Microsoft Bans Russia From Downloading Windows Apocalypse

Organize | Su Mi

Produced | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)

If one day Windows is unavailable, what will be the impact? The scenario that has been imagined many times is now a prophecy, and this status quo is being staged among Russian user groups.

Users in Russia cannot download Windows?

On June 19, according to a post on the DTF forum, Russian users complained that they had problems downloading the ISO image of Windows from Microsoft’s official website and could not download the operating system and use it normally.

Specifically, it includes utilities for Windows 10 and Windows 11, mirroring of the operating system, and media creation tool programs. When trying to download any of the above, the system displays a 404 error, which means that the file or directory cannot be found.

Additionally, when Russian users tried to download the Windows 11 ISO image, another error message appeared.

It is reported that this situation began to appear in mid-June, and users in several regions of Russia have reported the existence of this situation. In this regard, when DTF forum users further checked, they found that Windows and other related image files are indeed not loaded into the local Russian provider service. If local users use VPN services connected to Europe or the United States, download images and applications. There will be no problems and can be used normally.

As of now, Microsoft has not responded to the situation.

Microsoft suspends sales in Russia

However, as early as March 4 this year, Microsoft issued a statement “Microsoft suspends new sales in Russia” on its official website, suspending the sales of new products and services in Russia.

In addition, earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft was significantly reducing its operations in Russia, writing in an email, “Due to the changing economic outlook and the impact on our operations in Russia, we have decided to significantly reduce our Operations in Russia. We will continue to honor our existing contractual obligations with Russian customers, while the moratorium on new sales remains in effect.”

At the time, a Microsoft spokesperson said more than 400 employees would be affected, but “we are working closely with those affected to ensure they are respected and have our full support during this difficult time.”

Among them, it is not stated that the use of the Windows operating system will be suspended. This sudden situation immediately aroused the concern of many people.

What will be the impact if Windows is cut off?

As we all know, in the desktop operating system market, Windows is the unrivaled existence. For its success, CSDN founder & chairman Jiang Tao once analyzed this problem from the perspective of a programmer, and shared:

The greatest success of Windows lies in its ecological success.

Once, Microsoft held the largest “professional developer conference” in history. It was the Professional Developers Conference held by Microsoft in Anaheim in 1993. At that time, about 8,000 people attended. API interface for Windows32.

This release is of great significance, because it means that third-party developers can use the operating system provided by Microsoft to develop their own application software, and because Microsoft’s graphical interface and interface were the most advanced at that time, many third-party developers Among them, both hardware service providers and software service providers choose to develop on Windows, thus quickly helping Microsoft to construct a PC ecosystem worth 10 trillion US dollars. Typical users include the well-known Adobe in the software, and its ace software is Photoshop built on the Windows operating system.

Behind the participation of these software in the Microsoft ecosystem, they use the capabilities provided by Windows APIs and operating systems, which also brought Windows the ultimate success. It can also be seen from this that Microsoft attaches great importance to and understands developers. , and the large investment.

At present, according to Statcounter statistics, Windows ranks first with a market share of 75.54%. However, it is worth noting that since 2009 to 2022, Windows’ market share has gradually declined due to competition.

It is not difficult to understand this development trend. The main reason behind it is that, on the one hand, Apple’s macOS has brought strong competition; on the other hand, the endless open source operating systems have brought infinite possibilities to the OS market. .

In recent years, many countries around the world have begun to abandon Windows and use open source operating systems. For example, in 2003, Munich, Germany launched the LiMux project (the “Munich distribution” based on Ubuntu), planning to integrate all government office systems and civil servants. The personal computers of 2018 have been migrated from Windows to open source software platforms; the Korean government has supported the local open source operating systems based on Linux, Gooroom, HAMONIKR, TMAX OS, etc.; some parts of Turkey have implemented the locally developed Linux distribution Pardus…

Back to the question itself, what are the implications if Windows usage is limited?

Undoubtedly, with the trend of open source infiltrating global software, it is not impossible to abandon Windows, but there is still a huge gap between a “usable” and an “easy to use” operating system, and an open source operating system is an ideal backup. The options are not as perfect as you might imagine. Take the attempt of Munich, Germany as an example. More than ten years after it launched the LiMux project, many government officials said that Linux seriously affected office efficiency. Therefore, there were also media reports that Munich finally decided to return to Windows. However, behind every migration , it is bound to pay multiple costs in time, manpower, money and so on.

However, I would rather take what is straight, not what is good. In recent years, as far as China is concerned, due to the reasons for Huawei’s supply cutoff and the general background factors of the international situation, more and more companies and developers have devoted themselves to the research and development of domestic operating systems, breaking the field of operating systems. passive” state.

Among them, the operating systems represented by OpenHarmony and OpenEuler are highly expected by users; secondly, Alibaba Group, Tencent, ByteDance, Ant, etc. improve their business development by improving or customizing Linux and other operating systems; in emerging fields, AI, Machine learning, Internet of Things, AR/VR, unmanned systems, industrial robots, etc. have also become the next main battlefield of operating systems.

Figure from ” New Programmer ” https://ift.tt/OquGRb4

Under the wave of open source, replacing Windows is not as difficult as it seems in the past, but in the era of China’s core technology stack in full bloom, how to improve the functionality, stability, compatibility, experience, ecology and other dimensions of domestic basic software, It is also the problem that we need to solve urgently and the breakthrough of basic software.

The text and pictures in this article are from CSDN