The article hardly demonstrated any great win for Microsoft. They're dumping Windows there ( undisclosed discount pricing == dumping ) which proves that the free market in operating systems was a fantasy all along. It's a command and control market, not at all free.

China shows no interest in becoming dependent on imports. They're more savvy then to become dependent on Microsoft. Look for pirated hacks and other interesting variations on the core O/S. Heck, they might even fix a few bugs by hacking the binaries. ( unlikely, but a funny idea :)

Microsoft and the Chinese government are meant for each other, they think alike. And Linux doesn't need "Red Flag Linux" in the public mindset, reinforcing false notions of open source being socialist.

The whole O/S war is old. Linux has won. Windows isn't going away, it's just irrelevant. The Microsoft stranglehold is broken.

Good riddance.

AKA the Chinese language. MS hasn't spent a lot of ergs moving that rock. Which is why Red*Star Linux, YDL, and others took off so quickly.

Andrew --

You quoted Bill Gates as saying, in part, "Indeed, in China's back alleys, Linux often costs more than Windows because it requires more disks."

It would have been good to point out that anyone in the world can obtain distribution disks for the Ubuntu flavor of Linux for free. You don't even have to pay for shipping. See https://shipit.ubuntu.com/.

Also, given a fast enough Internet connection, the entire distribution can be downloaded, again for free, from Ubuntu. The resulting download can be burned onto a CD and the full OS can be booted and/or installed from there. Of course, one may make as many copies of the CD as one desires. In fact, Ubuntu encourages this practice.

Finally, a fully operational Ubuntu distro, including a GUI and the standard third-party tools (browser, email client, word processor, etc.), all fit onto one 700 MB CD. It's hard to imagine how Microsoft can claim to fit Windows on less than one CD.

Maybe it's the case that blank disks themselves are more expensive than what Microsoft is selling. Assuming not, I wanted to point out those facts.

P.S. I should point out that most of what I said about Ubuntu's policies and capabilities applies to many other flavor of Linux. I am most familiar with Ubuntu, however, and I do believe their offer of free shipping and free CDs may be unique.

I would love to have my "stranglehold broken" and be "rendered irrelevant" in such a manner.

You Get What You Pay For