Two of China's Largest Tech Firms Are Uniting To Create a New 'Domestic OS' (zdnet.com) 93
The two biggest OS (operating system) makers in China announced plans last week to unite and jointly build a new "domestic operating system." From a report: The two companies are China Standard Software (CS2C) and Tianjin Kylin Information (TKC), two of China's largest software firms, with known ties to the Beijing government. Both companies are known on the local Chinese OS market. CS2C created "China's Windows XP clone," known as the NeoKylin OS, and TKC is the current steward of Kylin, China's first-ever homegrown operating system. CS2C and TKC plan to set up a new company in which they'll become investors, and through which the new joint OS will be developed. The new company will handle the new operating system's development, technological decisions, marketing, branding, financials, and sales. The current Kylin and NeoKylin operating systems will serve as a base for the new OS, the two said.
Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Since when has China created any truly new tech? I expect they'll use a Linux or BSD distro and fork it to suit their spying requirements.
The create IPhones every day :) !
Re: Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:1)
Re: Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Funny)
Thatâ(TM)s not âoenewâ tech, though. If itâ(TM)s Apple, itâ(TM)s foreign-designed. If itâ(TM)s a clone/copy, itâ(TM)s still not âoenewâ or âoeoriginalâ.
Hopefully they'll make a way to parse their ishit as well.
Copy Slashdot (Score:2)
If itÃ(TM)s a clone/copy, itÃ(TM)s still not Ãoenewà or ÃoeoriginalÃ.
But if they add Unicode support, will it still be Slashdot?
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the 19th Century they used to say that about the US when it was ripping off the patents and copyrights of European industry and art.
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:4)
Back in the 21st century in China they used to say this about Africa and South America, when those were ripping off the patents and copyrights of the Chinese industry.
Some things never change.
Re: Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
The point was that the US grew rapidly in the 19th Century, in part because they just 'borrowed' European knowledge without renumeration.
Re: (Score:1)
The point was that the US grew rapidly in the 19th Century, in part because they just 'borrowed' European knowledge without renumeration.
Well fiddling with serial numbers would be far worse, anything could be stolen and you wouldn't be able to track it back.
Re: (Score:1)
Its a very valid point. The US is an aging world power, and China is a upcoming world power.
Re: (Score:3)
sure....I"m guessing in a few decades we'll see how well that all worked out for us.
Re: (Score:2)
Note that we're we're talking about the diversity of ideas and action in a free society where individual will has been held to be a right in the US, vs a more cohesive society in China where conformity and the authority providing for the common good have been held up as virtues.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, in the terms you put forth, I would agree, however, the US until the past decade or two, while still diverse in thought, ideas and inventiveness, was more of a cohesive and homogeneous cultu
Re: (Score:2)
In the past, the extremes didn't control the narrative.
Extreme corporatism has controlled the narrative for decades.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop using backward shit as justification for current wrong doings. Back in the 19th Century we did a lot of shit to each other. Should China be allowed to legalize slavery because back in the 19th century they used to . . . .
Why not round up tens of thousands, if not millions of people in concentration camps because back in the 20th century ....
Re: (Score:2)
Stop using backward shit as justification for current wrong doings. Back in the 19th Century we did a lot of shit to each other. Should China be allowed to legalize slavery because back in the 19th century they used to . . . .
Why not round up tens of thousands, if not millions of people in concentration camps because back in the 20th century ....
Yeah, they're doing that too. Both of those things. They don't bother to justify it, either.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What is funny here is that China is copying Russian mentality.
Re: (Score:1)
What's funny here is that you know neither the Chinese, nor the Russian mentality, but have an opinion about both.
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid.
Russia already flirted with ReactOS some time ago. There there's Elbrus.
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
Chinese industry created more patents last year and spent more on both R&D and basic research than the US did. Huewei is essentially creating the standards for 5G since they're so far ahead of everyone else. You need to get out of the 1980s.
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Interesting)
Chinese industry created more patents last year and spent more on both R&D and basic research than the US did. Huewei is essentially creating the standards for 5G since they're so far ahead of everyone else. You need to get out of the 1980s.
IBM received more than 9100 [ibm.com] patents in 2018. Do you consider IBM to be a great leader in innovation?
