Pedro Miramontes

China has ordered immediate switch to homegrown Linux distros, dropping Windows now. The country's Ministry of State Security has ordered all state-linked entities to stop using Windows immediately, moving up a deadline that was originally set for February 2027. The directive cites "data security concerns" and pushes organizations toward domestically developed Linux alternatives. Two distributions are being positioned as the main replacements. The first is Kylin OS, developed by Kylin Software Co., which evolved from FreeBSD roots into its own independent Linux based operating system. The second is Unity OS, created by Tongxin Software Technology Co., built on top of Deepin, which itself is based on Debian. Both have been in development for years with government backing, waiting perhsps for exactly this kind of situation. China has been signaling this direction for some time, citing concerns about dependency on American technology infrastructure. After the U.S. placed restrictions on Chinese tech firms in recent years, China accelerated its de-Americanization of tech. Note the scale of the migration. China has hundreds of millions of government-linked computer users. Even a partial migration represents one of the largest single deployments of Linux in human history. For context, the Munich city government switching to Linux was considered a landmark case. China doing it nationally is an entirely different order of magnitude. And yes, China is not th only one doing. Europe has been on a similar path, with France, Germany, and several other countries pursuing Windows alternatives over the past decade, driven by data sovereignty concerns and enconmics. Politics aside, I am happy to see that Linux is now being chosen by governmens on multiple continents.