Kylin: The multiple semi-official Chinese versions of Ubuntu

Ubuntu's special distro for the Chinese market has a widening edge over the company's more conventional flavors. Ubuntu 22.04.1 appeared earlier this month, and along with the other flavors of Ubuntu, that means a new release of Ubuntu Kylin too. We looked at its resource usage alongside two other desktops, but Ubuntu Kylin is …

[nautica]

You tried running essentially the same story on Kylin by Liam Proven earlier this month, El Reg. A new title does NOT make it a new story.

Not enough "clicks"? Here's a really dynamite suggestion: find some new material, and, better yet...

Give it a rest.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Very snide comment.

Is this the article you are referring to: (https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/19/less_mainstream_xbuntu/)?

A quote from it: "We plan to do a full review of Ubuntu Kylin soon..."

[Liam Proven]

This is a completely new piece, which took about a week of research, multiple emails around the world, and several days of effort.

Just because it has the same product name in the title does not mean it's the same story, you know.

The Reg has published quite a lot of stories that mention MS Windows over the years. They're not the same story even if they all mention Windows.

[thames]

Excellet Review

That is a very detailed review and the author evidently put a lot of effort into it.

I suspect that the Kylin desktop UI won't be much more than another niche alternative outside of China unless someone makes a serious effort at increased support of other languages.

On the other hand, it's possible that their focus on Chinese language support will find them a niche in places that use either Chinese or languages which use a similar alphabet.

The differences between the Latin alphabet and the Chinese alphabet are quite profound, and as you noted results in different UI design decisions. It might make for an interesting article if someone knowledgeable in the area were to write about how significant this is and what the implications are.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Excellet Review

Thanks. Yes, I did.

You have a good point. I am not sure if UKUI would be any more suitable for other idiographic languages (e.g. Japanese) than it would for Chinese. To be honest, I do not see anything much in this desktop or distro that reflects thwe Chinese _writing system_.

As a national localization, yes.

But that could be removed (e.g. input methods), or changed (e.g. global weather, wider choice of non-Chinese search engines). Nothing about it is inherently or unchangeably Chinese-specific.

[Anonymous Coward]

"All the leading Western distros tend to focus on GNOME"

It's not the focus of the article, but I have to respectfully disagree with the suggestion in the article that "All the leading Western distros tend to focus on GNOME". I've had no problem avoiding GNOME over the years, with SUSE/OpenSUSE and more recently with Mint and Cinnamon. Distrowatch is currently claiming that MX Linux and EndeavourOS (both XFCE by default) are 1 and 2 over the last six months, with Mint in 3rd place.

The author has said before that GNOME (and KDE) aim to offer more than just a desktop, and in this category it's clear that GNOME is the most popular. But I don't feel I need the full integrated range of tools these offer, and for me a desktop is just a way to launch Firefox/LibreOffice/Steam/etc. Cinnamon does this well for me. Am I in the minority, and most Linux users are after the extras you get with GNOME?

[thames]

Re: "All the leading Western distros tend to focus on GNOME"

Distrowatch themselves say their rankings have nothing to do with usage or market share. Here's what they say about their list "they correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions".

Of course if the Distrowatch list did correspond to how popular a distro was, it would put Ubuntu Kylin well ahead of SUSE for the past month, and between half and a third of the user base of Red Hat. Red Hat itself lags behind ReactOS.

The Distrowatch list is just a count of how many people clicked on the page for that distro. It's more of an indicator of interest by the sort of hobbyists who collect or play with Linux distros the same way that some people collect stamps.

There are also people who obsessively click on a distro's Distrowatch page to try to bump the ranking up, as also stated by Distrowatch "continuous abuse of the counters by a handful of undisciplined individuals who had confused DistroWatch with a poll station."

So, don't take the Distrowatch rankings too seriously.

[Liam Proven]

Re: "All the leading Western distros tend to focus on GNOME"

GNOME is the only available desktop on:

* the commercially-supported version of Ubuntu and Ubuntu LTS versions

* RHEL and all rebuilds of RHEL

* SUSE SLE

It is the default desktop on Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and multiple other distros.

Yes, you can avoid it. There are many alternatives, as I covered at length in this story:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature/

But it is the dominant desktop out there.

The only mainstream major distro that defaults to KDE is openSUSE, and GNOME is a supported option there too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "All the leading Western distros tend to focus on GNOME"

[original AC again]

Thanks for the reply. You're absolutely right about the commercial distros (even SUSE is GNOME!). I hadn't considered them as I'm just a user who didn't fancy paying £95 for W10 when I built my last PC. I'm happy on Mint (and happy to keep away from GNOME), but please keep the linux articles coming!

