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Operating Systems Software IT

China Announces Unix-compatible Server OS 48

Posted by Hemos from the the-red-giant-awakes dept.
swe writes " It looks as though the Chinese government has come up with their own Operating System. Called, Kylin, it is focused on high performance, availability and security. The kernel is similar to Mach with BSD-like system service layer and Windows-like desktop environment. It is supposedly Unix standards compliant and is also compatible with Linux binaries. Could there be another contender? "
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China Announces Unix-compatible Server OS More

China Announces Unix-compatible Server OS

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  • Grep the source for GPL code!

  • Who would use this without a gun to their head? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adb ( 31105 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @09:07AM (#12336026)
    I have enough trouble trusting NSA-enhanced Linux. What are the chances this doesn't have nasty spyware and/or censorware built right in?
  • $10 says there are spy hooks all over the place.

    If they release the source, sure. But binaries-only OS's from shifty gov't types .. no thanks.
    • Governments - even the Chinese government - are more open than many corporations. Who's to say that the Chinese government is less open than Microsoft?

      I have found it odd that Americans (from what I've seen anyway) are so distrustful of governmental organisations yet so willing to trust a corporation. While I'm naturally distrustful of both, at least I vote for my government, and governments (in my country anyway) have safeguards imposing a degree of openness and accountability. How open is Microsoft? Did
      • I have found it odd that Americans (from what I've seen anyway) are so distrustful of governmental organisations yet so willing to trust a corporation.

        Corporations don't use Tanks to Shut Down Protest.

        At least, not yet they don't. And corporations have to ultimately answer to the government. Very few governments actually answer to anybody ..

        • Corporations these days hold tremendous sway over governmental decisions. Look how quickly Microsoft got off the hook once Bush won the 2000 election and put Ashcroft in charge of the Department of Justice.

          It looks to me that governments are increasingly answering to corporations. Don't pass our proposals? No more 'soft money' campaign donations for you. Don't do things our way? We'll just move our company offshore.
        • "Very few governments actually answer to anybody"

          They answer to their voters. If they misbehave, it's the job of the voters to kick them out. If this isn't happening, you need to wonder how well your democracy is really working. Most countries have constitutions, and even governments must abide by laws.
        • Corporations don't use Tanks to Shut Down Protest.

          No, they just eviscerate their worker's pensions and leave them penniless. Stay tuned,
          China 2020 Tour
          Keynote speaker:Ken Lay
          "Guns and Butter: What I learned from screwing other capitalists"
        • Didn't corporations (ITT, I think) use fighter jets to shut down Chile's elected government after they nationalized the phone infrastructure within their borders?
      • ... at least I vote for my government

        And I vote for corporations all the time with my wallet. If I don't like their services then I switch. I'm never forced to use any platform that I don't want, even if it doesn't have the software I like. I can either learn to live without, or I can use that platform just for what I need it to do and no more. For many people, the days of being locked into a single vendor solution are over.

        On a somewhat related note, I find it interesting that there are people who

        • Voting is intended to ensure that each person gets one vote. Theoretically (discounting 'donations' and other possible avenues for corruption) you have just as much voting power as Bill Gates. Is your wallet as big as Bill's? The largest customers of most corporations are other corporations. Your wallet doesn't even register as a blip on their radar.
          • My wallet doesn't need to be as big as Bill's in order to have a voice. The Internet is turning out to be the great equalizer, and politicians are beginning to fear the 'net a lot more than they do people with money. This is why you see people trying to enact laws to control it. I'm not sure how you feel about groups like MoveOn.org, but they've shown what a grass-roots campaign can do if well mobilized. No big bucks necessary, just some folks with a good idea, a couple of computers, and a big, fat pipe
            • The fact that political websites can be established is a good thing. It shows that people are exercising their rights to freedom of speech and expression. The minute one tries to do the same thing against a corporation, though, they get sued and litigated into oblivion. It doesn't matter whether they are right or wrong, since they normally don't have the resources (time, money, legal representation, etc.) to defend themselves anyway.

              When it comes to spending power, it is true that ordinary consumers have a

      • At least you have multiple choices of corporations. There is only one government.

  • He who writes the history books... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @09:14AM (#12336081) Journal
    While based off Linux and BSD, code wasnt stolen, it was Liberated.
    - China's National University of Defence Technology.

  • It's difficult to believe this was done without GPL'd code.

    I'm not saying it's impossible, but consider how long it took to bring Linux to it's current state. Has China really been working 10+ years on this?

    It seems to me this is probably just another CherryOS.

    Does anyone have access to source we can look at?

  • ... with XGI releasing open source drivers for X11 [slashdot.org]?

    The timing looks very good for China and its neighbours to drive the IT.

