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😨

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

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" Ubuntu spin, got it

'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!

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.

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.)

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

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

Meanwhile, in NixOS land:

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.

Ultra based India

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.

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)

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.

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.