As for R&D spending, the metrics are far murkier than the number of patents. Government budget spending on R&D is public, but government spending constitutes a small part of total R&D, so all such figures are coarse estimates. Without PPP [wikipedia.org] adjustments, China is still not close the US spending on R&D by most estimates. Even with PPP adjustments (which multiply exchange rate-based numbers for China by around 2x), US spending at $476 billion still is greater than Chinese spending at $370 billion according to UNESCO [unesco.org].
More importantly, what is the result of all that spending other than economic stimulus? Even the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) admitted [scmp.com] that "although China’s spending on research and development had risen steadily in recent years it had yet to yield any 'breakthrough' results that would help the country to achieve its technological goals."
To be fair, China has made important innovations, e.g., cell phone software, infrastructure, and use cases, as well as other areas. However, neither patents nor R&D estimates are useful metrics for innovation.
5G may turn out to be a platform that drives great innovation, productivity, and quality of living increases, like the internet. Or it could turn out to be a fantastic marketing flop. By a show of hands, how many are planning on buying a new 5G phone and are looking forward to the promises of 5G? The problem with my current phone is not that 20Mbps is a roadblock. Software and battery are the problems. The occasional absence of any connectivity is a problem; where there is connectivity, speed is not the problem. 5G for fixed clients? How many need help with that?
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Interesting)
The 20 **billion** IoT devices that are expected to be in use worldwide by this time next year will put serious strain on the current 4G infrastructure. 5G isn't about phones for the most part, except for the obvious marketing to get consumers to upgrade, it's about providing connectivity to the ocean of new devices that are being installed in order that they can pay for themselves.
And no, IoT isn't actually about your connected refrigerator.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a lot of IoT devices in the world. However, those devices all currently function without 5G. What is it about 5G that will improve the functionality of those IoT devices? Overwhelmingly, IoT devices use very little bandwidth and don't have very low latency requirements. In-building devices for the most part connect to wifi. Many fixed-location outdoor devices also connect to wifi (such as municipal smart utility meters). Perhaps cars, but it's not clear when (in terms how many decades) it'll
Re: (Score:3)
Huewei's '5g' standard was stolen from Nortel when they were all part of the consortium.
Qualcomm is defining 5G (Score:2)
China's Huawei is a significant player, but they are not leading 5G development. American company Qualcomm is. According to the Wall Street Journal published yesterday:
"Qualcomm today is the undisputed leader in the 5G space for the simple reason that no other companies can keep up with the San Diego-based innovator. Qualcomm holds a staggering 140,000 patents and patent applications for 5G technologies."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/q... [wsj.com]
Re: Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:2)
Chinese industry created more patents last year and spent more on both R&D and basic research than the US did
Unless you consider miilitary research; the U.S. black budget alone likely compares to that of the entire PLA.
So you read TFS, then? (Score:5, Interesting)
"The current Kylin and NeoKylin operating systems will serve as a base for the new OS, the two said."
Kylin is a Chinese Linux distribution. So yeah, it's obviously Linux.
Re:Linux or BSD fork incoming (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA you'd see that it's expected to be a derivative of Kylin Linux, which is the base of the NeoKylin "XP clone" (essentially they stripped off the ugly-ass user interface and made it usable). Kylin started as BSD and migrated to Linux several years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
What's wrong with using a technology that has been around for a long time, is open, and has been through the test of time? If China did make a domestic OS, assuming it is open (GPL), it only can benefit people. It doesn't hurt to have big companies working on a desktop UI for Linux, and an OS that can work in enterprises and go head to head with Windows.
We have heard all the jokes about the year of the Linux desktop, but if anyone can do this, it is the Chinese government. In the past, they did make some
Re: (Score:2)
Well, the heading is correct, despite the idiocy of the message.
And if it's a BSD fork, that's even in compliance with the license, so what do you care? If it's good enough for Apple...
As for technical advances, China has long been known for stagnation, but it's also long been known for intermediate periods when advances were created that took multiple centuries to penetrate to the West. I blame this on the Mandrinate, with a bit of help from Confucianism. When you worship the way things are traditionall
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Since when any truly new tech is truly new tech?
Surprised it took this long (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's virtually impossible to create a truly NEW OS from scratch today. It would take 100 years and hundreds of billions of dollars create a new from scratch OS that could rival Windows, Mac, and Linux in features and stability.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah right! Just as it took Linux 100 years and a billion of dollars.
Re: Surprised it took this long (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux today is the result of investment of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of coding and engineering from countless individuals hundreds of companies around the world.
