Well I certainly don't agree with that, and in many cases (at least with specific Linux distros) I would even argue it IS vulnerable already. Maybe we have different definitions of "viable" or something. The Linux kernel itself has also been forced to make political decisions at the demand of the United States, such as removing support for Russian CPUs (but somehow Chinese ones are A-OK).

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's viable because all of the important components are open source. That's the entire genius of open source, if you're capable enough then you're immune to future changes. You can fork a project and take over development. It only costs developers and that's well within the budget of a modern western country.

Any country who is going to undertake the effort to move away from Windows will have the resources to support distros which align with their country's interest or create their own. Even North Korea has their own distro of Linux, I'm sure the EU countries can find the talent required to ensure their software meets their needs.

As an individual, you're right. You're largely at the whims of the people who volunteer their time to the kernel, the software ecosystem and the individual distributions. If you have infinite money then those problems become a line item in your budget.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

But if the definition of viable is merely "open source"... there are many other such operating systems out there.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

It's not just that it is open source. It also has the largest software ecosystem of other open source software.

Yeah, they could use TempleOS, but then they'd need to write their own Office replacement. Or they can use Linux and use/fork LibreOffice.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel, Linux has been the nerd community's go to OS for replacing Windows for decades.