China Joins Europe In Scrapping Windows For Linux (zdnet.com) 42
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice dream, made difficult by the "AI" outfits cornering the markets for the key components required for that.
Re: Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:2)
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.
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Okay not highly successful but technically I'm not Dead yet. Technically.
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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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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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: Linux Domestic Everywhere (Score:1)
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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.
The only reasonable move (Score:1, 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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The end of any empire is destroying the world order it brought about.
Re:The only reasonable move (Score:5, 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.
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:2)
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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.
Re: The only reasonable move (Score:2, 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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
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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Crank whores deserve whatever they get. Meth during pregnancy is the almost worst thing you can do. 2 decades in jail for ruining your child's life, and inflicting your forever needy child on society seems like she got off lightly.
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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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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...
"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:3)
Not much local pride to be had,
It isn't about "pride", dear. It is about something else entirely.
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Well, Linux is European, and we are at least less hostile than the US.
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:2)
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.