Re: Surprised it took this long (Score:5, Insightful)
A current Linux distribution has 200 million lines of code.
Even if you had 100 perfect programmers that never made any mistakes and never needed sleep or bathroom breaks, and could average a line of code per minute, AND you had the entire OS perfectly engineered and planned out AND you had a perfect development plan so that every programmed could work at perfect efficiency with no one duplicating or messing up anyone elses work, it would still take a solid year of non-stop perfect programming to chug it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Coordinating 3000 engineers for 5 years is quite a bit harder than you think. Read Dijkstra sometime on how software projects don't scale well.
Re: (Score:2)
Coordinating 3000 engineers for 5 years is quite a bit harder than you think. Read Dijkstra sometime on how software projects don't scale well.
An OS from scratch isn't one software project though. It's a boot loader project and a kernel project and a system library project and a UI library project and a desktop renderer project. If it's something Unix-like, it's an additional several hundred command line tool projects which are dependent on the kernel and system library projects. If it's something Windows-like, it's an additional few dozen GUI tool projects, which are dependent on the UI library and desktop projects, as well as the kernel and s
And still no drivers or 3rd party support (Score:2)
So basically like running linux from 10 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, then after five years you are only 10 years behind Windows, Mac and Linux were 5 years ago.
Progress!
Re: (Score:2)
It did. Before Kylin there was red flag Linux.
Not sure why no other nations seem to do more than thinly customize. They must be happy with windows spyware, and stock Linux distributions. At least there are enough of them to offer some choice.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair they probably only have to support millions of different devices to cover their use case, but that's still a herculean task, and it doesn't make any sense to start from scratch. This is why FOSS will, if not crushed, eventually take over for all software. Software only becomes more complex over time, and the cost of duplicating that complexity increases.
Re:Surprised it took this long (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder is there was pressure by Microsoft to ensure the new OS variants would not make it. Plus, at the time, pirating Windows was doable. Now, with national pride at stake and the trade war turning into a cold war, it isn't just something to be tossed out as a lever against MS, but as a way to get away from being dependent on parties they can't control for operating systems and fear of spyware.
Kylin, AFIAK, is based on Ubuntu, so the amount of stuff they need to do to fork it and maintain it isn't huge. This time around, it most likely will get the funding it needs to be a desktop OS competitor, especially if it is kept open source and audited for any backdoors.
The key will be getting applications to run on it. Not just an office suite, but financial stuff with functionality similar to Quickbooks, Peachtree, AutoCAD, Solidworks, and other programs that only run on Windows specifically. Maybe if the Chinese throw enough money at it, they may be able to make a WINE-like layer, but we all have seen the trail of attempts at that, all the way back to Sun's attempt at Window's compatibility with Wabi. If they can pull this off, it will actually make things interesting in desktop and server computing.
Re: (Score:2)
integrated circuits, networks, viable electric cars, pharmaceuticals and anti-cancer drugs, lasers, etc. All developed without a war.
Re: (Score:2)
The key will be getting applications to run on it. Not just an office suite, but financial stuff with functionality similar to Quickbooks, Peachtree, AutoCAD, Solidworks, and other programs that only run on Windows specifically.
All of those programs are important in the USA, but are they all important in China? Or do they have more homegrown stuff, that they could "convince" the developers to port to Linux? For that matter, if China creates an installed base of Linux by force, can they convince more developers to port to Linux?
Re:Surprised it took this long (Score:5, Interesting)
I figured this would have been started 10 years ago. I would think the top economies would all be looking into this.
It did not take very long. And the reason is simple. There is still a great many older computers that were running Xp and linux fit the bill. Within a very short period of time the OS has taken over important functions like radar imaging, satellite mapping and a whole host of other applications that are not just military in nature. The versioning of how the Linux kernel is used stresses process security. They are building it out as a complete replacement for Microsoft software and are finding that Linux is flexible enough and advanced enough that having to use of a Microsoft OS is no longer necessary at all even for their business servers and government systems [huawei.com].
Besides with anti Chinese bullshit now prevalent in the US it only goes that Microsoft will lose a huge up and coming market opportunity. Apple is bending over backwards to keep a share of the market for iPad, iPhones and the like but that too is in trouble with the current isolationism attitude in Washington.
Re:Surprised it took this long (Score:5, Informative)
There have been stabs at this, but funding wound up drying up. Red Flag Linux and Asiaux come to mind as endeavors which were to go against Windows, but eventually died out.
