> 
> Almost all of the employees have a Bachelors degree and some have a Masters or a Doctorate but that doesn't necessarily equate to picking up new tech quickly.



They are a very competitive nation. For each workplace they have like two breathing on your neck. It will iron out really fast for them.


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## ratirt (May 24, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> Speaking as a government employee (US) I know that if we switched from windows to a linux flavor we'd be screwed... Teaching some people I work with how to sign into their email or connect a printer is a struggle on an OS that does it for you.


Well I used Linux some time ago. Knoppix, Ubuntu and others and to be honest it isn't that difficult as you say. The IT would have to configure an image and set it up but after that is done if you use proper layout for the users it can look basically like windows. The problem I see is the application they are using. For instance Finance department. There are so many of these applications and some of them might not work on Linux based system. That would be a problem. That's just on top of my head as an example but there are hundreds more in various departments in a company. That also depends on the servers they are using which some of the features they need may not be supported but also some features may have better support and extended functionality. I'm sure if the Koreans said they want to switch to Linux, they have done the background research and I don't think they are screwed.


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## R-T-B (May 24, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> Teaching some people I work with how to sign into their email or connect a printer is a struggle on an OS that does it for you.



I really wonder sometimes what people think modern linux does...


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## Ferrum Master (May 24, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I really wonder sometimes what people think modern linux does...



I also wonder... because the browser is the same everywhere... i would agree about some obscure vintage corporate active X controls, certificates, DRM like trustNET to access some sites... okay, I agree it would cause pain.

But else? As long you are the admin to cherry pick the HW in order not to stumble to some crap realtek driver that are the only ones in my experience that are pushed into the kernel and doesn't work for ages...


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## hat (May 24, 2019)

I wonder. We had Linux machines as well as Windows machines in my school. I mostly remember the Linux machines being in the library. There would be 4 screens to a single computer. It was surely a cost cutting measure for the school, but I never heard other students complaining about the Linux computers...


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## ShiBDiB (May 27, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I really wonder sometimes what people think modern linux does...




I also wonder how the linux fanboys still think it's comparable in ease of use to windows...


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## R-T-B (May 27, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> I also wonder how the linux fanboys still think it's comparable in ease of use to windows...



I mean, have you used a distro recently?  The tasks you quoted are.

I'm not a linux "fanboy" (It's still inferior for gaming) but I toy with it on occasion and man, it's apparent some people have not used it in quite a while.


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## ShiBDiB (May 27, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I mean, have you used a distro recently?  The tasks you quoted are.
> 
> I'm not a linux "fanboy" (It's still inferior for gaming) but I toy with it on occasion and man, it's apparent some people have not used it in quite a while.



It's still nowhere close. Simple things like plug and play compatibility with most printers/wifi dongles/etc.. is non-existent. The process of manually finding and installing drivers is a pain in the balls on a good day. The lack of a microsoft office suite for linux should be enough to turn professional agencies away, libreoffice (or whatever knockoff flavor you like) is a knockoff for a reason. The lack of name brand support (or half assed support) for most products. 

It's not a daily driver for the non tech inclined. To say otherwise is asinine. Windows sucks for numerous reason, but as a mainstream OS it's lightyears ahead of any nix flavor out there.


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## R-T-B (May 27, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> It's still nowhere close. Simple things like plug and play compatibility with most printers/wifi dongles/etc.. is non-existent.



I haven't found anything that isn't detected immediately.  At worst, it needs firmware from the package manager.




ShiBDiB said:


> The process of manually finding and installing drivers is a pain in the balls on a good day.



That's because "drivers" are a foreign concept on linux.  If they aren't in the package manager, you shouldn't be installing them, and nearly all "drivers" ship with the OS other than the nvidia binary ones and a few very rare holdouts.

Honestly it sounds like a case of RTFM and don't apply windows concepts to a nonwindows OS.  Linux doesn't use "drivers."  You break things thinking like that.  You use the package manager.  And it almost always has a GUI.



