Bonum Certa Men Certa

Stopping GNU/Linux (and the GPL) May Be Mission Impossible

GNU/Linux up to ~10% in India as PC sales plunge

India’s PC shipments drop below 5 million for the first time in four quarters: report

Summary: Low-budget and low-energy computing will favour GNU/Linux; Microsoft Windows is far too bloated to remain competitive as prices of energy soar and supply chain woes translate into low sales

TWENTY hours ago we mentioned how Vista 11 had gained only 2.61% market share in 15 months, according to one survey. To put things in perspective, 15 months after it arrived at the scene (summer) and after billions of dollars spent on "marketing" (fake articles), plus bundling/preinstalls on new PCs, the market share of Vista 11 is similar to that of GNU/Linux, not even counting ChromeOS. The world's dominant operating system is now Android and Linux is running inside it.



In Africa, Android is the dominant operating system in almost every country [1, 2]. And also in Africa, GNU/Linux has grown on the desktop/laptop this month (and in recent months). Android is the dominant platform there, but Windows is waning even in its form factor of 'choice' (it could simply not capture other markets).

GNU/Linux in Africa



Africa's significance here is that it illuminates the impact on poverty at a time when more and more country enter a crisis of poverty, which means no more $1000 laptops with the latest Vista or whatever Apple markets to insecure people with a new credit card.

"Africa's significance here is that it illuminates the impact on poverty at a time when more and more country enter a crisis of poverty, which means no more $1000 laptops with the latest Vista or whatever Apple markets to insecure people with a new credit card."It seems like a safe prediction that GNU/Linux will continue to grow and the Linux Foundation's role will be attacking the community while handing over GNU/Linux to monopolistic corporations.

Not many people noticed it, but the licence of the code connecting Linux to Rust is not GPL. This highlights some of the potential dangers of adding Rust to Linux. There are many such dangers. A reader recently suggested an article that might praise the benefits the GPLv2 and GPLv3 have provided and that they were adaptations to changing situations; now with the tsunami of Microsoft lobbyists the situation is moving yet again and GitHub is basically a massive attack on the GPL.

One associate noted that "[t]he GPL in and of itself is a clever hack of copyright law and has provided great benefit. Linus Torvalds himself has mentioned many times that very thing and once, right before he got abused, even stated in a video that it was his best decision ever to use the GPLv2."

Microsoft hates the GPL so much that its CEO publicly compared it to a cancer and went out of his way to lie about it, to demonise it, and to attack people who had come up with it. Entire companies were set up by Microsofters for the sole purpose of attacking the GPL.

So what is the GPL? It's a legal 'hack' that ensures people don't turn Free software into proprietary software. They need to give back changes that are made and delivered.

GPL is a key thing. The media barely mentions it, but it is the cornerstone of the movement. Aside from the lawsuits, it's one of the reasons why GNU/Linux grew so popular so fast, whereas the BSDs remained smaller (in relative terms; BSD is also a success story).

"Entryism has long been on the cards."Right about now Microsoft is trying to use secure [sic] boot as a GPL evasion tool. It's already using it to prevent GNU/Linux from even booting. Microsoft is trying to hire the man who did this and his current employer wishes to be acquired by Microsoft. There should have been an antitrust complaint, but instead we got sold cheaply to the abuser. Around the same time Microsoft made a plan to use GitHub as an anti-GPL weapon (that was in 2014) and "UEFI / restricted boot is a means of license evasion / violation," an associate explains. You may modify your operating system, but then it might not boot on your computer. It's a bit like TiVoization, which GPLv3 sought to tackle.

Either way, expect Microsoft to play "hardball" and do anything it can to sabotage GNU/Linux, including bribing the Linux Foundation to lie to us like Jim Zemlin constantly does. Entryism has long been on the cards.

Recent Techrights' Posts

France Does Not Need Digital Weapons Disguised as Social and as Media
French people lost interest in Social Control 'Media' (or Networks)
EPO "Productivity" Will Fall Off a Cliff If Examiners Stick to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and Follow the Real Rules
The EPO's "Cocaine Communication Manager" would hate to see the next "productivity" metrics
The Problem is Not Technology, the Problem is Really Bad Things Sold or Imposed as "Tech" (Like a Religion Built Around Technology)
Don't hate technology, hate the corporations that abuse it to promote coercion, exploitation etc.
Resisting IBM and EPO Corruption
Rise up against EPO dictatorship next week
Where Slop Meets Ghostwriting: It's a False Analogy
It's a false analogy
Slop Technica: Ars Technica Seems Like Repeat Offender, a Part-Time Slopfarm
The culprits are repeat offenders, but the publisher will never admit this in public
 
The Techrights Team Makes the Platform Faster
The infrastructure is already fast
Mozilla Firefox Died in Afghanistan
Mozilla has been a complete disaster
Gemini Links 18/02/2026: Astronomy and Texinfo
Links for the day
Are IBM CEO and IBM CFO Ready for Financial Audit That Topples the Shares by 50% in One Day?
The same "chefs" that cooked up Kyndryl Holdings Inc are still in charge of the IBM kitchen
"How Many Friends Do You Have?
"Do bots count?" "Friends in Facebook?" "Does a girlfriend chatbot count as a friend?"
"Senior AI Reporter" at Slop Technica/Ars Sloppica Has Written Nothing in Nearly a Week, Did Conde Nast Suspend Him for Fake Articles With Fake Quotes?
Slop Technica/Ars Sloppica is having a serious credibility issue right now
Linux Foundation Puts Slop Images, Not Just Slop Text, in Linux.com
More of the same then
The Register MS Paid-for 'Articles' (Ads) Seem to be LLM Slop Again
If it's true that The Register MS is resorting to these marketing tactics, will they later delete the evidence (as they did months ago)?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Microsoft Had Mass Layoffs Every Month Last Year, This Year It's Delaying a Lot to "Prove" Rumours That Crashed Its Stock... 'Wrong'
Building a bigger snowball for later
Red Hat Is Not a Company Anymore, Amid Bluewashing and Mass Layoffs It's Merely IBM "Division" or "Brand" or "Product"
systemd at this point is sort of like IBM/Microsoft thing
IBM suffers "worst weekly drop in six years", Microsoft's MSN calls it "buying opportunity"
Ask Cramer what to do
Still Some Slopfarms in View, Sometimes Targetting "Linux"
That's a total of at least 4 in Google News today, coming from 3 sources
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: 3D-Printed Stainless Steel Smartwatch and Gopher Bay Offline
Links for the day
Links 17/02/2026: Machine Rage and Microsoft Kills XBox Social Clubs
Links for the day
Links 17/02/2026: Why OpenClaw is Very Sleazy and Ars Technica Exposed as Hub of LLM Slop (Credibility Destroyed Overnight)
Links for the day
Benj Edwards (Ars Technica) Used Fake Articles to Promote Ponzi Scheme for Conde Nast and Its Client (Marketing)
What Ars Technica and Conde Nast do here helps defraud the general public
Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
If statCounter is to be trusted
Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026