China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux (zdnet.com) 142
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China's Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. In addition, even before the recent trend of governments outside America moving away from Windows, Beijing has started a long-running push to replace foreign technology in sensitive systems with domestic, open-source alternatives.
[...] The Chinese government did not specify which Linux versions would replace Windows 10. However, the stock prices of Chinese Linux suppliers, Kylin Software and Tongxin Software Technology (commonly known as UnionTech), immediately jumped. These companies' respective operating systems, Kylin OS (no relation to Ubuntu Kylin) and UnionTech OS (UOS), were already positioned as domestic desktop and server replacements for Windows in government, state-owned enterprise, and critical-infrastructure environments. [...] Huawei's HarmonyOS 2, which began as an Android variant but is now a proprietary mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, is also being developed into a PC platform. HarmonyOS 2 won't be deployed anytime soon. Kylin and UOS are the only mature desktops that are ready for institutional desktop deployments.
[...] ... this transition won't be easy. For agencies now moving off the government Windows build, the issue will be more demanding than simply swapping one desktop interface for another. Migration requires application testing, peripheral and driver validation, identity system integration, document-format compatibility, staff retraining and, in many cases, replacement or adaptation of Windows-dependent line-of-business software. The report provides no details on exactly how this transformation will occur. But the speed of the shift suggests that these issues are already being addressed in China's centralized managed desktop stack.
[...] The Chinese government did not specify which Linux versions would replace Windows 10. However, the stock prices of Chinese Linux suppliers, Kylin Software and Tongxin Software Technology (commonly known as UnionTech), immediately jumped. These companies' respective operating systems, Kylin OS (no relation to Ubuntu Kylin) and UnionTech OS (UOS), were already positioned as domestic desktop and server replacements for Windows in government, state-owned enterprise, and critical-infrastructure environments. [...] Huawei's HarmonyOS 2, which began as an Android variant but is now a proprietary mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, is also being developed into a PC platform. HarmonyOS 2 won't be deployed anytime soon. Kylin and UOS are the only mature desktops that are ready for institutional desktop deployments.
[...] ... this transition won't be easy. For agencies now moving off the government Windows build, the issue will be more demanding than simply swapping one desktop interface for another. Migration requires application testing, peripheral and driver validation, identity system integration, document-format compatibility, staff retraining and, in many cases, replacement or adaptation of Windows-dependent line-of-business software. The report provides no details on exactly how this transformation will occur. But the speed of the shift suggests that these issues are already being addressed in China's centralized managed desktop stack.
Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:2)
It's the universally local option.
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Nice dream, made difficult by the "AI" outfits cornering the markets for the key components required for that.
Re: Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:3, Insightful)
If this persists China will simply build more fabs, and more quickly than anyone else. So what if it's old-ish tech, at least they will have it.
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Yes, eventually. But as Keynes said once famously, in the long run we're all dead.
Re: Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:4, Funny)
Okay not highly successful but technically I'm not Dead yet. Technically.
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That's a good one, too.
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And we will somehow keep voting for the same imbeciles who do
Re: Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:2)
China is ramping up ram production.
which company, what ram, by how much, on what schedule? I'm genuinely interested.
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https://www.gadgetreview.com/chinese-memory-flood-could-finally-drop-dram-and-ssd-prices
You can find tons of other articles just by searching for the phrase Chinese ram production surge.
There are tons of other companies everywhere in the world except America that could pretty rapidly build ram manufacturing capacity. India could do it. Same with Vietnam. And of course Taiwan.
It would require a very large capital investment that would require loans from Banks and no Bank in
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Could, would, may...
I'm not looking for articles, I'm looking for products.
So far nothing is available.
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Hasbara bro, you're boring. But you keep shirking from the most important questions, why is the new goal "keeping the oil prices low", what happened to the HEU stockpile of Iran and how did Iran develop the HEU stockpile in the first place?
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You won't be able to buy it because they will sell it to China, and then they will build more fabs and they will be for HBM, not DDR.
Re:Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice dream, made difficult by the "AI" outfits cornering the markets for the key components required for that.
It sounds like you think that will actually be replacing hardware? Given Linux runs better on most hardware than Windows there is no actual need for new hardware, and any new hardware they do buy can be more modest spec.
