In an unexpected turn of events, it appears that the Russian government is planning to migrate all of its computers and infrastructure to a Linux kernel-based operating system, also known as the GNU/Linux distribution.
There's nothing surprising about this, but how it happened is perhaps the most interesting part of the story. In an interview with Bloomberg by Russian government Internet czar German Klimenko, the conversation turned to American tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple.
In this 90-minute interview , Mr. Klimenko shares his thoughts on why Google and Apple should pay more taxes, and why replacing Microsoft Windows with a GNU/Linux operating system on government computers is a necessary measure.
Most of the country is known to use Microsoft's Windows operating system. It seems that there are around 22,000 municipal authorities in Russia that are ready to get rid of Windows and move to an open source alternative. It is still unknown which version of Linux.
This is not the first time that Russia has planned to move away from proprietary software, as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered in 2010 that government agencies plan their transition to open source software and an open source operating system based on Linux.
Of course, it's 2016 and none of this has happened yet. But if this move is made, the use of Linux will take off and the number of users who will start using it will increase rapidly.
