Desktop programs are an issue, but they can be ported.

The biggest problem is all the websites that serve ActiveX plugins. Web apps are supposed to be platform-independent, that's one of their biggest advantages, but Microsoft sabotaged that with ActiveX. Microsoft did a tremendous amount of harm to internet users by producing so much platform-dependent web software.

Did you really just say that it's easier to write a large number of windows-only programs than it is to either:

   a) fix the websites that have ActiveX dependencies
   b) modify a single web-browser to support ActiveX like IE6 used to

If true, ... wow.

What I meant was that the large number of currently Windows-only Chinese desktop applications will not be the biggest obstacle to Chinese users adobting Ubuntu, because they can be ported, and Canonical is working with the Chinese government to port the most popular ones ahead of time.

The number of Chinese websites out there with ActiveX dependencies is probably much greater, and you can't really "port" a website. Good luck getting all those Chinese web developers to fix their sites.

If Canonical bundled a web browser that supported ActiveX, that would temporarily resolve the problem (while enabling it to perpetuate), but I'm not sure if Microsoft's licenses even allow a non-IE browser to re-implement ActiveX.

So, I think that not being able to browse many Chinese websites on other platforms is the main thing that keeps Chinese users locked into IE/Windows right now.

Perhaps, though, my knowledge is outdated and ActiveX plugins aren't as ubiquitous in China as they used to be.

I'm sure the Chinese government could force the most popular sites to replace ActiveX, but it'll be hard to get to the long tail.

Depends on the costs involved. Network externalities are a killer.

I think the "everyone and their mother" can be interpretet literally in this context, not just figuratively.

Yes, there is software as well. Forgot about that.