Is 2023 finally the year of the Linux Desktop? Up to 1.4 BILLION new users linux users announced as China switches away from Windows

[rcmaehl]

REMINDER:

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• If something spans politics and tech, the discussion must remain clearly within tech and must not descend into politics.

 

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Summary

China, in a move to separate itself from the West, has announced that it will be switching away from Windows by 2024.

 

Quotes

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In China, the government has ordered the dumping of Windows in favor of Linux, among other things. Beijing has ordered government offices and state-backed firms to replace foreign-branded PCs and their associated operating systems with alternatives that can be domestically maintained. China is set to replace almost 50 million PCs in central government agencies alone. This process will obviously not be completed in one fell swoop but is intended to be carried out... over a period of two years. On the hardware side of things, multiple PC OEMs, including Dell and HP, are... negatively affected. Local manufacturer Lenovo as well as other software and hardware vendors such as Kingsoft Corp and Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co. saw their share prices rise. This move has been long in the making as the Chinese government has been encouraging the use of homegrown hardware and software for the better part of the past decade. "hard-to-replace" PC components such as CPUs and GPUs developed by western firms are likely exempt from this order. Many Chinese OEMs rely on them.

 

My thoughts

I mean, it's not the market share increase I was expecting, but it's a market share increase Linux deserves. It's unfortunate that China will probably roll their own distro similar to North Korea to allow more control over its citizens. 

 

Sources

Neowin (quote source)

Bloomberg

Tom's Hardware

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

My thoughts

This wont be "Linux" this'll be some locked down / "optimized" version of "Linux" ... in other words something most Linux users would despise. 

 

 

However,  if this leads to billions of gamers not using windows anymore we could indeed see a bigger shift. 

[Kisai]

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Is 2023 finally the year of the Linux Desktop?

No. It is never going to be the year of the Linux Desktop. People will just keep pirating windows if they want it.

[tim0901]

8 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Beijing has ordered government offices and state-backed firms to replace foreign-branded PCs and their associated operating systems with alternatives that can be domestically maintained. 

So absoluetly nothing will change in the consumer space then.

 

If I were to guess, the versions of Linux used in government offices will be very similar to the NeoKylin Windows clones that GN investigated a while back, because they're close enough to Windows that people know how to use them.

 

[da na]

I'm imagining Linus Torvalds himself taking a tarp off of a box full of millions of penguins as the audience applauds

[Ultraforce]

Won't the obvious choice just to use deepin? Since It's been around for 18 years, developed by a company that is a subsidiary of a company that also produces Unity Operating System which is used currently by the Chinese government to replace their own usage of Microsoft Windows?

[Ultraforce]

It would also make sense to use Deepin just because it's designed to be very similar visually to Windows, and both the desktop environment and just overall operating system is such that it regularly gets praise from English-speaking sources for being a particularly good installer and a beautiful desktop.

[SupaKomputa]

good for them, i think the world need some balance.

imagine if china at cold war with usa, and the government banned windows entirely, there would be massive global economy crash.

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

Won't the obvious choice just to use deepin? Since It's been around for 18 years, developed by a company that is a subsidiary of a company that also produces Unity Operating System which is used currently by the Chinese government to replace their own usage of Microsoft Windows?

I think they want the os to be maintained by them domestically. Basically they want to be totally non reliant on other countries.

[Ultraforce]

Though the project is currently fully open source an article from 2019 discusses that safety experts say that it's uncertain though because of the size of the codebase of deepin it's really not super feasible to be 100% sure there are no backdoors.https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/deepin-linux-security-threat-or-safe-to-use-86044.html

[Ultraforce]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

I think they want the os to be maintained by them domestically. Basically they want to be totally non reliant on other countries.

I maybe should have specified, deepin while open source is developed by a company that's a subsidary for UnionTech which is based in Wuhan, China

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

Won't the obvious choice just to use deepin? Since It's been around for 18 years, developed by a company that is a subsidiary of a company that also produces Unity Operating System which is used currently by the Chinese government to replace their own usage of Microsoft Windows?

 

7 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

It would also make sense to use Deepin just because it's designed to be very similar visually to Windows, and both the desktop environment and just overall operating system is such that it regularly gets praise from English-speaking sources for being a particularly good installer and a beautiful desktop.

As with most news regarding china, the information might not be too accurate or skewed. But the real "news" is that they're replacing windows?  And "western hardware ".

 

 

Also article speculates that they still use western cpus... maybe in special cases, otherwise unlikely as they already have homegrown cpus afaik (which aint too shabby iirc)

 

But, yes, Im also interested what kind of  "Linux" version we're talking about lol.

[Ultraforce]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

As with most news regarding china, the information might not be too accurate or skewed. But the real "news" is that they're replacing windows?  And "western hardware ".

