The necessity of open source software in Japan
December 4th, 2006 by quaisiIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
When I bought the PC I`m writing on now, it came with Microsoft Windows. IN JAPANESE. Microsoft Office. IN JAPANESE. And a dainty wireless keyboard that you see above. IN JAPANESE. This all despite me knowing at that time. ABSOLUTELY NO JAPANESE.
Look at my pathetic spacebar. Either side of it there are keys which change the character set from Roman letters to Japanese. I press these buttons all the time when I`m typing to great frustration. *+%$ I just pressed it now.
Time and time again a window would pop up with a maze of kanji to wade through above a yes or no. Regardless of which button I pressed, the program I was using would shut down taking with it my hard earned work or time wasting session with it.
All the crapware that came with the PC including one that let me make custom-made New Year`s cards, check kanji and get train times was you guessed it.
IN JAPANESE!!!!!!
Needless to say they were all useless but being poor, I was unable to buy an English software or operating system. So i turned to free and open source software to a hugely beneficial effect.
I downloaded firefox instead of Internet Explorer, substituted Microsoft Office with Open Office and downloaded GIMP which lets me edit the photos I take to my heart`s content and saves me shelling out thousands of yen on Photoshop.
There are problems however still. I use the excellent Picasa to organize the many gigabytes of photos on my computer yet even though I select English as the default language, the program recognizes that Windows is in Japanese, thinks I am crazy and loads up the Japanese version. This happens with many other programs as well.
There are other free open source programs I use too - Trillian replaces Microsoft Messenger (in Japanese), Skype lets my parents coo over Isabelle with free video calls. I even dabbled with Ubuntu the free and easy to use Linux-based operating system which I have installed on a partition on my hard drive as a back up resource. There are more but I think you get the idea.
You may be thinking that you know and use these programs already and don`t know why I`m fussing over them. To me these programs are not merely free programs that just ape their pricier counterparts. They are more powerful programs that allow me to go about my life on the internet in ways which the programs that shipped with the computer actively prohibit via their insistence on promoting the language barrier. Without them, I would not be able to productively utilize the massive resources buried in the computer itself.
Posted in Life in Japan |
December 5th, 2006 at 5:15 am
Welcome to open source. I discovered it a few months ago by going with SUSE Linux. I try not to use Micro$oft as much as possible because I really am liking the Linux way.
December 5th, 2006 at 7:28 am
I’m not sure how you can (legally) get it, but there’s a so-called Language Pack out there that allows you to install other languages over your XP installation. In my case I tried it out with an English installation of XP, and I added Korean. In the Language part of your configuration screen you then get a dropdownbox where you can choose the language. Log out and back in again, and boom, english XP.
A Quick google search gave my [url=http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0db2e8f9-79c4-4625-a07a-0cc1b341be7c&DisplayLang=en]this[/url] Microsoft page, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for. As always google is your friend :).
December 5th, 2006 at 7:30 am
(Apologies, the link didn’t came out all that nice. Why oh why did I come up with bbcode…)
December 5th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
for messenger service go to http://www.meebo.com, which lets you load almost all of the popular services into one client.
It is web based, which is the only down side.
December 5th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
All of the problems, with the exception of the Japanese keyboard, do not exist on macs. Actually, I think that maybe Microsoft Office may come with only Japanese menus (typical), but every other program that runs on a mac gives menus in whatever language you choose, just by changing one setting (and then re-running the program).
One of the reasons that I switched over is that Mac has been at least one step ahead of Windows machines when it comes to language handling.
For what it’s worth.
December 5th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
@Shannon: I was amazed too when I went to the apple store and asked how easy it would be to get the operating system in English. He just changed a menu setting and my jaw dropped to the ground.
Why can`t Windows do that?
December 7th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
I was laughing, I know what you mean about the tiny space bar and the two annoying buttons either side. With Picasa, you can change the language from Jpnse to English even after you’ve loaded and installed it. I think it’s through Tools. You’ll have to navigate the kanji though!
December 7th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I was going to mention the Picasa thing too. Just go to Tools -> Options and you can choose the language you want for the menus and dialogs. I’m got Picasa running in English on my Japanese Windows XP PC. Cheers.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:43 am
You’re right about that Shannon, I finally made the switch to Apple in April ‘06, after working with them for about 2 years at work already, and I haven’t looked back since. Definitely the best OS out there that handles multiple languages, on the fly. You can even change the complete Finder language without restarting, crazy!
December 15th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
I’m with you - I have 1 box at home with fedora core 6 linux. 1 with win2k, another with winxp nihongo and a laptop with winxp english. I’ve spent all day trying to fix up the mess left behind by the lastest windows “update.” I hate this thing. I’ve never had a single problem on the Linux machine.
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:22 am
I had a similar experience. I started getting open source stuff to solve the problem, and made the mistake of downloading the software from the closest servers. These servers were usually in Japan, and by default many of the programs had been compiled using the Japanese language option. Makes sense, but I didn’t catch on until after a couple of downloads.