China’s KylinOS Linux takes a great leap forward to v11 and kernel 6.6

China’s KylinSoft has delivered a major update to its flagship Linux, which Beijing hailed as a great leap forward for the nation’s ambition to develop operating systems that match and exceed the capabilities of western products. KylinOS 11, announced on Wednesday, uses version 6.6 of the Linux kernel and runs on processors …

[Anonymous Coward]

> Beijing hailed as a great leap forward for the nation’s ambition to develop operating systems that match and exceed the capabilities of western products.

They seem strangely ignorant of what happened to Russian developers during the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Linux might have originated in Finland, but it is very much a US-owned product hosted on US-owned infrastructure, maintained exclusively by US-sanctioned developers. It's an especially stark contrast to their newfound distrust in NVidia hardware. You'd think China would be supporting their homegrown BlueOS or something instead.

[I am the Walrus]

Umm.... The Linux kernel is completely open source and can be forked, adjusted and configured however you wish before being recompiled. There is literally nothing "Western influenced" inside the kernel that can't be removed or replaced in a fork of the kernel that is then compiled for use in a custom distro. Do you think the Chinese government is using a generic LTS kernel in their distro builds?

[Liam Proven]

> Do you think the Chinese government is using a generic LTS kernel in their distro builds?

Why not. They used to. OpenKylin 0.7 used kernel 5.15.

There may be some additions, of course. Probably are. Someone could go in there with one of the FOSS SBOM tools, or even the `diff` command, and work out what...

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Bingo.

In my case, that meant LMDE 6 for now, and we'll see if I'll be running a Debian 13 Xfce stack or a future LMDE 7 release on this hardware, but the Debian 12 core under LMDE 6 is pretty long-in-the-tooth. It is also very, very well supported by all the projects and third party tools and products I rely on for my own development and use experience. I'm leaning towards a native Debian 13 experience once NVidia updates their CUDA and video driver stacks and repos to support debian 13, and docker and docker containers have followed suit. Oracle's VirtualBox is also required for my environment, and PostgreSQL/PgAdmin repos.

The main reason I'm leaning towards a native Debian stack next is that running LMDE does provide a very nice UI through the "Cinnamon" desktop, but it also means having to perform all kinds of surgery on commands used to install third party repositories and products because it isn't native Debian 13, just potentially based on it, as LMDE 6 was with debian 12 "bookworm."

European based project management is a much safer alternative, both politically and economically at this time, as least from this Canadian's perspective. Why trade with a few hundred million Americans under Der Fuhrer when we could be trading with billions of democratically led-by-election people around the world?

[druck]

Just in case anyone was wondering; LDME is Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Not quite as up to date as the standard Ubuntu based Mint, but provides some insulation against Ubuntu's next stupid idea leaking in.

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO

Sanction or otherwise restrict country's ability to buy high tech and they'll find ways to bypass those rules, either by sanction busting, home grown development (if they can afford it) or both.

China is not close to bankruptcy like Russia was after the cold war and has become a powerful contender that needs to be taken seriously.

My prediction?

With mainstream OS support those Chinese chips will make their way out to the rest of the world and gain a foothold in the low/mid range market before more performant chips appear and become a serious challenger to the current market leaders

[wolfetone]

Re: IMO

Necessity is the mother of all invention after all.

[Gerhard den Hollander]

Big event ...

According to the pictures on the official website, they made a big song and dance about it all

https://www.kylinos.cn/about/news/1960318011530870785.html

[Gene Cash]

Re: Big event ...

Now I know how to say "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" in Chinese!

[jake]

Say what?

"the nation’s ambition to develop operating systems that match and exceed the capabilities of western products."

Wait ... They are using a Western product to showcase how they don't need Western products?

Emperor Pooh shouldn't have skipped out on the Logic classes in Junior High ...

[I am the Walrus]

Re: Say what?

They're using the linux kernel which is A. not an operating system and B. contributed to by people from all over the world not just from "the west" (Although granted I believe commits form Russian contributors to the mainline have been excluded for a numbered of years now). As I stated earlier in the thread, the kernel is open source and can be forked and modified however anyone chooses before being compiled and used as the basis for a custom OS. So no, they're not just "using a western product" to create their own OS. That's like saying that the USA didn't go to the moon, the Nazi's did because the Saturn V was built using their knowledge, technology and scientists. (Hi Godwin).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Say what?

You've not watch Iron Skies have you...

I do wonder how different Russian Linux is now, the schism has been open for long enough now that it could have diverged significantly

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC - Re: Say what?

Nobody prevents you from finding it out. They're not hiding it from anyone that would be interested.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: @AC - Say what?

I'm actually interested in how open the Russian (and Chinese) work on their versions of GNU/Linux are.

In theory, because these things are subject to GPLv2 and beyond, they have to publish their changes, at least to their own users. But as Red Hat have shown, this does not mean that their modifications get opened up to other people.

