The Ministry of Digital Development is working on regulatory documents that will oblige laptop sellers to pre-install native versions of Linux on imported mobile PCs. This is reported by the Kommersant publication.

At the moment, pre-installing programs is the responsibility of the manufacturer (like with smartphones), if the rules change, retailers will be obliged to install Russian software under threat of withdrawing the goods.

Last year, the Ministry of Digital Development identified the most popular domestic Linux distributions - these are Astra Linux, Alt and Red OS. In the Association of trading companies and manufacturers of household and computer equipment (RATEK), including large retailers like DNS and M.Video-Eldorado, consider that this initiative will negatively affect the market and may lead to laptop price increase.