  • My guess is: yes. China has some huge potential in the IT industry. When considering how many people there are in China, this operating system may one day become the most popular OS. My first impression: impressive effort.

    • I read the article at http://it.sohu.com/20040913/n222021830.shtml about kylin; My simplified chinese is a bit rusty, but what I got out of it was "64-bit support", "a team of 863 IT experts" and "independant of Linux"

      Anyway, from the sound of the article, there is a kernel, maybe some simple utilities to go along with it, and they are very proud of the fact that they did it all by themselves.

      The article mentions that they want to develop a computing platform that is independantly developed in-country,

  • Not credible (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25, 2005 @09:20AM (#12336154)

    I was going to post a comment about how amateur and untrustworthy the project looks, but somebody beat me to it [osnews.com]:

    If this is real at all, it clearly borrows heavily from some well known BSD licensed unixlike codebase (almost certainly Darwin, given their claims of Mach kernel services). Nobody, not even the Chinese government, is going to write an OS this feature-complete from scratch and spring it on us out of the blue. Even so, this would be a big step forward for Darwin: some of the features claimed (SSI clustering, NUMA support, SELinux-like MACs) have only been available in Linux and commercial Unices until now. So let me just say, if this is real, it's great.

    Unfortunately, this seems unlikely to me. The website for this project is so unprofessional that I doubt it was produced by a team capable of creating this software. The following are strikes against them:

    -The website is poorly translated, ridiculously unprofessional, makes very vague and grandiose claims, and shows only tiny screenshots that could well be KDE on Linux.

    -They claim GRUB was "ported" to Kylin, yet their OS is quite obviously familiar enough that no port would be necessary: they're using Mach, and they certainly did not invent a new filesystem.

    -They claim IA64 but not PPC support, Darwin is all about PPC but does not support IA64.

    -They claim not only an astounding level of feature parity with Linux, but also extraordinary compatibility - they even claim to be LSB compliant!!

    Are we to believe that the Chinese government poured enough money into this project for enough time for them to achieve such an amazing result, then had someone who couldn't do webdesign OR speak english spend 10 minutes on a website that is essentially one page of vague claims that reveal technical ignorance. A release announcment without even a download link? No way - it would be humiliating, and doesn't reflect the level of dedication that would be required to create such software.

    This is most likely vaporware, and I'd even doubt it has anything to do with the government. If we do eventually see a download, I'd bet that it's an illegal and poorly put together Linux distribution with an OpenSSI kernel that hasn't got a trace of Mach or BSD anywhere.

    synthespian, David Adams and Eugenia are all gullible, more so, it seems, than any Slashdot editors (this story remains conspicuously absent there).

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Not credible (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jerf ( 17166 )
      Boy, China is really starting to remind me of the old Soviet Union; a Communist country panicking the free world by looking like it is about to take over a technological lead... but lacking the necessary culture to do that. Substituting for the necessary culture and true innovation and progress, they pour all of their resources into looking like they are progressing, doing well in the Olympics, some token tech program (space-based in the USSR case, possibly China's too), a city or two full of tech and photo

      • Re:Not credible (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Uber Banker ( 655221 )
        A key difference to the USSR in 1985 and China today is that you can get a visa a jump on a plane to CHina tomorrow: Beijing, Shanghai, some remote province, no real problem. And if you like what you see you are welcome to start a factory or whatever there. Capitalist related matters are pretty out in the open.

        I wouldn't expect amazing technological progress from what remains a 3rd world country (apart from the odd pocket here and there), but that doesn't mean a lack of economic growth. Its a country
        • Good point. That's actually closer to my real feelings, but I see a lot of people missing two things: "Catch-up" doesn't mean "surpass tommorow", and they are "catching up" to a moving target.

          I still see a lot of that old-school communist "style over substance" at work; they moving that into the military domain is quite disturbing... (in an abstract sort of way; they can annoy their neighbors but at the moment they are certainly in no danger of taking over the world or anything.) but now I'm getting pretty
  • "THERE IS ANOTHER"
    - Colossus

  • What happens (Score:2, Funny)

    by lbmouse ( 473316 )
    FTA: "Few human interfere during the installation process is required."

    What happens to you if you do interfere?

  • Twenty years ago... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dimss ( 457848 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @11:26AM (#12337598) Homepage
    ...there were "soviet" OSes for IBM 360 and 370 clones. Of course, they were just repackaged VM and VMS.
  • Let me guess. Every time you start it up, it plays a scratchy mp3 of your girlfriend saying "I believe in you!"?
  • Sorry guys, I created this website a long time ago for April fools day and have since forgotten to take it down.

    I didn't know submitting stories to slashdot took so long...

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