So... Social Credit algorithms... (Score:3)
... built in at the kernel level?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The more, the merrier (Score:1)
This is great news. The OS space has become boring and the major players need more competition to step up their game.
If Microsoft Had Laid Off The Telemmetry In W10... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If Microsoft Had Laid Off The Telemmetry In W10 (Score:5, Informative)
That is Win 10's sole advantage right now - it can run productivity tools that you can find on other OSs, but the PC games ONLY run on Windows. Once that obstacle is gone, I suspect that few people will stay with Windows. The OS just has no tangible advantages that other OSs like Linux don't have. The new generations will probably prefer Android or iOS based PCs over MS's crapware in the first place. So this is probably the beginning of the end of Windows, save maybe for business that NEED to run Windows legacy software.
I think you might have the priorities a bit backwards. 3D gaming has been possible on Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo platforms for nearly 20 years now, and the number of PC exclusive titles is relatively small at this point...and possibly offset by the exclusives available on the other platforms.
Business software is the use case for which Windows continues to exist. Every couple of months I see a post implying that Linux is a drop-in replacement for Windows. Yes, lots of software is going browser based, but just because lots of the Slashdot crowd is fine with Chromium, LibreOffice, and Eclipse, doesn't mean that there aren't dozens of other software titles where the story is different.
Law firms keep their cases together using Worldox, itself depending heavily on plugins for Microsoft Office. While we're on MS Office, quickly, I know the Slashdot crowd loathes Outlook almost as much as Windows itself, but Thunderbird and Evolution are far from drop-in replacements.
Dentists use Dentrix or PracticePerfect or OpenDental, all of which run only on Windows. They also likely require some sort of imaging application for X-Rays, commonly VixWin, and the X-Ray sensors themselves are an example of hardware that commonly either only has Windows drivers, or loses half of its feature set with the class drivers that ship with most Linux distros. Your chiropractor may use Eclipse (not that one) or Chirotouch, plus something like Tytron to check your spinal alignment. Your general practitioner may use Nextech.
Quickbooks is as terrible for the small business market as SAP is for the enterprise, but millions of people run it. Yes, there are cloudy options like Xero, but I'm still waiting to find a contender to Quickbooks - I either see GNUcash (too simple for many businesses) or something like Postbooks - difficult to learn if you're not a straight-up accountant, and apparently, discontinued except in a paid product from Xtuple? That sort of thing is super common. While we're in the finance field, your taxes are probably prepped in something like PFX Tax or Ultratax, and your accountant may keep cases together in PFX Engagement. Point of Sale systems are commonly available for iPads for new businesses, but existing businesses may well have decades of data in Coalition or a dozen other Windows specific PoS systems.
AutoCAD should run on Linux, but doesn't. MasterCAM is used by CnC mills for machinery creation. GIMP hasn't quite made the same strides as Blender has, so Photoshop still reigns supreme. Davinci Resolve is making its inroads, but Final Cut, Avid, Premiere, and Vegas still handle the lion's share of nonlinear video editing. DJing is commonly done using Traktor or Serato. There are a few DMX lighting solutoins for Linux, but even the more advanced lighting boards from HOG, Elation, and Maxxyz run some form of Windows under the hood.
These are just some examples off the top of my head of software used by my clients at work. In the same way most people interact with Linux via Android or their routers and don't know it, you probably interact with Windows just as many times and don't know it. Now, I would *love* to see all of this software be ported over to Linux tomorrow. I would *love* to get rid of Windows. However, I'm a pragmatist. Quickbooks is lowest-common-denominator software that virtually every small business has used for two decades now, and the options are still either GNUcash, something like Dolibarr, or putting one's fi
Re: (Score:2)
China has been moving in this direction for a long time now. It was just accelerated by Trump's trade war. Microsoft must be pretty pissed off.
trade war (Score:1)
You mean Obama's trade war [archives.gov] that China started, don't you?
No. (Score:2)
If Microsoft Had Laid Off The Telemmetry In W10... people would happily be using Win 10. Instead they turned it into a giant spyware turd that nobody trusts, so now everybody who has the means will be looking into creating their own national "secure" OS.
