The Russian government has indicated that it plans to dump Windows and switch to a custom Linux OS in near future. Sound like a good news to you as a Linux over, isn’t it? But wait till you hear it all.
This move is inspired more from political motives than for the love of Linux and Open Source. The real reason is that Russia wants to have its control over the Russian network. It is unhappy that while Google can track everything and answers to over 32,000 requests a year from U.S. law-enforcement agencies, it doesn’t do the same with Russia.
This switch to Linux is part of the bigger plan to punish big tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft by forcing them to pay more taxes and by removing Windows from government computers.
The new Internet advisor to President Putin, Klimenko revealed these plans in an interview published at Bloomberg. He lamented at the US companies: “We are breeding the cow and they are milking it,”.
Microsoft, Google and other U.S. companies “reached the point of no return” when they complied with sanctions over Putin’s annexation of Crimea by halting all business with the peninsula, according to Klimenko. As a result, it’s “inevitable” Russia will switch state networks from Windows to an open-source system based on Linux, a move 22,000 municipal governments are prepared to make immediately, he said.
Kilimenko, who sees Google as a potential threat to national security for its non-cooperation with the government, is not afraid if Google decides to leave Russia. He added, “It won’t be fatal if Google leaves Russia — Yandex and Mail.ru have similar technologies.”.
Bottom line
The silver lining amongst all this is that over 22,000 government offices will be using Linux and that’s what I prefer to see in this political mess. I hope Russia won’t go the North Korea way (North Korea’s Linux spies on its users).
Russia is not the first country to have booted out Microsoft for a Linux system. There are several countries with Linux as the national OS. Many European cities have also switch the government offices on Linux and Open Source office products, a move mainly intended to cut cost on software licenses.
But there are still some countries like the USA and UK who are paying to Microsoft to extend the support for Windows XP.
President Obama, ‘Yes, you can’. You can switch to Linux too. This is what we ‘hope’ for.
Liniux IS free, faster…!!!
May be it’s too late, but… Russia have it’s own modern operating systems built from very beginning (not Linux based), such as Kaspersky OS, Embox OS and some other micro-kernel OSes for military purpose. All these are POSIX-compatible.
But Linux is especially interesting and ported on many developed-in-Russia processors, such as Baikal and Elbrus (custom E2K architecture). We are not only selling oil, you know?
You have more supporters and admirers in the world than you think ( in my case Belgian living in Ireland). I even have a friend who learned Russian language in 6 (yes six)
months to visit Russia lately and meet everyday people.
Just forget about American BS !
Good luck.
Why do they always need to bring this Cold War-tier propaganda “durr Russia is going to use this to oppress people” to every freaking news from there? No matter what the news are about, every journo must mention Gulag, Stalin and maybe anti-gay laws for good measure.
They are switching only government computers (used by officials) to Linux. So what kind of spying on citizens are you talking about? Why did you bring up Google at all? And the change makes sense because Windows is closed-source under jurisdiction of US and there’s a high chance for some some sort of backdoor appearing on Windows copies for the Russian market. You don’t know want that on government computers.
Hi Abhishek,
Don’t you think you were meaning North America when you wrote North Korea?
What about privacy issues in Windoz 10?
One day I switched to Linux for about the same political reasons as Putin! (among lots of others)
I just wonder why Russia waited so long to take such a clever decision!
There is plenty of great developers in Russia, this could be good for us all if they work on our so much beloved OS.
This said, your tips and posts are great and I open your letters right when they appear.
Thanks again.
Mike
Do you ever proof read your articles?
If someone points out the mistakes, I do correct it :)
Could you correct tis?
But there are still some countries like the USA and
But there are still some countries like the USA and UK who are paying to Microsoft to extend the support for Windows XP.
Updated. Thanks :)