I recently saw some cheap batteries for a couple of Mac Book Airs that I brought circa 2013 so brought them and then flashed the latest Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on them. Not some stripped down Linux for legacy systems, but the full normal version of Mint. I was impressed to find it runs really well on both of them.
If China does their planning right they can probably save money on both hardware and software as well as protecting their sovereignty.
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Yes. A year ago we were scrapping old PCs at work so I took one home thinking it might come in useful one day. Thanks to the AI Bubble I turned it into a home server this year instead of building something new and it works fine with Linux even though Windows 11 won't even run on it. The only real downside is that it's an old i7 so the idle consumption is around 40W when it could probably be quite a bit lower with a more modern CPU and motherboard.
China could well find they have plenty of old hardware Window
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Probably could go with a mini-pc and get more bang for your buck over a RPi. Don't get me wrong, the RPi has it's niche. I use one for a basic jellyfin server and to run pi-hole.
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Re:Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
China has domestic hardware for government computers.
For example, they have multiple domestic CPU designs. RISC-V, ARM, MIPS, and even some licensed AMD Epyc cores with the random number generators replaced by domestic designs.
Richard Stalman used to have one of the MIPS CPUs IIRC, until it got stolen. Reason being that it was the freest laptop available at the time, running almost entirely open source software.
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I recently saw some cheap batteries for a couple of Mac Book Airs that I brought circa 2013 so brought them and then flashed the latest Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on them. Not some stripped down Linux for legacy systems, but the full normal version of Mint. I was impressed to find it runs really well on both of them.
Dayum! Not as impressed as I am that you got Linux Mint running on the batteries and not the Macbook Airs.
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To your point now when I boot one of those Macs and disconnect the power lead Mint does indeed run on the new batteries. Before buying the new batteries when I disconnected the power lead the screen went blank, nothing would run on the old batteries. So I think that proves my statement true?
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China already has the AI themselves. But with Linux they still use an US operating system (even though Linux is probably trustworthy due to open source).
The only reasonable move (Score:3, Insightful)
There is little reason to use software or "cloud services" from a territory with a regime that is vindictive, short-sighted and reneges on its treaties and contracts as a matter of course, attacks established and effective international institutions and dispute resolution systems, while simultaneously claiming they have universal jurisdiction.
Get normal or live in your own MAGA autarky, muskovites.
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The end of any empire is destroying the world order it brought about.
Re:The only reasonable move (Score:4, Insightful)
Iran has been "two weeks away from a nuclear bomb" for at least thirty years now. It's all been part of Israel's plan to convince American boys to die for Israel in a war on Iran.
Well, they got their war and it turns out that a) no sane American boy wants to die for Israel and b) all those expensive American wunderwaffen don't win wars.
So Iran will do what it wants. If it wants nukes, there's nothing American will do about it. And the Iranians now clearly see that the only way to be safe from American attacks is to have nukes like North Korea does.
As for Sharia law, we're going to have Christian Sharia law or Muslim Sharia law. There's no future in which 'uman rights' and 'wimmin's rights' continue to exist much longer because they're utterly destroying Western society.
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If you don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, disarm Israel. They have at least 100 nukes, and multiple ways to deliver them. Stop the settler state sponsored terrorism too.
Take away the reason why Iran thinks it needs nukes to secure its existence.
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As for "state sponsored terrorism", I assume you don't mean any of the state sponsored terrorism supported by Iran, specifically directed at Israel. When people's lives are literally on the line, they're not going to listen to you when you tell them to lay down their lives, from the comfort of your armchair.
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If you believe that Iranians saying that stuff is a statement of actual intent and makes peace impossible, then you should also believe the same about statements made by the Israeli government and its genocidal intent to create a Greater Israel.
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:3)
Re:The only reasonable move (Score:4, Insightful)
... There's no future in which 'uman rights' and 'wimmin's rights' continue to exist much longer because they're utterly destroying Western society.
I think your pessimism is unwarranted. I would agree that the US is trying to destroy Western society; but I don't think they will succeed, unless they start lobbing nukes.
