Leaving aside the normal concerns about collaboration with an authoritarian government, this looks like a really big deal: Ubuntu is now the "reference architecture for standard operating systems" in China.[1]
If I understand correctly, this means a flavor of Ubuntu (and Unity, according to the press release) will be used by hundreds of millions of people within the next decade, far surpassing the worldwide market share of Mac OS X, Chrome OS, etc.
In all likelihood, Microsoft now views Ubuntu with Unity as a main competitor on the desktop.
As a Chinese, I guess that this probably won't happen at least for the next decade. Non-IT professionals in China aren't even aware that Linux system exist.
Apple is incredibly popular among Chinese international university students, but the first thing everyone does when they get a new Macbook is to install bootcamp and never boot into OSX again.
If even the brightest and more malleable of the people don't want to use anything except Windows, I don't see the average person switching to Ubuntu at all.
It has nothing to do with the Chinese international students being bright (which they generally are) or malleable (which they're not - they're just studying machines). It has to do with the fact that there are a ton of Chinese websites that only work in IE.
That is a good point, although I think it's more of Windows-only programs like PPS, a TV and movie streaming app that fills the Netflix void, except it's free so everyone and their mother uses it
Desktop programs are an issue, but they can be ported.
The biggest problem is all the websites that serve ActiveX plugins. Web apps are supposed to be platform-independent, that's one of their biggest advantages, but Microsoft sabotaged that with ActiveX. Microsoft did a tremendous amount of harm to internet users by producing so much platform-dependent web software.
What I meant was that the large number of currently Windows-only Chinese desktop applications will not be the biggest obstacle to Chinese users adobting Ubuntu, because they can be ported, and Canonical is working with the Chinese government to port the most popular ones ahead of time.
The number of Chinese websites out there with ActiveX dependencies is probably much greater, and you can't really "port" a website. Good luck getting all those Chinese web developers to fix their sites.
If Canonical bundled a web browser that supported ActiveX, that would temporarily resolve the problem (while enabling it to perpetuate), but I'm not sure if Microsoft's licenses even allow a non-IE browser to re-implement ActiveX.
So, I think that not being able to browse many Chinese websites on other platforms is the main thing that keeps Chinese users locked into IE/Windows right now.
Perhaps, though, my knowledge is outdated and ActiveX plugins aren't as ubiquitous in China as they used to be.
> Apple is incredibly popular among Chinese international university students, but the first thing everyone does when they get a new Macbook is to install bootcamp and never boot into OSX again.
Is Chinese support in Windows dramatically better than in OS X? I found the level of stylus support in Windows to be head and shoulders higher in quality than Apple's. Perhaps it is the same with languages.
If I understand correctly, this means a flavor of Ubuntu (and Unity, according to the press release) will be used by hundreds of millions of people within the next decade, far surpassing the worldwide market share of Mac OS X, Chrome OS, etc.
In all likelihood, Microsoft now views Ubuntu with Unity as a main competitor on the desktop.
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[1] http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-stand...
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Edits: changed "few years" to "decade," in response to hydrology's comment (thanks hydrology!); and added a reference to Chrome OS and Microsoft.