LXer received a document from an anonymous source with the message “I read your article on linuxJournel about countries growing use of Linux. The attached article was posted in Intel’s intranet site.” It reveals that Intel expects to sell hundreds of millions of Linux-based computers in rural China. If Intel can sell a Linux computer in rural China.
It’s great if it’s true. But the source of this “document” seems very untrustworthy to me.
Edited 2005-11-04 22:28
Look at the links and the photos. Have you seen those anywhere else?
Better question is are those photos authentic, do the Chinese phrases actually promote intel and information technologies.
Yes, the leftmost the writings on the wall are promoting Intel products (the leftmost 3 characters are Intel’s name). The rightmost are common rural slogans promoting birth control and abortion.
This whole document looks pretty real to me. The references to “Beijing Middle School #4” etc. are all very believable.
This is kinda like Halloween I & II. A leaked document shows how Linux will promulgate through China, Brazil, India and the middle-east. OK, it’s the reverse but I’d rather do it to them than have them do it to me.
“do the Chinese phrases actually promote intel and information technologies.”
Probobly something like “End capitalist MS, the people’s struggle for a free OS.”
Well, in the Chinese country side there are a lot of people without legacy hardware/software that “need” to buy the next MS OS.
🙂 :
I love the comments though, like the one a about “The Farmer PC.”
Anybody with a lot of experience with English subtitles in Chinese movies might get the subtlty of that.
$350 dollars is a massive amount of money if you’re one of China’s rural poor and it’s not even that cheap.
I can easily buy a brand new system for much less, say around $250, without even trying very hard to find the cheapest solution.
Whoever wrote that document, if it is even real, has no clue whatsoever and neither does the LXer guy.
“Powerhouse” economy or not, the rural chinese are still very, very poor and they most certanly havent been “separated” from starvation. I’m sure they’ll make a great minimum wage workforce for Intel’s chip factories though.
Intel isn’t the only company trying to open this market. There is a HK based company whose name I forget. It is an IBM partner company (you can find out its name on that information I guess). It seems to have good connections in Beijing.
This company has produced a custom PPC chip with builtin modern Chinese support and a builtin Linux operating system (based on Midori if I remember correctly). It seems likely the government in Beijing will require the use of POS systems based on this chip to fufill its coming requirement that every cash register in China be online linked to the goverment’s taxation system. The total sales potential of this are immense and the chip also has a self evident military potential.
However its CEO has dreams of getting cheap computers based on this chip to the countryside. The systems would be very basic with no hardrives and be essentially internet devices. He envisions them as not being bought by individual peasants but by by local communities to be used as kiosk systems. His aim is to create the largest online Linux community in the world connecting the vast Chinese peasantry together.
Edited 2005-11-05 07:00
i always read China is striving to gain technology indepence and it is developing its own microprocessors
(Godson , DragonChip) so it sounds strange to me they rely on Intel chips
I thought the intertwined discussion of US politics was inappropriate in this report. I wonder whether the confidential memo was an excuse to propagate political ideas, or the other way around. I would have much rather read the memo in its undoctored format.
As for the particular “call to arms” ideology expressed, it’s just not going to happen in todays political climate. If an American company is to be successful in selling super-cheap Linux PCs to the great unwashed in the US, it will do so in spite of whatever backroom dealings Microsoft tries to stop it. US politics/economics/media is not inclined to level the playing fields.
Makes sense for Intel to promote it’s low-end chips in China. I am sure that $350 is a lot of money for many in China.
Given the poverty in most of China, Linux would seem to be a natural, and a legitimate copy of Windows would be a real luxury. Promoting a Farmer PC allows Intel to take on a roll that it has not had in the US in years, selling a complete solution for the desktop, like IBM used to.
China makes sense: there is not much of a market in the US for $350 desktops that cannot play the games Win-phreaks play or do the fast compiling Linux-istas do.
The article seemed hostile about Intel’s effort, and I dont know why. US is a different market than china and Intel is treating it as such. Chinese cannot afford a luxury like Windows, most cannot even download a Linux distro. Here in US, most of us could download a new Linux distro every day if we wanted to.