Short of that they'll put us all through some shitty hard times. But they've dropped their drawers and demonstrated that, short of nukes, their vaunted military superiority is largely a bluff.
The rest of the Western world stands a good chance of surviving - and maintaining its values and social order - as America continues its transformation into the world's largest banana republic. The country still has some bite to go along with its bark, but this emperor's closet is starting to look exceedingly bare.
Under Trump North Korea got the bomb (Score:2)
Basically if you just praise Donald Trump and give him some fancy gifts he'll let you do basically anything but if you stand up to him he'll
No, Under George W. Bush North Korea got the bomb (Score:2)
North Korea detonated its first nuclear device on October 9, 2006, when George W. Bush was in office.
I'm sure you and I would like history to note those things that happened while Trump was in office. But North Korea getting a nuke wasn't one of them.
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm quite sure my life in America is substantially better then the average life of an Iranian. Especially for women.
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You don't live in a country that has been under continual full bore economic, propaganda and terrorist attack by the biggest economy and most expensive military/intel organizations on the planet for half a century. Like Cuba, the fact that the country is still intact, unified, and free is a huge testament to its people and its government. You may not like their culture or their government, but it works for them and we have no right to force anything different on them.
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I'm quite sure my life in America is substantially better then the average life of an Iranian. Especially for women.
Wrong comparison.
Is your life better than it was before the Iran conflict started in March of this year? That's the comparison you should be making.
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I seriously doubt the Iranian government is working for at minimum, half the population. Ask the women.
I realize the history. Iran's sucked for long time. Did USA and the British stir the pot? Absolutely. It's almost like powerful countries shit on others when they are the big dog. The Persians did when they were the big dog. Of course, that was thousands of years ago. Then again, these religious nutjobs are still bickers over sky daddies made up thousands of years ago. So there you go.
Guess no one's all th
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You may not like their culture or their government, but it works for them and we have no right to force anything different on them.
False.
UN resolutions compel us to remove their government
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P): Adopted at the 2005 UN World Summit, this global political commitment allows the Security Council to take collective action if a sovereign state fails to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.
The UN Security Council has never authorized any action against Iran for that reason. What it has done is impose sanctions in connection with its nuclear program. [armscontrol.org] Those sanctions were lifted when the JCPOA was created in 2015, with snap-back provisions in case Iran fell out of compliance. And then Trump 1.0 tore up the JCPOA in 2018. And here we are now.
Apart from it just being the decent thing to do.
Their culture is abhorrent
Their government doubly so.
Let the actual Iranian people have a say in their form of government and eliminate the oppressive IRGC once and for all.
I agree. But striking Iran doesn't appear to be leading to that outcome. And let's not delude ourselves into thinking that Trump and Netanyahu are fulfillin
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Is their HEU pile now safely stored in the ball room of the White House?
Or is it in Iran, in their hands, to be used as they see fit?
And why does it even exist, this HEU stockpile?
Well, we both know the answer, it is there because don the moron tore up a working agreement that prevented Iran from enrichment until 2019.
What a failure the MAGAt policies are.
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the agreement to give them nukes in 2030 was broken
Strange, there was an agreement that actually worked and prevented Iran from having HEU for almost a decade.
There is no evidence an agreement like the one you describe ever existed.
Perhaps you are lying, hasbara bro?
As per the new agreement. Every time they try the locations and people get bombed. They'll learn eventually...
Wow, really? We hear that they were 'bombed into oblivion' and 'lost the war' 120 times since the first bombings in 2025.
And yet now "the #1 goal is reducing the oil price", per your figurehead-in-waiting, vajay dunce, with no mention of the HEU supply they allegedly have.
Why the shift in the st
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The number two goal was "line up the pockets of don the moron". Or, as the shitgibbon himself had put it, "we take their oil".
Plunder, the most trumpistani thing ever.
Actually, it was the only goal, but the sore loser failed and had to backpedal.
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Wut? LOL. You're really crazy, an incestuous child of a MAGA moron and a hasbara troll.
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What was the #2 priority? Ah, yes, I forgot the #2 real reason for the war, right after #1, wiping the ass of the war criminal chieftain of the apartheid state.
#2 was "we take their oil".