But as we all should realise, there is no way that FSF, GNU or the Linux kernel maintainers can enforce the GPL in an authoritarian regime. Sure, they can refuse commits from developers in these countries, but you can't block access to the sources that are truly open, so they can continue to take further developments to feed into their own fork.

I'm also interested in how 'local' KylinOS actually is. Does it use the GNU toolset, or have the Chinese developed their own userland tools that sit over the Linux kernel? IIRC, previous versions used the GNU toolset.

If they haven't provided their own toolset, and this is just a localised variant of GNU/Linux, can they really claim it's a Chinese developed OS? Sure, the translations, language display and input methods may be locally developed, but these things do not an OS make.

Porting Linux to another platform is actually a well documented operation, and it is probably the most ported OS the world has ever seen, running on everything from supercomputers down to microcontrollers. Provide the relevant compiler backends for your architecture, and any architecture specific I/O and memory handling drives, and you can probably cross-compile the kernel and most of the tool set to your ISA relatively quickly. Tweaking it to use the specific processor features for best efficiency is another matter, but that is just optimisation.

Sounds like time to spin up a VM in s sandbox to find out.

[Liam Proven]

Re: @AC - Say what?

> I'm also interested in how 'local' KylinOS actually is.

I've looked into it.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/30/kylin_the_multiple_semiofficial_chinese/

It's Ubuntu.

That article didn't do very well AFAIK so I doubt the editors would want a follow-on, but make your voice heard. Write to the editors and ask for a sequel and I'll do it. ;-)

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: @AC - Say what? @Liam

I remember that I did read that article, although I didn't comment on it. I just didn't remember it when I read this article.

From your comments, it seems you invested a lot of time and effort that was not recognised. I don't know how you are remunerated for your articles. Is it related to the number of hits you get? If so, I can see why you're a bit sour, it was a good article.

So, it's a skinned Ubuntu. Not really a locally produced OS at all, then.

[jake]

Re: @AC - Say what? @Liam

"Not really a locally produced OS at all, then."

No. It isn't. Not even close. Thus my original comment.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Say what?

> They are using a Western product

Yep. The last version I looked at was Ubuntu with a Chinese language desktop.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/30/kylin_the_multiple_semiofficial_chinese/

Here is how it has progressed:

1. ~ a decade ago, China was largely dependant on Windows. Old pirated versions.

2. The government launches the 3-5-2 programme to wean at least the state apparatus off it:

https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/09/china_orders_ban_on_us_computers_and_software/

3. It also throws money at indigenous CPUs.

3a: Loongson (MIPS with the serial numbers filed off)

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/04/loongson_cpu_update/

3b: Zhaoxin for stuff that needs x86:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/china_approved_tech_list/

4. Kylin etc. get to the level of Ubuntu 18.04 or so. Good enough, works, does the job, can run WINE etc.

Every Linux user knows it's faster than Windows. So a PC badly underspecced for Windows 10 or 11 will be perfectly adequate for Linux. Something decently specced for Windows XP is usable.

5. China proudly announces its domestic OS built from domestic code running on domestic chips is complete, woo, parade, etc.

6. China invades China. PROC invades ROC. That means the Maoist People's Republic of China invades the Kuomintang-run Republic of China, or Taiwan as most people call it. That's where Chiang Kai-Shek fled to: the island formerly called Formosa.

Chiang and his party took Formosa from Japan, who'd occupied it for 50 years. They're still there. The Maoist CCP is furious it never defeated its WW2 enemy.

The PROC annexes the ROC and the war finally ends.

Also, as a happy side-effect, the computer industry in the rest of the world is decimated, because most phone and computer chips are fabbed in Taiwan. But China will be fine, because it has its own computers. Not very good but good enough.

The Chinese Civil War started in 1927. I fear the CCP will aim to end it by 2027.

As for its "own OS" -- it has all the source code and the toolchain. It doesn't need any other help. Nothing the West can do now will affect that.

FOSS has geopolitical consequences.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking forward to this

It's honestly pretty insane that this didn't happen 10 years ago, but maybe they'll actually get this done this time. It's such an obvious strategic win.

[An_Old_Dog]

Yes, but ...

... does it come with assembly-language support for those various China-designed CPUs?

(Yes, yes, I read the intro to Unix whatevereth edition which said, re assemblers, something like, "Necromancy is strongly discouraged.")

[frankvw]

"...and of course it has AI inside"

And a communist government backdoor?

[m4r35n357]

Re: "...and of course it has AI inside"

I like - makes it clearer that a1 is an enemy in your own computer.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

Re: "...and of course it has AI inside"

You're delusional if you think the NSA doesn't have similar hooks into American-based distros and operating systems. There are far too many "black box" kernel modules nowadays for me to believe otherwise for so much as a second. I even have my doubts about debian.org, the tentacles of the spy agencies of the super powers reach so far and wide....