This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with being "domestic". Made in China 2025 [wikipedia.org] is all about becoming more an more independent of the outside world which includes software. There are hard quotas that must be met (or incur the CCP's wrath) so everyone is pushing to make it happen.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think the telemetry in W10 is what matters do China or other governments. It's mainly angles. It's partially just helping out a domestic industry. It's partially retaliating for trade wars.
Yet, fundamentally, does any country want their 'infrastructure' to be in the hands of a potential adversary? Obviously not. If you were a country buying fighter jets and you bought a fleet of F18s from the US. Would you trust that in a conflict, the US doesn't have some ability to cripple the ones it sold you? Of
Oh, look. China discovered Linux (Score:2)
I'm all for China "making their own OS" (of course we all know that simply means creating a Chinese market Linux distribution). Good for them so long as they properly contribute back to the community.
Maybe if they get enough national market share, the big software makers that we all WISH would port to Linux finally will.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually they created their own Linux flavor years ago, I believe it was called Red Flag Linux. Yes, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There is a newer flavor, Kylin Linux, as well. It started as a BSD derivative, and now has migrated to Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
NeoKylin (the XP clone) is based on it, and it sounds like this is going to be a descendant of that.
Re: (Score:2)
Both of those are academic focused distributions, not really consumer level products. This is fine. The whole value of Linux is that you can make it what you need it to be and not everyone has to use the same "one-size-fits-all" product. Hopefully, these companies can be successful in a market where no one else has been.
(As a tangent, I'm really surprised this hasn't been done much in Europe yet. If I was a European country, I would migrate all of my government computers to Linux and LibreOffice and mandate
Re: (Score:2)
Actually almost all of the government computers and most of the corporate ones have already converted to one or another flavor of Linux. Kylin seems more popular since it has a decent interface.
Re: (Score:2)
As a tangent, I'm really surprised this hasn't been done much in Europe yet. If I was a European country, I would migrate all of my government computers to Linux and LibreOffice and mandate that anyone sharing files or information has to share that information in a way that is compatible with that OSS. But, you know, Europe generally is even more corrupt than America, so the big American software makers pay their way in with no problem.
The EU has been following an open source & open format strategy for a while now both officially (See: https://ec.europa.eu/info/depa... [europa.eu]) & unofficially. I do work for a few agencies in the EU & they're all about procuring free & open source solutions over anything else. They also provide funding to improve specific FOSS applications that they deem to be core for EU governments & businesses, e.g. LibreOffice.
The EU perception of US software companies has changed since Snowdon. They're now
Year of the Linux Desktop, Monkey's Paw Edition (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Between nationalism, the trade war, and NIH, it isn't surprising that China is starting to put their energy into an OS that is something serious.
I do wonder how it will turn out. If it winds up as spyware-laden as Red Star Linux, it won't be adopted, or there will be an upstream of the OS sans spyware made. If the companies were smart, they would not just make source code available, but let US and European firms audit the code. That way, there is some genuine tru
Re: (Score:2)
...If it winds up as spyware-laden as Red Star Linux, it won't be adopted...
Let me advise you that the [chief] aim of the Chinese government is to be devoid of any foreign software by all means.
While China wouldn't mind adoption of its domestically authored software by the world, this will be a welcome "by-the-way" than an initial aim of software development.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes me wonder (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Wonder no more.
One million Chinese are getting their backups atm. It takes some time to recall password for backup server in Redmond.
To be fare Chinese had their OS for more than 14 years. If they don't want to revive Red Flag Linux, they can also ask their friendly neighbors for their Red copy.
Domestic OS (Score:5, Funny)
So they use DOS?
Re: (Score:2)
Google Translate Link for the characters [google.com]
Obvious name (Score:2)
The great back door for China.
ReactOS (Score:2)
Seems like that would be a good fit and run legacy sw..
So, basically, just surveillance software? (Score:2)
Spying... (Score:2)
Next step? (Score:1)
Tu quoque... (Score:2)
The two companies are China Standard Software (CS2C) and Tianjin Kylin Information (TKC), two of China's largest software firms, with known ties to the Beijing government.
In the interest of "fair & balanced" news reporting, we should also refer to Google, Microsoft, & Apple as three of the USA's largest software firms, with known ties to the Washington government.
I guess Washington might be upset that China might popularise their Ubuntu Linux-based OS that might show the way to other countries to make similar moves away from US software dependence & therefore make their internal business, politics, & administration less susceptible to NSA/CIA surveillance
Thought this existed (Score:1)
Doesn't this already exist? Deepin Linux?