- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Certainly the Blacklight test show that Microsoft EU respect way more the privacy (forced by law) than Microsoft US.
You must log in or register to comment.
Data sovereignty is going to be key to maintaining any sovereignity going forward, it’s so vital to the function of society and the economy that outsourcing it to another country is just giving part of yourself away.
Certainly the Blacklight test show that Microsoft EU respect way more the privacy (forced by law) than Microsoft US.
What test?
Microsoft should be getting worried about Linux.
Yes, but currently Linux isn’t a valid option for a lot of users, because a lot of professional and corporation apps, apart of most games are Windows only. To rise Linux is needed to change this first. The only alternative for this issue is maybe using instead eg. WindowsX, something like an “de-microsofted” Windows. Linux is certainly the best alternative, but also has some drawbacks, like too much different distros not always compatible one with another, depending on the distro also often an deficient support and maintance, certain driver problems, among others. Not good if an still minority OS is above to diversified, which cause a lot of problems for the devs of software. To dethrone Windows as leader of the market does it still need a lot of work in many environments.
It’s not a plug and play solution yet but Winapps exists and can run almost any Windows software on Linux using RDP.
I, a Linux user, agree that there is work to be done, but I disagree with the “this needs to change first” on proprietary software availability. Specifically the “first” bit.
Let me explain why: The problem of software availability is a chicken and egg problem. No users on an OS = no developers make stuff for it = no users because there is no software.
With Wine/Proton, Valve “fixed” this issue for gamers. This “opened the floodgates”, and at least in one group of computer users, made Linux viable as a daily driver. People who play video games are diverse, and have different needs for software outside gaming, so this change grew the userbase of every category of software in Linux, not just games.
With an actual userbase comes both a community of people, who are all potential contributors for FOSS, whether that’s programming, docs, or reporting issues. And a marketshare for businesses to target (and profit off of).
The ball has clearly started rolling, Linux is gaining marketshare at a pace it hasn’t seen before. The bigger the userbase gets, the more software will work overall. The more software, the more people who can switch.
There isn’t a single definable point where software availability suddenly makes a userbase appear, these two grow together.
So yes, there is work to be done, but no, it doesn’t “need to change first”.
A lot of people find out after using Linux that it’s perfect for their daily tasks. A lot of other people never bother, and thus never find out. With Windows 10 EOL coming up, and MS pushing more and more onto users (like recall and copilot), a portion of people forced to switch will look for alternatives, or will try out Linux because they’ve heard of it as an alternative.
As for your other arguments:
too much different distros not always compatible one with another
Which used to be true, but is significantly better than even a couple years ago. “Standardized” packaging like Flatpak makes a ton of software available on all distros, ensuring compatibility. Valve took a shot at this too with Steam Linux Runtime, but this hasn’t seen any use outside Steam.
depending on the distro also often an deficient support and maintance,
For the vast majority of distros, no. Though I agree that we (the community as a whole) should stop accepting terrible resources for finding Linux distros (like “top 10 distros” lists that make no sense to a new user) and push for better ones.
certain driver problems, among others.
Which is being solved too. “driver problems” is exclusively Nvidia, but the issues are (very slowly) being fixed (by nvidia), and distros are offering easy options for getting the Nvidia drivers. Nouveau/NVK is also on the slow cooker, but I trust it’ll come out great. “Among others” is not a valid reason.
Not good if an still minority OS is above to diversified, which cause a lot of problems for the devs of software.
Which fits into the point of Flatpaks for proprietary software, and highlights where FOSS truly shines. Flatpaks standardize the runtime, proprietary software only needs to support this one standard to support all distros. FOSS devs can target whatever they want for their project. If “works on my machine” is good enough for them, so be it. (People will always complain about stuff like this though). If a distro wants to officially provide some open source software to its users, it has to be packaged. With the packaging process for a distro, modifications might need to be made, which can often be contributed back to upstream.
To dethrone Windows as leader of the market does it still need a lot of work in many environments.
It’s a lot closer than you think. It’s already a viable daily driver for many. The biggest blocker is the fact that MS is a global megacorp, with advertising, OEM “support”, and a lot of money to “persuade” people and companies to use Windows.
OEM support also ties into the whole “choosing a distro”. I trust that even the worst OEMs choose at least a supported distro, which takes all pressure away from the user. When Linux marketshare grows enough for OEMs to provide the option, the least technical users going to a brick and mortar store will be presented with “100$ cheaper, but looks different than your current computer”. If Windows UI keeps being as inconsistent as it currently is, it would have similar impact for non-technical users going between Windows N and N+1 as it does going to Linux.
This is just right. Massive amounts of corporations have a complete dependency on Microsoft Office. In a way that cannot be substituted by Libreoffice or similar.
Change need to happen. But there need to be a viable alternative before it.
Well, several administrations in Spain already are using LibreOffice, which is a pretty good alternative to the MS Office, it is even compatible with way more document formats than the MS Office. That means, that don’t exist an real dependency because tecnical reasons, but maybe because burocratic ones. Using alternatives of Windows is more complicated, but there isn’t any problems with general apps for Windows, except for some specific corporation ones, Windows catalogue of software is the biggest one of any other OS.
Tbh no not really, as long a OEMs either dont ship Linux at all or only niche OEMs do (or major OEMs on a small subset of their products) Linux will be a niche. The European Market still relies on American OEMs which means they have been cornered by Microsoft.
Some brands are starting to ship without windows already and are announcing it loud and clear. Lenovo made the news this week
Yes, on a smallsubset of their laptops. Not even half of their products will have the option to ship without Windows (and none of their products that they put on third party retailers such as Amazon or Best Buy so you will have to use their website just to know they exist).
“We will store backup copies of our code in a secure repository in Switzerland, and we will provide our European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed for this purpose.”
If Microsoft is going to actually risk giving access to their source code then they’re really scared!
Pretty sure that they already shared it with copilot, so I’m guessing that it’s only a matter of time until everyone has a copy…
We recognize that our business is critically dependent on sustaining the trust of customers, countries, and governments across Europe. We respect European values, comply with European laws, and actively defend Europe’s cybersecurity. Our support for Europe has always been – and always will be – steadfast.
None of that matters, since they still have to comply to American laws, which means they have to give access to European data if the US government requests it.
Wrong, MS EU have to comply EU GDPR laws, yes or yes. They have learned it after several high fines, like also Facebook and Google, even X planned in the past to stop the service in the EU because of this. They can’t send userdata to third countries without the express consent of the user. Privacy in the EU is an human right protected by law. MS is scared with a reason.
If you want to be pedantic about it - if the NSA, or any such agency demands to place a [backdoor of any sort] in an American company’s datacenter, they have to comply.
So, no, they (meta, Google, etc) won’t be handing over the data knowingly. But those devices placed there for sure aren’t running Minecraft servers.
Only if that data centre is located on US soil.
…or if any part of the data processing happens on US soil…
Also in the EU, security agencies and the police can have access to individual accounts, but only in the case of an criminal investigation and only with an court order. Even very privacy oriented services and apps have to give access to the data they have, in this case. But this, if these data are encrypted, there is few what the authorities can do, then they have to contact the user directly to obtain the encryption key, or trying through weeks to crack it. But all this has nothing to do with privacy, it’s not the same as sharing freely user datas to third party advertising companies, like it is possible in the US, in the EU it’s only alowed in a very limited way to share statistical, anonymised and tech data.
