Due to increasing concerns over cyberattacks and malware, India’s Defence Ministry has decided to replace Microsoft’s OS with a locally made Ubuntu fork named Maya (meaning ‘deception’ in Sanskrit). Maya will have an interface similar to Windows to ease the transition, and an end-point detection and protection system called Chakravyuh. The three armed services are also expected to follow suit, with the Navy already having cleared the OS for deployment.
The Indian government has long had a policy to transfer all government systems to open-source software, with the Railways and the Bombay Stock Exchange having switched to Red Hat and educational institutions using distributions such as Debian-based BOSS and Ubuntu-based KITE.
I wonder if a government can actually do better at security. Not that corporations are amazing and infallible, but it isn’t like governments are known for creating the best software systems either.
I don’t think so. One of the groups actively exploiting vulnerabilities are governments. You could add a backdoor only you know. I don’t think anything is better for security that popular FOSS distros/OS-es
You could add a backdoor only you know.
Anyone determined will find the backdoor with enough determination, even in the dark.
Legendary India
An Ubuntu fork meant to ease transfer from Windows? Sounds like they are making their own flavor of Linux Mint.
Maya is a cool name to use too, but I associate it with the 3D graphics software first.
This is incredible news. Windows 11 is a fucking travesty filled with bloatware, I recently had to reinstall windows due to a driver corrupting my nvme and switched back to windows 10 and my god the performance boost was actually insane. I run dual boot Ubuntu on my main laptop, and straight Ubuntu on my server host laptop and my work desktop.
I don’t like Windows either, but my experience with 11 was not as bad. I ran it on now dead 16 year old laptop (Compal FL90). It worked better than Windows 10, although it’s possible that it was old enough to not support some background services. I also disabled BITS and SuperFetch which gave it a huge boost.
But compared to Linux Mint 20.3, Windows 8.1 or the officially supported Windows XP, that was a snail.
This is the year of Linux military systems
Based BOSS, dumps Gnome for Cinnamon.
Fuck yeah.
It’s been tried in a bunch of places in Germany. Usually they never fully transition, or give up and switch back. Windows is really entrenched for the desktop.
On the one hand I agree, it’s not just the OS that’s replaced, it’s also the programs that run on it (unless they use cloud based apps, of course).
On the other hand, the Germany example you mentioned was 15 or so years ago. I imagine Linux has matured a lot since then.
Yes, the previous departments that shifted were mostly servers (Railways, Stock Exchange), tech-savvy people (unis) or light users (schools). This time a lot of normal desktop users are being asked to shift. So we’ll have to see where it goes.
‘Maya’ means ‘illusion’ or ‘magic’, and not really ‘deception’ as OP says.
Maya can be deception as well !
Literally, yes. But in a military context deception seems to be a better translation.
But for a secure os? Wouldn’t seem like the best choice of words
