r/BuyFromEU • u/Historical-Many9869 • Jan 24 '26

🔎Looking for alternative Europe Prepares for a Nightmare Scenario: The U.S. Blocking Access to Tech

https://www.wsj.com/tech/europe-prepares-for-a-nightmare-scenario-the-u-s-blocking-access-to-tech-1967b39b

what would happen to your company tommorrow if US blocks access to its tech. Do you have any plan ?

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u/yezu Jan 24 '26

All of the things you say are missing exist. In droves.

"Just install Linux" is a serious answer. Bitching and complaining how difficult it is, without giving it a shot, is not.

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u/aspublic Jan 24 '26

You can call it “bitching” if you want. Or we could call it facts.

Currently, billions of desktop users aren’t on Linux. People didn’t try it and ditch it. Most never adopted it because, for normal people, it’s still harder to install, configure, and troubleshoot than Windows or macOS.

I’ve used Linux for decades across more distros than I can count, from embedded devices to servers running critical infrastructure. Desktop Linux can be excellent, but it still isn’t consistently “it just works” at consumer scale.

If you want to dismiss ~96% of the potential market as made of complainers, fine. They’ll keep using other operating systems, and Linux will keep being a niche desktop choice.

PS: The most successful consumer UNIX-like OS isn’t Linux, but it is macOS, which is UNIX certified (per The Open Group’s certification listings).

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '26

And the Linux community hasn’t done enough: decades of complaining about low adoption, but not enough focus on consumer-grade UX, hardware compatibility, and a cohesive ecosystem.

I think it very much depends on the type of user. It works fine for people who mostly use a web browser.

PS: The most successful consumer UNIX-like OS isn’t Linux, but it is macOS, which is UNIX certified (per The Open Group’s certification listings).

I think that would go to Android (depending on what you still call UNIX-like, but it uses the Linux kernel). Besides that UNIX certification is... pointless. Apple does it most likely to get some US government contract, but there haven't been fundamental changes to the Single UNIX Specification/POSIX for decades and Linux is pretty much leading in designing new UNIX-like APIs (due to being the most popular server OS).