At least, this is what the company building UOS claims

May 8, 2020 07:21 GMT  ·  By

Linux has long been considered the best alternative to Windows, and the latest data shows its market share and adoption is massively improving.

But as far as China is concerned, building a Linux alternative to Windows could even take 10 years, Liu Wenhuan, the general manager of Union Tech explains.

Union Tech is the company that builds UOS, a Linux-based operating system that is supposed to allow China to abandon Windows as part of a long-term plan whose purpose is to reduce reliance on foreign software.

“It will take at least 3, 5 or even 10 years [for us] to truly compete with foreign operating systems,” Liu Wenhuan was quoted as saying by ABACUS.

Dropping Windows for Linux

Indeed, the development of China’s Windows replacements progresses at a rather slow pace. However, Union Tech is currently in talks with local companies to bake support for their software and devices in the new Linux operating system, and the Chinese authorities hope Windows could eventually be replaced on some 30 percent of the devices operated by the government.

Of course, this is only possible in the long term on state computers, as home users are more likely to stick with Windows, especially for gaming.

According to StatCounter data, no less than 86.67% of the desktop computers in China are currently running Windows, while 9.94% of them are powered by Apple’s macOS. Linux is only said to be running on 0.6% of the devices.

Whether or not Linux would replace Windows in China is something that remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt it does have what it takes to be used as a daily driver. And living proof is the number of organizations that have already transitioned to Linux worldwide and which dropped Windows for a wide variety of reasons, including the licensing costs.