I ain’t a super Linux user, but I find it crazy that so many governments aren’t scared to put their data in the hands of US corporations like Microsoft of Apple.

I work for the state in Geneva, Switzerland, and my employers gives me an iPhone and forces me to use Windows at work.

I know that developing your own Linux distribution or any other solution is difficult but my country is even using a foreign cloud service instead of a swiss one😨

The article says this will be “based on Ubuntu” but it will probably actually just be Ubuntu with custom defaults, pre-installed software, and maybe repositories.

This just makes sense in my view. The cost relative to the number of machines they must deploy will be miniscule. If they do not mess with the core system too much, they can outsource almost all the admin and expertise to Canonical in terms of security and packaging. People saying this will blow up. Why? It does not sound like they are really creating a full distro from scratch. Is Ubuntu not viable?

In terms of why crating a custom version instead of just using actual Ubuntu. Again, the cost of customizing a distro can be dramatically less than making even simple configurations on every system after the fact. They can standardize what the desktop will look like and set key defaults. They can choose what applications are installed by default. They can remove applications from the repository that they do not want to be installed. The can ensure that localization is done well, etc.

‘home-grown’

Very cool! Always good to see more countries get closer to embracing FOSS. Really helps with the collaborative benefits that FOSS can have, plus allows for organizations to have more control in their digital destinies instead of simply being customers.

Hope the best for the project!

People bitching about it being based on Ubuntu or “just Ubuntu”, I’ll take Ubuntu over windows and macos any day.

Finally something done right by India (just my rough impression, I remember them like banning VLC and then encrypted apps, idk exactly what they do.)

Another fríggin’ Ubuntu distro. Can’t somebody just commit to Debian instead… please?

Meanwhile, in NixOS land:

Ultra based India

This is 100% a nationalism thing. They want to be able to say we make our own operating system. That’s it. It’s going to be a disaster when they inevitably fuck up because they are doing g it for the wrong reasons.

A lot of schools and colleges in Kerala (Indian State) use Ubuntu. Kids are taught how to use software like GIMP and Audacity in schools. It has become part of the syllabus in public schools.

12 th standard students have to do maths practical in GeoGebra.

Hopefully they pull it off for real and it will not get bogged down by bureaucracy and red tapes.

Haven’t there been issues with other governments maintaining their own distribution? Why not just maintain a repo thats added with a script or something.

Can they do it? Yes. Can they do it with a reasonable level of support for many different desktop hardware so it’s cheap to implement? Probably, though it won’t be as comprehensive as windows. Can they get a 1:1 replacement for windows that has the same level of security as windows? No, because many national governments collaborate on windows security. But! They’ll be safe-ish from NSA back doors in windows (if you think there are any)

This won’t end well…

Not because of Linux or Windows, but because India’s government is one of the most corrupt in the world, and everyone is just going to get bribed into saying “this is great” and it’ll get implemented without any flaws being addressed

I think its their loss as Microsoft products are know for quality with less bugs. Also American products should be used by every country. I think India and China should be put in the blacklist so that they can’t buy any US hardware and chipset.