Russia already has a plan to cut down usage of foreign software by supporting local companies and applications, but President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to accelerate the transition by getting rid of Microsoft products as soon as possible.
And in his opinion, there’s a good reason why this should happen as soon as possible: Microsoft software can be used in the cyber war against other countries, and the United States could turn to products such as Windows and Office to infiltrate in Russia’s systems.
NBC News claims it has obtained a document from the US Homeland Security which confirms that Russian hackers used malware injected into a Microsoft Office document to shut down the Ukrainian electrical grid last year, so Vladimir Putin is afraid that a similar tactic can be used by Americans against Russia as well.
Good on him. It's really incomprehensible how much infrastructure is run on Windows even in countries that are enemies of the USA (or at least not on friendly terms).
Oliver Lee
How is ReactOS doing anyways, wasn't that part of their plan to replace Windows eventually?
The only time I see it mentioned is when comparing the compatibility of games to Wine.
William Nguyen
fix'd
Christian James
I'm pretty sure Russia is actually throwing money at it. Last I heard it runs Skyrim now.
Cameron Campbell
That's what hospitals and nuclear reactors run on :^)
Dylan Murphy
They already replaced Intel with Elbrus tfw can't get one of those sexy VLIW. Pretty sure they use a flavour of GNU/Linux for important stuff. Like every country.
Owen Bell
Slav magic is real.
Jayden Turner
Now hopefully the rest of the world will follow and switch to a free OS so I don't have to use MS Office to view my bills anymore.
Henry Myers
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Zachary Hernandez
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Dominic Davis
shit looks like windows 98
Jacob Hernandez
This CNN article is better: archive.is/CYfpj money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/technology/moscow-russia-microsoft-software-email/
Media again lies either because they fail to understand the intent of the Kremlin's actions or they are plain malicious. The Kremlin has argued that Microsoft Products could not be audited, nor have patches in a timely manner by the state without Microsoft's grace. In addition, licencing products every so years costs billions not invested in your home nation. Besides, it makes sense to invest in your own nation's IT industry. Whats funny, is that every other article I read makes sensationalist quips like this:
Also: What is PRISM?
Astute observation. ReactOS's libraries are sourced from older ones from the wine project.
Jeremiah Butler
Putin Linux when?
Noah Moore
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Ian Reyes
What kind of nuclear reactor in the US has the money for Windows 95? Most runs on Dos or custom board logic depending when they were built.
Elijah Brooks
Windows 95 can't even be legally bought anymore, plus its support ended in late 2001.
Justin Jackson
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Andrew Lopez
That's a good thing.
James Young
Microsoft Office document is vague. Are they talking about the old binary formats or OOXML, which is basically a ZIP file?
Matthew James
I wonder if journalists are always lying or if they actually believe some of their bullshit.
Mason Thompson
this is a sensible move tbh.
Jackson Evans
Haha, russians don't buy shit. Have fun supporting the "local economy" in Russia.
Kevin Taylor
What was the name of that other country recently that either banned or was about to ban proprietary software from government offices.
The government will be buying support. A government contract will be much more profitable for a software company than selling licenses to average Joe.
Logan Clark
How is this even possible?
Anyway, everything that tries to shut down ms is somewhat good.
Jeremiah Hernandez
Probably the computer had software that controlled the electricity grid, and the malware in the Office document accessed it.
Xavier Hill
I have many reaction pics and none of them are suitable for this retarded "info" at that scale.
Connor Bailey
It looks like Win2k, the best Windows ever released.
Juan Nelson
Does it work good with a Thinkpad?
Ryan Campbell
Yandex instead of Google and VK instead of Facebook are the two biggest defenses against US bullshit.
Mason Wood
He's just trying to keep USA spying out of Russia.
Zip-bomb maybe? Really doubt it was a 0-day
I don't think anybody has tried it. I don't even think ReactOS runs on hardware yet.
And you're replacing US botnet for a Russian botnet.
Jose Fisher
windows 2000 was my favorite, used it for ages even after xp was released.
Angel Campbell
seconded. I despise Putin and his government , and I would prefer if Russia used GNU+Linux rather than ReactOS, but I can only be happy for governments escaping from private and foreign private computing dominance.
Why would I prefer if they forgot about Windows alltogether? Well ReactOS still needs proprietary drivers for most things, Microsoft could still destroy all the interoperability work put by ReactOS is a snap for future Windows versions, and Unix-like systems are lovelier overall.
do they think we are this stupid, or is the general American and US-ally really this disingenuous
it won't. They want a Windows clone instead called ReactOS. Bad move if you ask me
I'd say most of them are both sensationalist by trade, and ignorant of other fields by circumstance
Jace Morales
Oh it runs on hardware, just a very limited set. There's a reason it's a meme os.
You're better off installing Linux and WINE if you need Windows programs to run on a non MS system that badly. Oh and it lacks 16 bit program support so anything 16 bit such as older installers and business software won't run on ReactOS.
Here's a long ass video of someone trying to install it on hardware, they had to grab another system because they kept getting 07e BSODs when they tried it on an XP era machine. It ended up actually booting later on on a dual-core Celeron PC but they struggled to make programs run. It also tells you that if you install a custom device it could even render your PC unbootable, limiting hardware support further.
Windows 95-2000 had the best UIs. It started going downhill with XP.
Bentley Sanders
i laughed
Austin Evans
Visual Studio code is bretty good regardless.
James Wilson
The sensationalist quips are actually pretty funny. It's as if people can't conceive that overpriced, proprietary, closed sourced software run by agencies associated with a foreign nation might not be the best thing to rely on for a country like Russia.
It's not even a good thing for the United states as is, let alone a competitor. Who the hell buys into this shit?
Ayden Cooper
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Cooper Peterson
reactos development seems to be moving quickly, and is accelerating.
I don't see much use for it personally, but have been watching their logs for the past couple months out of fuck-microsoft interest.
I think they will have it self-hosting within 6 months to a year.
I have played with (I think) 0.4.0 in a vm testing some commercial plc software. It failed the same way as the current release of wine did.
I plan to give 0.4.3 another try when it gets released soonish.
I never bothered learning programming under windows, but there are a whole lot of people out there who view it as their 1st platform. I think as soon as reactos looks somewhat practical, that giant mass of people are going to move over and start hacking on it.
If that happens, it will get legs and become a legitimate platform, maybe even more popular than linux.
Noah Sanders
I think that image should be named "feelsstallman".
Nathaniel King
More good news, according to the Free Software Foundation Europe:
