Massive layoffs will hit the US Defense industry as no sane nation ever will buy again a US weapon.
Cloud vendors will have to split hard their operations or see revenue cut in half.
Basically, she got enough of Windows, mostly due to subscriptions, that there was news being shown in the browser, and some other related issues and she was incredibly happy with Ubuntu (which is of course American, but since it's free and gratis, it doesn't really matter, and there's always SUSE).
She liked the cleanness, the absence of distractors, how it was clearer what was in the cloud and what was on the local machine, that she wasn't paying any continuous fee for LibreOffice and the happiness this switch brought was huge.
The only reason people are still using Windows is gaming and that it's a default on the machines at computer- and electronics stores. They'd be happy with Linux, they'd be more productive with Linux and they'd be calmer with Linux.
Also, almost every corporation and similar large-scale deployment, for management and compatibility purposes.
Also, in many ways, Windows management components (Active Directory, Group Policy, etc.) have no competition:
First, you must have management systems: imagine you are deploying, configuring and managing a new application on 10,000 desktops, or just 1,000. You can't manually go to each desktop (just add up the time spent walking between desks!); you must automate it.
Second, most user applications provide management components for Windows and for no other platform. If they have something else, it's often an afterthought (and goodness forbid they stop developing it and you are left 'to your own devices').
Finally, there's usually no reason not to use Windows. Why create these risks and costs? The users care only about the applications - these aren't their home computers; the IT department handles the OS, etc. The network effect of the Windows standard is hard to beat.
There are exceptions: Some deployments are very simple and can be done on Linux, for example POS cash registers. Many applications now depend on web browsers, though even then you can have DRM and other issues, and you don't know what new application a user may need tomorrow. Macs are a standard in some places.
Another directory services / management system that does the same thing as - or likely worse then - the original. All that work and at best you haven't moved an inch forward, you haven't helped the business' bottom line ... what did you do? How do you explain that to the CEO?
Heh.
I ran Linux as my desktop since... approximately the turn off the millennium, with a brief downgrade to Windows from when the Rift S came out until I finally got around to switching back last year.
I should probably see about finding time to upgrade my laptop away from the os it came with as well as some point...
I don’t think the US defense industry is worried. Do you know any sane nations around here?
In general it’s not like war is about who’s right or moral. It’s more about who can bring more and better weapons to the fight.
I suspect, though I'm not sure, that the point was more that a nation that rejects science in favor of a different kind of ideological purity (lack of virtue signaling as its own kind of virtue signaling) is a nation whose weapons are no longer likely to be the better ones.
In fact, the latest news is that Trump is expanding our circle of friends when it comes to advanced weapons, offering India the opportunity to purchase F-35s.
This is an exaggeration. The larger European military powers spent enough on defence to be able to operate without US assistance in a range of circumstances (e.g. the Falklands war). But Europe did not anticipate having to defend itself against Soviet aggression without US assistance.
In fairness, it would have seemed crazy, not so long ago, to think that the POTUS would be on friendlier terms with the leader of a Russian dictatorship than with the democratically elected leaders of France and Germany. But here we are.
The Falklands conflict was almost half a century ago. It is doubtful that the UK could respond today like they did in 1982.
The video "The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships"[1] addresses that exact scenario, and talks about the current woeful state of the British Navy today.
You are right to question who your allies are.
"You have the watches. We have the time." There are many ways to win a war.
A change of administration in the next few years, will not mitigate the taboo that has been broken.
The US sells 120 billion dollars a year of weapons: https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2024-u-s-arms-transfers-an...
European nations switching entirely to domestic military production within 4 years is as realistic as Trump's plan to make the US auto industry fully domestic within a few months, which is not very.
Cloud vendors already offer ways to ensure your data never leaves the EU, for larger enterprises.
Which Linux distro is Europe going to be on, top-to-bottom? The one controlled by Google?
The real shift may be to move closer to China.