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Comment by ak_111 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder the cost to Microsoft if there is a rigorous political effort by the CCP to move all Chinese desktop consumption away from Windows and Office Suite to open source (local) alternatives.

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That's a cost to microsoft, sure, but probably a much bigger cost to china.

I like Linux, but porting a country's software on linux is no trivial task.

Then have been at it for a while now,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

Also maybe EU should start thinking in better supporting SuSE or something like that.

A lot Chinese software was created for Windows XP or Win7. Keeping such software running on modern windows can be quite expensive. Many of them do not even have legal windows license.

Add security concerns... What happens if windows activation server goes down? Or Microsoft pushes some hostile patch?

Today, Linux with Wine can be the easiest way to run old windows software.

That is the beauty of web. Most end users now interact via web. They have popular alternative to Office, teams, slack etc.

So even if 40-70% of corporate computers can be moved out it's still big.

China has been doing this for a while already. Not only porting a country's software on Linux, they are also porting to their own platforms. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Currently it's full of rough edges and barely (if at all) works. But I do believe it's going to happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

[2] https://www.phytium.com.cn/homepage/production/15/ (Chinese-only)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_(processor)

[4] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/huawei-bring...

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