Linux and the future of open-source in India

Linux and the future of open-source in India

GNU/Linux must be turned into the default OS for majority of Indians!

India, my country, is a fast-growing economy and one of the potential superpowers despite having numerous problems such as poverty and ill management. Still, the vast urban population of India, the educated middle-class youths, would continue to help its technology sector grow steadily. Since the time of the Y2K bug, India has contributed its fair share to the development of software industry worldwide, and today thousands of companies ranging from small android-app developing ones (with a strength of 5, say) to large, sophisticated firms such as Wipro and HCL call India their home.

While computer education has reached the urban metropolises of India and also the smaller semi-urban townships, the vast majority of the Indian population back in countless villages are technology-illiterates. And even now, a generation gap has emerged in which the elderly people of our country can't properly handle a computer, even if it's running Windows XP.

Open source helps in growth of domestic developers

The Gen Y or our younger generation is really far more advanced so far computing skills are concerned, but the development of open-source and use of the very same is still very much lacking in our country. I am from the eastern megacity of Calcutta myself, which continues to be the most important urban hub for the entire east and northeast of India, and one of the top major cities of South Asia itself. Numerous technology firms have contributed to the rising potency of Sector V of Salt Lake area of Calcutta, the heart of its technology sector. Students of schools and colleges have practically discovered their dream homes in Facebook and Twitter, but yet few, very few people continue to be aware of Linux and open-source computing.

None of my friends use Linux, and to be honest, none of them had even heard much about it before being introduced to the various distros and concepts of open-source. Yeah, for examination purposes, students do memorize the names of different OSes, and even a student of standard V can say "Linux is a free, multi-user multi-tasking operating system that is similar to UNIX". But that much only. Before BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) was initiated by the Indian government in many of the schools, no one had even thought of searching about Linux a bit on the web!

I have been a Linux user since 2009, and I can practically never think of going back to the monopoly of Microsoft. Windows, according to me, is only good for two things, some specific software as well as gaming. While I do maintain an outdated version of Windows 7 ultimate on my desktop, my primary workspace is my laptop powered by a customized version of Ubuntu 12.10. Since I do occasionally work on my desktop as well, especially when coding my own software, I've kept an additional installation of Linux Mint 14 besides Windows 7.

This is the OS of choice for most Indian teenagers nowadays

To be honest, I'm a very unsocial person, and the only place where I interact with people of my age group of my school. And I've steadily tried to persuade many of them to move from the closed Windows platform to the more sophisticated, better, freer and more secure Linux platform. Time and again I've lectured them about it, but to no avail. For the average computer-literate 15-18 year olds, computers are for gaming, social networking, watching porn, fooling around online, downloading pirates movies and sometimes listening to music. This is the problem with our country, NONE CARES! This carefreeness combined with this sort of easy-going attitude makes them feel things differently. As per the average Indian computer-literate guy, computers and Microsoft Windows are inseparable. They don't even fully understand what an operating system is, and would never give Linux a try unless and until a gun is pointed to their heads. Indeed, there are exceptions, but they are too few to be mentioned.

My friends from other countries, of Europe and North America report similar situations. Especially Americans are nowadays getting dominated by Apple, and iOS has become a sort of fashion for their teens. Over-priced Macbooks and iPhones continue to rule their lives. Even during a recent conversation with a friend from Finland (the very country of Linus himself!), he reported that most people there haven't even heard of him. A German friend of mine mentioned something similar.

All these companies are powered by Linux to a large extent

But here's the point. Their nations can afford to have that expensive ease of access provided by Microsoft and Apple, but can we? India is, to be honest, still a third world country. Yeah, urban centres such as Calcutta, Mumbai and Bangalore are getting more and more developed, but what about the vast rural population outside? People of semi-urban areas face similar problems, lack of understanding of open-source. And that old fear of trying anything new, which has almost become a part of our culture!

A relative of mine from Burdwan (one of the leading semi-urban townships of West Bengal) who studied journalism once asked me "Linux is not user-friendly. What's the point in using it?". I told her about all the benefits of using open-source, but she just seemed not very much interested. This is the problem with our culture. 10000 among 100000 know about Linux, 1000 think of installing it, 500 among them actually do. When they see that their precious games aren't running on it, 400 runs away. Among the remaining 100 who choose to embrace freedom over hi-fi gaming, almost everything faces a series of problems. 50 remain, while the other 50 run away cursing Linux. Even the user-friendliness of Ubuntu has convinced a few to actually give Linux a shot.

The Indian government, on the other hand, has realized the potential of open-source, and has started a number of initiatives such as 'one laptop per child', BOSS etc powered by Linux. Our Akash tablets are powered by android which is built on the solid foundation of Linux. But still, the degree of understanding of open-source remains less. People continue to use old, pirated copies of Windows XP or maybe 7, and can't even think of trying anything else. I have high hopes for BOSS, but like most government projects, it's simply not up to the mark. However, the community end of BOSS is growing and will continue to make it better in the foreseeable future. Additionally, the Supreme Court of India had initially switched to RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux distro) but now they've made an even better decision, turning to Ubuntu. Our neighbour China has done a marvellous job and signed a deal with Cannonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to make a special Chinese flavour of Ubuntu with professional support and resources available for the new platform. Thus, the dragon has already started freeing itself from the tangles of Microsoft's monopoly. If they can, why not us? The Indian government would better have signed a similar dearer rather than attempting to build a distribution from scratch.

The BOSS Initiative, one of the first of its kind in a national scale. 

I've tried, time and again, to popularize Ubuntu on Facebook, circulating news about it among my friends, but at times I feel like I'm only wasting my energy. It's a lot like natural selection, the really intelligent users will gradually realize the power and benefits of open-source and join our Linux camp. But their numbers will continue to be negligibly small, compared to that of the vast Windows users of our nation. Possibly that's the destiny of our nation.

In the foreseeable future however, open-source appears to have a bright future in India. People like me are everywhere, even in small towns and villages, I guess, because what the statisticians call 'the law of large numbers' will work here. Eve if 1% of the total computer users of our generation turn to open-source, our numbers will be really impressive, because we've a vast population of young, educated individuals below the age of 30.

Everyone, who is interested in knowing why Linux is really better than Windows or any other closed-source operating system should have a look HERE. Switch to Linux today, so that you can be a part of the grander design of volunteers. Switching to Linux, you are:

1. Contributing to the economy of your country

2. Helping reduce pollution of natural resources

3. Building a secure and free environment for development

4. Learning better things such as programming and development

5. Getting to be a part of the Linux community, where you can make like-minded friends 

6. Using a free software legally, and not just stealing software (something that's very common everywhere)

7. Saving your own money, because Linux demands lesser hardware resources than Windows. 

If you want to know how these things happen, just have a look at http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/ to get the idea. You can click on each thumbnail to see what it actually means. 

I hope gradually India will evolve into a nation of sophisticated users of open-source, who'd help make the world a better place than it is, today.