 

 

Also article speculates that they still use western cpus... maybe in special cases, otherwise unlikely as they really have homegrown cpus (which aint too shabby iirc)

 

But, yes, Im also interested what kind of  "Linux" version we're talking about lol.

Well they said they were going to be trying to replace Windows in like 2019 I'm pretty sure.

I do think it would be interesting if more countries and governments tried to use free and open source software for more of their projects. Though I understand that the fact that outside of Ubuntu with Canonical and IBM with Fedora and other Red Hat distros there's not necessarily very many companies that would be able to provide the level of support that you would want for government. Let alone the roughness of a transition.

I do think that I think about this a bit more since I currently do stuff with the government using PowerApps and Sharepoint, and it feels like we are getting more trapped into specifically M365.

[Arika]

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Is 2023 finally the year of the Linux Desktop?

No.

also, i struggle to even refer to what ever the fuck this abomination will be as anything close to what people think of when they hear "linux".

 

 

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

good for them, i think the world need some balance.

You think this is "balance"? you know why they're doing this right? ultimate control.

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replace foreign-branded PCs and their associated operating systems with alternatives that can be domestically maintained.

 

[LWM723]

Maybe China can make a windows clone that is much better than the crap Microsoft is pushing (forcing) out. What's MS going to do, sue China, good luck with that.

[SupaKomputa]

13 minutes ago, Arika S said:

You think this is "balance"? you know why they're doing this right? ultimate control.

who are we to judge what's right for them?

[Arika]

14 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

who are we to judge what's right for them?

???????????????????????????????????????

[Lightwreather]

Oooh,

we gonna see another RedStarOS?

 

On a serious note: There won't be a year of the linux desktop, I predict a gradual takeover by the penguins who will slowly expand out of the south pole and become a world government in the shadows. Take heed: DO NOT DISPLEASE THE PENGUINS!

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

also, i struggle to even refer to what ever the fuck this abomination will be as anything close to what people think of when they hear "linux"

I dont, i have a very clear idea: Red Star OS 2 now with more tracking watermarks and backdoors. 

 

13 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

RedStarOS

damnit!

[Vishera]

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Is 2023 finally the year of the Linux Desktop?

In the eyes of the Linux community next year will always be the year of the Linux.

Though that year never comes - It's a never ending loop of false hopes.

[RejZoR]

That's bold to assume every single Chinese user will count as 1 Linux user... Also from looks of it, Linux will never quite be a gamer's choice. Mostly because 99% of games aren't even written for it natively and you're left at mercy of middle layers like Proton which are more hacks than an option really And multiplayer games not even supporting anti-cheat on Linux natively either. It'll just never happen. I've used Linux on laptops where gaming is not involved and it was fine. I could do everything I needed, for free and it was all legal. But you'll again be left at mercy for support there where BIOS updating apps for laptops often only come as EXE file and I currently have a problem of laptop (ACER) that's mostly used for media consumption and it's always plugged in during use and if I want to have charging limited to 80% so battery will last longer, I need to use their Windows only app to do it. The setting persisted even into Linux installation, but then out of the blue stopped working and it charged to 100% and I couldn't do anything about it because there just isn't any Linux app to do it. I don't know how this happened, but it forced me to install Windows again...

 

Only time things might change is if Microsoft, given how draconian and arrogant they are becoming with each new Windows release, if they make Windows a subscription service and they force everyone to use accounts to login to Windows, in that case there might be a greater shift of people to Linux and maybe someone in gaming industry will start writing games for it natively. And even then it'll probably be a big gap in time between that happening to Windows and anything changing on Linux side. So, we're again looking for years of waiting for anything to happen (that may not happen in the end anyway).

[Roswell]

How in the world are you extrapolating 1.4 billion from 50 million?

[Master Disaster]

4 hours ago, Vishera said:

In the eyes of the Linux community next year will always be the year of the Linux.

Though that year never comes - It's a never ending loop of false hopes.

Actually no, its not us that keeps saying it, its the external onlookers who want to move away from Windows but don't want to learn something new or the Windows users looking to create the next "OS Warz" thread.

 

Why would people already using it care what other people use? Progression happens regardless of user numbers and there's actually a solid argument that having too many users would probably be detrimental to the platform.

[mr moose]

19 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Actually no, its not us that keeps saying it, its the external onlookers who want to move away from Windows but don't want to learn something new or the Windows users looking to create the next "OS Warz" thread.

 

Why would people already using it care what other people use? Progression happens regardless of user numbers and there's actually a solid argument that having too many users would probably be detrimental to the platform.

I find it hard to bbelieve that the loudest proponents of linux's impeding rise to majority are people who don't/can't use it.    

 

 

 

 

[Shimejii]

Linux will never be mainstream because thats how it was made to be by design. Most are not made to be like that,  they have very specific uses and such, which is what makes them unique.

 

Unless Microsoft decides to really mess up, its here to stay, as well as Mac OS.