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:2)
no, your chieftain in chief wants them. he's getting paid to keep em high.
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the agreement to give them nukes in 2030 was broken
Strange, there was an agreement that actually worked and prevented Iran from having HEU for almost a decade.
There is no evidence an agreement like the one you describe ever existed.
Perhaps you are lying, hasbara bro?
He is. There was no "agreement" that allowed Iran to have nukes in 2030, or indeed at any time. The preamble of the JCPOA (the actual agreement) addressed this issue unequivocally:
Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.
And the JCPOA was working, and was set to run for a decade, until Trump 1.0 tore it up in 2018. After which Iran started to enrich beyond the 3.67% limit the JCPOA had held them to.
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He's not only lying, he's lying profusely. I should have ignored him and that's what I'll do from now on.
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Yet Trump "broke the agreement"
That he did alright, yes.
and Iran didn't have to follow it any more and the "Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances* will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons." didn't really mean much after all did it...
Exactly. The dumbfuck moron lapping nazinyahu's dick and creaming in his diaper about a casino in Gaza made a working agreement completely meaningful entirely on his own and because he's so stupid.
The Iranians proved to be a lot more reasonable and show incredible restraint.
They not only stuck to the agreement for four more years, they were ready to continue keeping it until the Nazinyahu's fascist government engaged in several terrorist killings, which finally caused a (rather meas
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Re:The only reasonable move (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you hear about the woman in Iran who suffered a stillbirth and was then sent to jail for 18 years?
Actually wait, I have that incorrect.
It was Alabama. https://www.wsfa.com/2025/12/3... [wsfa.com]
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What a deeply hateful comment. Well, I guess you are a full-on psycho with no compassion and no human decency.
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What a deeply hateful comment. Well, I guess you are a full-on psycho with no compassion and no human decency.
Or...I've very personally seen and live with the resulting human destruction low life people can and will do to them selves and everyone around them. It is amazing, how you fully analyzed me from a paragraph. You must be a genius...or something. Live a while, watch the needless suffering caused by drugs and the morons who use them. If it hasn't touched you personally, be thankful and STFU about things you can't know unless you lived them.
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I guess you are a full-on psycho with no compassion and no human decency.
Have you no compassion for the victim of the crime?
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Getting high is a self made choice. You aren't a victim. You are the agent of your own destruction when you abuse drugs. So no, I don't have any compassion for people that continue to double down on terrible choices. Even worse when they start victimizing other people to get their fix because they can't control themselves.
And this is coming from someone that drinks and smokes weed. I also go to work every day, pay all my bills and have exceptional credit. Take some personal responsibility for yourself folks
and lying is any better? (Score:2)
If over here we imprisoned people for admitting they did drugs while pregnant, then people would just outright refuse medical treatment when they need it due to a lack of trust. Instead, if people admit to it, we get them free help and support so they can deli
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Did you hear about the woman in Iran who suffered a stillbirth and was then sent to jail for 18 years?
She admitted to medical staff that she used methamphetamine during her pregnancy.
but - lets leave that little snippet out...
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And if you read the fucking story the same medical staff say it had nothing to do with the pregnancy.
Shoemaker’s attorneys argued that there is no proof that the drug use caused the pregnancy loss. In her appeal, her attorneys submitted an expert’s opinion, based on a review of of pathology slides, that a genetic abnormality and severe infection caused the demise of the pregnancy.
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So she's trying for a deal to get attempted murder instead?
We know that you don't care about children because you are in favor of child rape.
quick quick say something about Epstein and run away.
No one is running away, but you child rapists sure do run at the mouth.
"domestic" (Score:2)
Linux? domestic? Really? Really?
Re: "domestic" (Score:2)
yes, domestic.
if the deployment is designed and supported domestically that's what it is.
kinda like "local inference" using an open weights model on your own hardware is local even if the model was trained elsewhere.
Re: "domestic" (Score:2)
From components and a kernel created all over the world. Not much local pride to be had, I'd say.
That's not some "America First" bullshit. Linux is a global effort and a global success. It's only local to China in the sense that they choose what {packages/CCP poison} go in there.
Re: "domestic" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not much local pride to be had,
It isn't about "pride", dear. It is about something else entirely.