ShiBDiB said:


> It's not a daily driver for the non tech inclined. To say otherwise is asinine.



No, it's actually easier because 90% of the time things just work plug n' play.  I can't remember the last time I had to load a "driver" other than nvidia. 

What it isn't easy for is an experienced WINDOWS user treating it exactly like Windows, which it is certainly not.


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## ShiBDiB (May 27, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> "Your rant"



All your counterpoints are reasons why linux is not a daily driver for the non tech inclined.


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## Solaris17 (May 27, 2019)

On the contrary, I run entire *nix infrastructures and while I am very much an advocate for all OSs (right tool for the job) I would argue its easier for me to secure my linux servers than it is my Windows machines.


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## R-T-B (May 27, 2019)

ShiBDiB said:


> All your counterpoints are reasons why linux is not a daily driver for the non tech inclined.



Wanna try again?  That wasn't a rant. 

The nontech inclined doesn't mean they'll be trying to load drivers in it.  Quite the contrary, nontech-inclined means they'll be quite "point and do what I am told."


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## Deleted member 158293 (May 27, 2019)

Using a linux distro like Ubuntu is actually easier and less maintenance than Windows for everyday office work, which is typically what government employees do.  And for sure open source software is more secure.

With all the moves away from globalization lately, I can see why countries wouldn't want to depend on another country.  

Just look at how Canada was/is being treated by the U.S. with tariffs for the last 6+ months.  I'm sure South Korea is paying attention.


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## robot zombie (May 27, 2019)

Last time I installed linux, it was no more complicated than Windows 10... if anything it was simpler. Not to mention most of the big, mainstream distros have you set up with big-pool software repositories where installing any app your average user would need is a matter of going right into it via the gui, searching or browsing by category and clicking on the one you want. Imagine Windows store, only everything is free and it all works. You click it, it downloads/installs, and you use it. And the apps are generally very refined and capable. Not to mention many of them are specifically designed to look and function just like their Windows counterparts, meaning experience in the Windows ecosystem does tend to carry over. On the fringes, there is weird stuff that takes footwork to use, but that's all power-user territory. For an office user, linux is pretty easy to recommend.

Sometimes I think people see linux power-users (which to be fair is probably most avid linux users) messing about with the terminal and getting under the hood and think that's what linux is... like, that's what it takes to use linux. But your average user, whether at home or at work, will probably never need to go that way... same as with Windows. Now, from an IT perspective linux can be highly favorable in terms of security, troubleshooting, and sheer modularity. It's fairly trivial to do a custom distro... in this case I imagine it would be very possible for a couple of people with all of the relevant info to compile a custom build that would suit everyone's needs to the point where the only real difference coming from W10 would be that the GUI looks a little different and things have different names. But then, that's what icons are for.

And then, there's drift. There's that common adage of having to re-install windows sometimes. It can sometimes drift, become almost untraceably (or it IS traceable, it just takes too long to whittle-down) broken by updates/software... what have you. It sometimes loses stability over time, which I imagine can be a huge PITA when you're working with tons of interlocking systems. IME, linux-based systems tend not to have this problem. You set them up, with a potentially very high degree of granularity, to run how you want them to, and then they do that for years. And you can set it up so that nobody and nothing is changing that. That kind of stability and ease of maintenance can save a lot of money.

I dunno, from an IT perspective, long run... it's great. I see few downsides. I know which one I'd want if I were the admin. And honestly the learning curve is basically nonexistant. Modern linux has several gui's that mimic modern Windows so well that your basic user might not even realize it isn't Windows. And beyond that, there are other configurations that ARE a little different, but actually may be better optimized for your workflow and thus are very intuitive and easy to learn.

It's not like everybody shows up to work one day and gets a 3-inch-thick book slammed on their desk with a sticky note saying "memorize this by tomorrow." It's not this insurmountable thing. I installed and used my first linux distro in my early teens and I promise you I was not some sort of prodigy. Frankly, I didn't know shit! It was just that easy, even back then!


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