Not that Microsoft would be too concerned about it, but the South Korean government is allegedly planning to ditch Microsoft Windows and make the switch to Linux operating systems for their computers. The change will begin when Windows 7 support from Microsoft is officially up, which is happening this coming January.
It’s likely to be a very dark day for all of South Korea because Linux is not—nor will it likely ever be—better than Windows.
You might read about all the things that Microsoft does wrong with Windows, and how it’s such a terrible operating system with all its problems. But the reality is that “terrible” operating system is still leaps and bounds ahead of any open source operating system. And anyone with a grasp of how capitalism works and the size of Microsoft as a company should already know that.
Yes Windows has its problems. But it also has an abundance of resources being thrown at those problems. The Windows 10 that you use today (if you’re up to date) is vastly superior to the Windows 10 when it first came out. And that is what resources can do for a company . . . something Linux doesn’t have much of.
To be fair to South Korea, they’re suggesting their issues with Windows 10 aren’t with the performance itself but costs associated with using Windows 10 now that Windows 7’s free support is used up. And on paper, it’s hard to argue that they may save money switching to open source operating systems.
However, open source Linux doesn’t have free support either. What’s more, Linux technicians are actually very well paid in the industry, in comparison to Microsoft tech support, because fewer people understand how to solve problems on Linux. Usually it’s best to pay a bit extra and then let your computers run while you make that money back, rather than trying to shave off costs from the fundamentals. Just the switch to Linux alone will cost the South Korean government at least half a billion dollars in the short term, and we would expect that number to rise considerably still in the long term.