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China joins Europe in scrapping Windows for Linux (www.zdnet.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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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.

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.

This change to Linux doesn't mean that there will be a nationwide ban on all Windows installations in China. Windows Home China 11, a restricted, factory-locked edition that requires you to use only Chinese, is still available.

The transition also doesn't mean that every government body has been ordered to abandon Microsoft software. The directive's scope remains undisclosed. Still, the writing is on the wall: China's future government desktop will be Linux.

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[–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

If your issue is with peripherals working, you shouldn't expect much to change with SteamOS. At the end of the day it is an Arch based distro, and there's not going to be some amazing bit of kit that they develop that makes every peripheral that manufacturers support on Windows/MacOS work on Linux flawlessly. (In the event they did develop such a product, it would probably be open source like Proton so Linux as a whole would benefit)

Like you said, it's okay for Linux to not be for you but I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you believe that X distro is going to change that for you. The inconvenience of learning a new OS and having a few peripherals that don't work as they did before has to outweigh whatever issues you have with Windows/MacOS. Everyone has their own threshold and that inconvenience is getting smaller by the year, but it will never be a decision with no compromises.

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