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For all values of u, Linux is local to u in the sense that u chooses what packages go in there.
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Well, Linux is European, and we are at least less hostile than the US.
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Re: "domestic" (Score:3)
Damn, you're right.
Those poor fucking European bastards with their continent-wide passenger rail system, working public transportation, free national health care, vanishingly low rates of gun crime, social safety net, democracy, decreasing carbon debt, open borders and beautiful walkable cities!
What the hell are they thinking?
And oh yeah, they have to put up with that goddamn Eiffel tower, the Alps, Stonehenge, fucking Tulips, Pompeii, the best museums on the planet and OH MY GOD, Scotland!!!1!
I'd GTFO, wou
I see a RISC-V/Linux future (Score:2)
I was considering buying a Risc-V motherboard and installing Gentoo on it, but according to the Reddit "experts" the stuff doesn't work properly yet, and in a relatively old interview Linus Torvalds expressed concern Risc-V hardware makers were going to repeat all the same mistakes that make Linux on ARM uncompetitive with Linux on AMD64.
But with the might of the Chinese government behind it, a post "Wintel" world ruled by Risc-V with either Linux or FreeBSD looks inevitable.
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Well what's holding that back is the lack of a "standard PC", a common platform where you can just boot up your OS image and have a basic way to enumerate the hardware so you can actually boot. Essentially that's what the IBM-PC brought the world.
SoCs typically are highly proprietary as every manufacturer wants to do their own thing to keep their customers from switching.
Not new (Score:3)
This migration is not new. It's been happening for many years already.
KylinOS is not completely unrelated to Ubuntu Kylin...
Yeah, also German universities... (Score:2)
like there's an article in the magazine "mc" about universities ditching MS-DOS and Windows for that new "Public-Domain-Unix" Linux.... ... but that was in the issue 6/94, from 1994.
Windows, in the real world, has been on a steady decline since then, only propped up by OEM sales and it's lower use of ad-blockers boosting up statistics based on that data.
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Being pro-Iran is, indeed, as silly as being pro-Israel. There's not much moral justification for either. Once upon a time there was a bit of economic justification, but as governments have changed that has mainly evaporated.
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Both governments are fun by religious nutjobs.
pretty easy actually (Score:5, Interesting)
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If your country ISN'T the USA... (Score:3)
You need a national program pushing Linux right now. Windows is a backdoor into every company that uses it - Microsoft can install whatever it wants, monitor whatever it wants, exfiltrate whatever it wants.
365 is exponentially worse, because you can't even shut the computer off if you discover it's happening. Microsoft will tell you the data is, as per your local laws, in a data center in an approved region... but it's all accessible from the USA.
It's one call from the Trump admin away from being an active compromise. It's not like the Trump admin hasn't already been dumb enough, multiple times, to pull the trigger on things that only work once and then make everything worse for themselves going forward.
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It's too late for that, 'law enforcement' has unfettered access to Americans within the US. It doesn't matter what OS you use when they can just march in and disappear you.
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So just like China, Russia or North Korea?
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It's not that bad yet, but I think it is a lot closer than the average American believes it is. All the mechanisms are in place, they just haven't been fully employed yet because they're being pushed a little at a time so there's no big incitement to revolution.
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So maybe like the UK and all their cameras? We're just not caught up to China. Seems like the West, and not just USA, is in for some hard times.
I'm still confident we'll oscillate back the other direction because that's how our system works. I will say it does feel increasingly unstable over the past 12 years but we're been through worse as a country and come out the other side. Stuff gets messy, same as pretty much any other country in the world that was ever big enough to influence others.
Retraining? (Score:2)
Another good reason (Score:2)
Cause: Investigations from VLC devs revealed the issue wasn't a VLC bug, but Windows Defender scanning/quarantining the application's plugin cache.
War (Score:2)
I think I never really considered that War would be the factor that finally dethrones Windows and Windows Desktop software. In so many cases the choice of using Windows is more about Software or Hardware support.
If we could write great prgs for Linux/BSD... (Score:2)
Munich had it right (Score:2)
The city of Munich was ahead of the time and made the right choice originally - then got corrupted and went back to M$, sadly.