The HKLUG should take proactive lead in pushing government and "official" organisations (e.g. MTR, KCR) into adopting Linux. Not only that will save lots of money soon as Microsoft's "Longhorn" is supposedly going to be shipped this year, but it will also create a much bigger local software development industry.

We have many plan this years but gov is not our fucus. If you have any idea on that, feel free to mail us your contact or you plan and we can disucss in detail. (info(at)linux.org.hk)

I would like linux to be promoted on a personal level in HK. Damn Small Linux is a good example. It is a 50mb distro that boots cleanly everytime from CD, HD or USB pen with settings saved on USB or HD. It is therefore portable. More info can be found from http://www.damnsmalllinux.org.

As far as I know (and I do work for a company that design, implement and install PA and CCTV systems for MTRC), some of the contractors are indeed using linux, or at least some unix variant. Pretty sure that MTRC isn't putting the use of open-sourced software on top of their priority list when considering bids for projects. For instance, the Master Control System (MCS) where the Station Controller oversee the station and how the train flows, still have it's GUI in Windows XP with a (in my opinion) rather poorly done application as the front-end. They do use some kind of Unix variant on the backend for database, communications and other daemons.

On our end, PA Controller that takes care of everything you hear in the station was also a Windows program. I joint pretty late into the game and couldn't have that changed. Our system was controlling both Sunny Bay and Disney Stations' PA system, and at one point the program was crashing left and right and programmers were called back from Beijing to fix it.

Having said that, I think the main problem with promoting Linux in Hong Kong is how little benefit you seem to get after learning the system. Given that, and the fact that it's not an easy system to learn, we still have a long way to go.

I did manage to do a fair share to at least put an embedded system with Darn Small Linux and custom application into Asia World Expo Station (for PA system).

Just my two cents.