Russia switching all government systems to Linux | Hacker News Reader

Russia switching all government systems to Linux

kommersant.ru

27 pointsmiohtama13 comments

Interesting, and I suppose unsurprising, that they seem to be choosing a home-grown Linux variant. Are there companies in Russia capable of supporting a government-wide Linux rollout? I'd doubt it. RedHat or Canonical might be able to manage this with their experience doing this at scale, but of course with the current economic sanctions they aren't options.

I can't imagine this going well for Russia, particularly at a time when one would have thought they want stability wherever they can find it. I'm in favour though as anything that might hinder or detract from their war efforts is probably a good idea.

I 'd say there is knowhow in Russia to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux

My concern is less about the technology – making a Linux distro isn't a ton of work – it's more about the experience deploying at scale and transforming Windows processes to Linux ones. They have quotes from people involved in the project in the article, but it doesn't sound like there are many or any large players in this space in Russia.

I think the Astra Linux link was an answer to the question though. Not because it was built in Russia, but because it's already long been deployed in some of their highest security environments. It's what already runs in many of their highest value government departments. It sounds like they're just rolling it out to their lower level departments as well.

Google translate - https://www-kommersant-ru.translate.goog/doc/5570730?_x_tr_s...

The article mentions Astra and Red OS

> Are there companies in Russia capable of supporting a government-wide Linux rollout?

I'm not sure about companies, but they probably have the talent. I work with a lot of Russian contractors, and when the war in Ukraine started the ones who didn't relocate out of Russia were laid off, so they might be looking for work and available to work on a project like this.

Great, now Debian is going to be on the export control list...

It’s strange you mention export controls, I had a similar question in my mind about whether Rust could be export controlled if it does make systems harder to crack. It’s technically impossible but that wouldn’t prevent a law being passed.

Who knows, maybe they'll go with SuSE.

Putin will only use Gentoo, obviously. (He tried Arch but it was too involved)

Seems sensible given their goals. I wonder what kind of productivity impact there will be. Not just with switching things over. But with the non tech savy users.

Such a shame it takes Putin to uproot Windows and to end Covid...

Similar things have been said about Trump; "I wish it wasn't Trump who did X good thing". Consider that you might be consuming too much propaganda.

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