Will the war in Ukraine give new life to Linux, the open source operating system that just celebrated its 30th anniversary? According to the Russian economic site Kommersant, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development is preparing new rules to do without Windows: to benefit from preferences in public procurement and tax advantages, software publishers will have to adapt their solutions to Linux.
And for good reason, Microsoft suspended sales of its software (including Windows) on March 4, following the Ukraine invasion. Similarly, the American group has blocked Windows 10 and 11 updates in the country. If circumventing this ban is relatively easy for individuals, it is difficult for the administration to keep the enemy of Windows on the nation’s computers.
start over from the beginning
But the measure in favor of Linux is anything but trivial: much of the national software runs on foreign operating systems, and in particular Windows. So some will need to be ported to Linux and some will have to be recreated from scratch, especially for banking systems.
Therefore, the change will be carried out in stages and will require significant financial investments, Russian digital players interviewed by Kommersant warn. And for the latter, threats of exclusion from public procurement will not be enough as long as there is no real demand in the country for Linux products. To this we must add that the developers of the open source system are much less numerous than those of Windows or Oracle in the labor market.
Currently, Windows is present on almost 75% of computers worldwide compared to 2.8% for Linux, according to the latest figures from Statcounter. Beyond software, Russia is also working to become hardware independent. According to 01net account, the national brand Promobit presented last June a laptop with its own processor, which is still very limited in terms of features.
Source: BFM TV
