Wouldn’t this violate the EU’s DMA?

Mint has three prebuilt options, Cinnamon is just the default. Beyond that you can also install other desktops.

I thought it was a Dragon Ball Z reference.

But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.

For the reasons you described, I won’t run VLC as root, and I don’t think 99% of users would need to. But if someone wanted to do it, the software shouldn’t stop them from doing it (beyond giving a warning and asking them to confirm).

Any distro that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.

What is the reason we don’t run as root?

We are human and make mistakes. Not running as root means the computer will ask us to confirm when we are about to do something major (like a software update, or formatting a partition). This reduces the chance of making big mistakes. (But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)

Mint works. Most alternatives don’t. I can install Mint on a total newbie’s system, and not have to worry about something breaking two weeks later. Hell, most newbies can install Mint if you give them the USB.

On a deeper level, I think Mint devs are one of the few teams that understand the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ philosophy.

Older Redmis allow bootloader unlocking from Developer Options. Then some seller installed malware this way so newer models require you to register as a user.

The sun powers the water cycle.

Shit list?

Yes, because tomorrow you may face the same bug.

The government distros (BOSS and IT@School) are for government offices and schools, respectively. Also, both are open-source. Mostly they add better support for Indian languages, and some educational software.

Android uses the Linux kernel, so it is Linux (but not GNU/Linux). This isn’t just semantics - Android has a UNIX-style filesystem, shell scripts, etc.

But yes, desktop per capita is probably decreasing as well.

If they’re moving to smartphones, that’s still (mostly) Linux.

That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it’s more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware.

Most Windows in India is pirated. Microsoft doesn’t care unless you’re a big company. The second point is true. Another reason is that schools shifted to Ubuntu 10-15 years ago, and government departments are now shifting to Linux.

The first rule of coding is that you don’t re-invent the wheel.

Not sure about this particular textbook, but ours did explain what open-source is. So I’m guessing it might have been covered in a previous chapter.

The problem is that India has many local languages. So you need one language, equally foreign to everyone (so no one has an unfair advantage) for things like federal laws, national-level competitive exams and inter-state communication (each state is, in theory, composed of the people speaking one language). English conveniently fits that bill.

We almost had civil war in the 1960s over this. The compromise was that (1) India has no national language, (2) all federal documents would be in both English and Hindi (the biggest Indian language) and (3) all schools must teach any three languages, including English.

I don’t see anyone here switching to linux on their personal pc other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux.

I think someone is pulling your leg. All the IT / engineering students I know use either a normal Linux distribution like Ubuntu, or Windows. Kali is for cybersecurity people and wannabe h4X0rs.

Do these private computers run a properly licensed version of Windows? What’s the cost for a license? Same as in other countries?

Only the big ones. Pirated Windows is extremely cheap, and Microsoft doesn’t care too much as they want people using Windows. A new proper licence would be Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000. This is a considerable sum for the average Indian.

Is there more Linux expertise available than in other countries?

I don’t know that much about other countries. I do know that we are probably the most Linux-friendly country in the world. But most of the senior people in the FOSS community are from Europe / US / East Asia.