The specialized Chinese version of Windows was already scheduled for retirement in February 2027, but now its end-of-life date has been moved up.
  • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
    721·
    18 days ago

    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.

    I never understood why any country would allow their government computers to run proprietary software from a foreign (to them) company.

    I’m sure that China had access to a lot of Windows source code as part of their previous agreement, but it’s far too big a risk, really, for any country, even the United States, to run Windows.

    As far as I’m concerned, China is decades late in making this decision, and it’s still ahead of a lot of (most?) governments.

  • vanillama@programming.dev
    15·
    18 days ago

    That’s amazing, especially considering China has even more people than the entirety of Europe combined, may we soon follow over here

    • bignose@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      18 days ago

      To be clear, articles like this are saying “China”, “Belgium”, etc. as shorthand for the national government of that country.

      Not that everyone in that country must switch; only that the country-level government is declaring they will switch computers they use.

      This does have a strong effect on what other organisations and individuals use, but it lags a long way and certainly doesn’t directly affect everyone in the country.

      With that said: Yeah the Chinese government is made up of a great many more people than European national governments. It’s a big move.

      • Axolotl@feddit.it
        4·
        18 days ago

        But also remember that this may actively impact the developmemt of linux, the EU and China both have resources to contribute to Linux, will China do it? I have no idea but they have to publish their modifications under GPL if they ever do any

      • story@lemmy.zip
        3·
        18 days ago

        but also we keep in mind the sheer size of the largest human government in the world. there’s about 35 million public sector employees

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      18 days ago

      from proprietary software, not from Microsoft; nothing wrong with using free software just because it was developed by Microsoft

  • ferox@programming.devEnglish
    9·
    18 days ago

    I’ve never understood why Asian countries seem so reluctant to use Linux. Maybe it’s just confirmation bias on my part? You would think China especially would have an interest in not using Windows anywhere, and they have the power and resources to quickly build and replace whatever needs to change.

    Just checking the Steam stats only 1.38% has Simplified Chinese set as their language, the same number for Windows is 23.80%. While that just represents Steam users private computers, I guess we will see an increase here in the coming months or years.

  • BassTurd@lemmy.world
    9·
    18 days ago

    I bring it up any opportunity I get at work, but nothing yet. Unfortunately, our IT team does not have the skills or experience working with Linux, so it would probably be a rocky and dicey transition. As a dev, I think I can maybe convince the right people that our team should go Linux and we could be the test cases. We would all survive without the MS suite, but a lot of tools would have to change, like Jetbrains instead of Visual Studio.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.world
        1·
        18 days ago

        I agree and that’s what I use on my personal devices. It’s different enough that there would be some growing pains transitioning a whole team that’s lived in the VS world.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.world
        1·
        18 days ago

        VS code is lightweight and has a lot less features. Visual Studio is a full featured IDE. If you’re familiar with jetbrains, it’s kind of like the difference between Rider and Webstorm.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    51·
    18 days ago

    It would probably be cheaper and easier to go back to paper and pencil after all this tech world domination bullshit.