Indian Defence Ministry set to replace windows with home-grown "Maya OS"

news.itsfoss.com /indian-govt-linux-windows/

104 comments

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😨
- People are so shortsighted about this. Spend billions on Microsoft products to prevent spending millions on a safe solution that will never be suddenly deprecated.
  
  you're ignoring the very large elephant in the room known as "maintenance". r&d is only the first hurdle.
  
  This way you outsource the fault.
- I mean, you guys have all that Nazi gold still so I’m not sure extrapolating that “neutrality” to other countries is necessarily useful
  
  I’m just talking about keeping your data and those of your citizens away from Apple and Microsoft.
  I don’t know enough about the nazi gold, but whatever your country is, I’m sure it has a dark history too. Still this is in no way related to the original post.

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
- India's space program is doing more than fine.
  
  Not really...
  They use the same propaganda tactics as Russia. No matter what the result is or what they said before any mission starts, they declare everything means they succeded and that their now a world super power.
- That would be their problem.
- Someone is really getting the fucks for basically parroting the usual narrative of the deep states lol.
- but because India’s government is one of the most corrupt in the world
  This same country also has a space organization that is well-respected all around the world. If we can launch rockets, we sure as hell can build a secure Linux based distro lol.
  
  Half the mobile rom teams are Indian devs
  We have some serious manpower for cheap, that's smart, development/employment focused, and intuitive
  
  This same country also has a space organization that is well-respected all around the world
  Lol, sure...
  Other countries don't pay India lip service because it's a large 3rd world country poised to become the newest sweatshop of the developed world...
  It's because they respect a space program who retroactively changes their goals and tells their uneducated masses that everything was a resounding success.
  Just like "any day now" for the last 30 years they are going to become a world leader.
- This has little to do with government officials. Though very less information is available, I believe the military will use its own personnel or private contractors.
  
  Oh yeah, far right authoritarian governments have nothing to do with their militaries...

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.
- I remember when Ubuntu was just Debian with custom defaults, pre-installed software, and their own repositories. Basically what every new distro is in the beginning.
  And yeah creating dpkg packages isn't really all that difficult. Don't know why people are saying this will be a disaster. There's a lot of technically proficient people in India that could handle doing QA, and putting a dpkg on a server that gets automatically picked up by all the various systems that need it. Hell, they could develop their own applications and package them up and distribute them around much easier on a Linux system than a Windows system.
- As an Indian... You mean we can outsource stuff to others? :D

"home grown" Ubuntu spin, got it
- Chalega, it's a step in the right direction
  
  It's certainly a step in some direction, I'll check back in a few years and see if it was the right one, or if it's just a publicity stunt.

'home-grown'
- Well, it was the headline in a National newspaper and I just quoted it.
- 'home-grown' like that Miley Cyrus distro.

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!

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.
- How is controlling the package repo for your gov a bad thing?
  
  Because they aren't doing it to control the package repo, they are doing it to score nationalism points.

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.)
- Yeah, they banned encrypted apps thinking that only terrorists require encrypted messaging.
  
  I think they are just stupid lol

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

Ultra based India
- They're not that based, they're banning encryption
  
  Not based anymore 😔👊

My main concern is support and delay b/w security patches the OS will introduce. I'm making a wild guess, but I think they should have lot older hardware devices and from performance pov, they should benefit given latest Windows are not that great on older devices and older win versions have already reached EOL.
If they do get it right, they probably need to retrain their staff to be able to use other apps like Libre Office and more.

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.
- Kerala has a very good relationship with Free Software Foundation. Here is a video of Stallman speaking in the inauguration function of "Free software foundation of India" in Kerala broadcasted on State television https://youtu.be/ZnlslvE2A9U
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/ZnlslvE2A9U
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

Interesting because to airlines, using a Linux-based RTOS is a major security issue to the point where most airlines use homegrown RTOS solutions. But this isn't the first national government switching to Linux for operations I'd argue are equally if not much more sensitive.
- I did not know linux-based RTOS is a security issue for airlines, do tell me why. And ofcourse it will take a toll on the military to maintain the OS. As before this I assume they used enterprise version of windows, so the burden was share between microsoft and the military.
  
  Whatever the reason is, it probably has very little to do with the described use case since RTOS is a very different use case to desktop copmuters. I didn't even know that people were making an RTOS that is based on the linux kernel. You could never bring the device support the linux kernel has to the RTOS world.
  
  This video from the linux foundation mentions some of the supposed concerns for Linux in aerospace: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=skaj70Qo3FA&t=1228s&pp=ygUbZGViYXRpbmcgbGludXggaW4gYWVyb3NwYWNl

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)
- The likelihood that windows doesn’t have a back door for the US government is irrelevant.
  No windows user can guarantee every part of their OS is clean.
  Linux users have the advantage of Open Source.
  If you run Linux, you can audit the code. Can’t do that for windows.
  
  For governments, big businesses, etc windows is already open source
- Many national governments collaborate on Linux security as well.

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.

Apologies - my memory doesn't always serve me well. But didn't Micro$oft bring a copyright lawsuit against a Linux distro... was it Canonical?

Great idea, I'm gonna replace my firewall with OS/2
- I don't get the comparison between Linux and an old OS.

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.
- this is bait
- Microsoft absolutely is not more quality and less bugs. It's the opposite.
- How would Bill Gates feel? Have they thought about that?

104 comments