According to an article over at The Inquirer, the National Copyright Administration of China is now requiring that all new PC’s purchased, must have a pre-installed operating system. However, the NCA promises this will not affect pricing of new machines.
Since Windows operating systems would obviously raise the price, it would mean the pre-installed software must be free. Macintosh software, which is now thought to be PC-compatible, would also raise the cost of the systems, so the only other forseeable operating system, must be Linux.
Linux distros, such as Fedora Core, Ubuntu and Gentoo are among distros which could be eligible for pre-installed operating systems. If the Chinese government is now requiring all PCs to come with operating systems, Linux would most likely be the OS of choice, for machines that would normally come naked.
The article does not specify what operating systems will come on the machines, so there is no ruling out older, free, OS’s such as DOS or Windows 3.x, but chances are that outdated operating systems will not be the top choice.
The new law is a result of the NCA’s attempt to prevent illegal versions of the Windows operating systems from being installed on computers. Ironically, the NCA’s main target is government computers.
The new law would, infact, promote non-Windows operating systems, but would be incredibly inaffective on preventing unlicensed versions of Windows being installed. Any customer could simply remove the packaged OS and install a pirated version of Windows.
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Well good because Windows sucks anyways sorry to say …… It will also help people start seeing where Windows is going with there products …. Maybe will be a little boost for Linux
can i run my internet connection on linux? its an alcatel modem speed stream
Good M$ tried to kill piracy in China and now has shot itself in the leg. I hope Linux rules in China and spawns a new era of software development for Linux.
Thank you Bill gates for screwing yourself.
(If there were no fences you wouldn’t need Gates)
Just like flyingrhino said M$ is shooting itself. Considering that China and India are pumping out more software engineers than any other part of the world (just take a look at the graduation rolls from American Universities) if linux becomes the standard OS that they learn as children then we can look forward to an entirely new explosion of software for Linux. Virtually every graphic designer video editor software programmer and 3D artist I know learned on pirated software. This move means that there is a chance that we might see a real shift in the balance of power in the world of software from the West to the East.
i live in china everything i use is either pirated or free softwares also i haven’t seen any original store selling original copies here. so if they restrict using pirated windows obviously linux is the choice. recently i installed fedora core 5 which is good in many ways and i am trying to get used to it. its hard to migrate to linux with things i have been using in windows like messenger visual studio firewalls cd burners and so on. its not that they restricted and i moved on to linux its coz i want to.
what i think about piracy is its a must for the development and uprising of original software. there won’t be many fans of original products out there if there ain’t much audience. to gather audience there either they should decrease the price of products fairly to ppl with little economic condition or good old PIRACY.
The bad news is….. China Big Head Mr. Wu has just met M$ Kill Gate buying M$ software in a billion dollars…..
yea probably for those fuckin chinese government pc’s…. total BS!
he probably offered them a big discount. i never understood why schools and what not will go into a contract with anyonee but i’ll bet it’s because they are offered big discounts and they wanna stay with the most “worldly compatible os” … anyway if all the kids in china do grow up on linux theyre probably gonna kick our (us) digital asses one day or at least be a nation of potential hackers.
Good little communists. Live like the masters tell you. Think exactly what they want you to think. Good little children of Mao. (Yeah and the Chinese people too.)
Fucking communist scum makes me ill!