9 ms·

Many countries are currently ditching Windows in favor of home grown distros due to distrust of Microsoft. Notable examples: Currently transitioning: - Astra

• sq_ 6y ago
  Definitely can't blame them for being distrustful. Seems like it would probably be easy enough for Microsoft to hide extra data in the telemetry that Windows 10 already sends home if the NSA or someone were to force them to, and history seems to inform us that US companies have little choice but to comply with such orders.
  • hsitz 6y ago
    Just curious, what "history" are you talking about? Do you have some reference links?
    • sq_ 6y ago
      Mostly just referring to PRISM and the like. Also, over the years, we've seen a few instances where big companies have publicly fought National Security Letters or gag orders, so I think it's a safe guess that plenty of other stuff like that goes on behind the scenes without ever coming to the public's attention.
  • JaRail 6y ago
    Large governments have access to Windows source code. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/gsp https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/gsp It's more about long-term strategy. China wants full control over their OS. They want features Microsoft would never add. They want support for their own hardware, etc.
• axegon_ 6y ago
  Yeah, aware of those... But... I wouldn't really use most of the countries on your list to set an example for the rest of the world, if you know what I mean...
  • andai 6y ago
    It just means western lobbying doesn't have much of an effect there. Japan was going to use their TRON operating system in schools until Microsoft decided they didn't like that.
  • pphysch 6y ago
    Plenty of other countries have faced US aggression, or are in danger of such.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • TallGuyShort 6y ago
      Hell, US citizens face aggression from the US.
  • xrisk 6y ago
    Why is Hacker News largely anti-communism? (other than the obvious ties to VC of course)
    • Wh1zz 6y ago
      See general state of development/corruption for all ex-soviet countries versus the rest of the developed world.
      • Wh1zz 6y ago
        > See general state of development/corruption for all ex-soviet countries versus the rest of the developed world. Also, rights and stuff
      • 6y ago
• bananamerica 6y ago
  Is there really a need for them to create their own distributions?
  • unixhero 6y ago
    No. And it's a shame everyone does.
    • andai 6y ago
      I've been wondering about this. Competition breeds innovation and all that, but in the end, aren't we ending up with a whole lot of repeated effort for little benefit?
      • dewey 6y ago
        I guess it's a whole lot easier to repeat the effort (Even if it seems wasteful) than getting multiple countries / governments / languages and funding situations organized around one project. Probably just easier to do it on your own and if at some point one of the distributions is gaining some momentum maybe then others will adopt it and send patches upstream.
        • bobthepanda 6y ago
          Keep in mind that the whole motivation of these is "we don't trust outside group X"; these governments have no reason to believe that OSS isn't compromised, and one of the easiest ways to know everything is to do a lot of the work yourself.
  • yellowapple 6y ago
    I mean, it depends on what "their own distributions" entails. Adding customized branding or extra localizations or a different mix of preinstalled apps to a popular distro like Ubuntu/Debian or Fedora/CentOS or what have you seems perfectly reasonable.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
• m0guz 6y ago
  There is also Turkish government funded Pardus project [0] and has been going on since 2005. Numerous government institutions started to use it but still not enough to ditch Windows. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardus_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardus_(operating_system)
  • terminalcommand 6y ago
    I feel like Pardus project has lost some momentum. Maybe I feel like this because there was a lot of publicity and hype around Pardus project when I was growing up. What interested me most is that Pardus project had its own packaged manager called PiSi, which was then adopted by Solus. I bet Pardus project had their own reasons to adopt the apt system and rely on Debian volunteers for all packaging support. As the OS is largely maintained by a government institution, I'd imagine it doesn't have the large userbase as Debian does. There are also some other cool projects made for Pardus, for example Zemberek, a spell checker for the Turkish language that uses natural language processing for Libreoffice and Openoffice: https://github.com/ahmetaa/zemberek-nlp https://github.com/ahmetaa/zemberek-nlp
• microcolonel 6y ago
  FWIW in each of these countries, except perhaps North Korea, Windows is still king. Kylin, Red Star, and Nova are all very long running projects at this point, and as far as I can tell none of them are a majority even of government desktops.
• jariel 6y ago
  Those are mostly countries for which the strategic advantage of not being dependant on Windows far outweighs the other aspects.
• DavidPeiffer 6y ago
  Interesting note on Red Star OS: They appear to have a watermarking system allowing them to track how files move between people. https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw?t=2122 https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw?t=2122 Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979