[keithpeter]

Buster

# apt-get install ukui* libukui* ukwm

Looks like no meta-package for UKUI desktop. May try this as its Windows like layout may perhaps appeal to others in my household.

https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/install-ukui-desktop-environment-linux/

Recollecting that the original ubuntu project was very active in Africa, I suspect the OA may have a point about actual desktop innovation coming from outside US/Europe/Western Industrial countries.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Buster

I think you're right -- there's no metapackage.

I confess, I did not dig into low-level stuff like that. The article was overlong as it is, and took a long time.

It's a good strong desktop, though, and for me, it beats its progenitor MATE in several ways, such as better vertical taskbar support -- a big win on widescreen displays.

I suspect that in its home market, where I think it is being installed on a lot of PCs, it will further develop its fancy disk partitioning scheme, with dual root partitions and a shared data partition. A distro that is tolerant of, and can recover from, package update errors would be a big step forward.

Ubuntu was not especially active in Africa, as far as I know. The reason for the African-themed colour and sound schemes is that the company's founder and financial sponsor, Mark Shuttleworth, is African. He was born in South Africa and was the first African citizen to go to space.

[keithpeter]

Re: Buster

I might be shouting into the void here but I thought I'd just complete the above having installed UKUI on Debian Bullseye. The following packages were needed for what looks to be the full desktop...

apt-get install ukui* libukui* ukwm

apt install qt5-gtk2-platformtheme

apt install qt5-ukui-platformtheme

apt install mate-themes

The result is quite close to a 'modern' windows look. I'm guessing that the version of UKUI that is in Buster is the transitional version from GTK to QT. It might be worth mentioning that I have Gnome and Xfce on this Buster laptop.

[3arn0wl]

The Year of the Linux desktop (in China at least) : 2035?

@Liam Thank you for this piece, and for all the work that went into it. It all seems highly confusing! Not to mention full of intrigue!

I wonder how many Chinese computers (personal and business) are running non-proprietary OSs. i.e. How is the intention to move away from US IP progressing? I realise that that's an impossible question to answer, but the best guestimate of the informed Register contributors would be an insight. I don't suppose Micro$oft publish figures about how many licenses are sold there?

Also, do we know whether the Chinese market is favouring smartphones and tablets over desktops, like the Western market?

[Liam Proven]

Re: The Year of the Linux desktop (in China at least) : 2035?

I suspect that the government of the PROC would be reluctant to disclose this info, even thought it very probably has it.

20 years ago, 92% of software in China was pirated.

https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/28/china_software_piracy_stats/

There have been many big crackdowns:

https://www.theregister.com/Print/2012/12/03/microsoft_shanghai_ruichang_piracy_payout/

... and big payments to go legit:

https://www.theregister.com/2012/07/19/china_government_spending_software_piracy/

But that doubtless does not delight The Powers That Be.

Allegedly it is way down:

https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/28/china_software_piracy_stats/

But I suspect that an edict from TPTB which says "switch to Linux *or else*" will have a marked effect, and that's what is underway.

Officially this is the last year of the 3:5:2 programme.

I suspect, in reality, if they can get pirated Windows down to a single-digit percentage, they will be relatively happy and probably not push for complete extirpation if it would break stuff... and I bet it would.

And of course there was also this:

https://www.theregister.com/2015/03/19/pirates_to_get_windows_10_for_free/

You can install a pirated copy of Windows 7 or 8.x, crack it, and upgrade it to Win10. Then extract the product key, wipe the machine, and reinstall a clean copy of Win10, and activate it with that key.

The result is a clean copy of licensed Windows with no crack or anything on the system. I've tested it: it worked.

(The machine was wiped and given away long afterwards, BTW.)

I suspect that quite a few companies do this to get into compliance, not just in China but around the world.

[3arn0wl]

Re: The Year of the Linux desktop (in China at least) : 2035?

Thanks for that. Some way to go, then.

I find the World's addiction to proprietary systems so nonsensical (and - irrationally - frustrating). People will talk about app lock-in, or the non-interchangeability of files, or open source apps not being up to the job, or app gaps. I can't say that any of that has ever been an issue for me.

If China can't wean its population off US IP software, then no one can. :/

[Allan George Dyer]

Traditional, Simplified or Both?

I would assume Simplified, given the Mainland connection, but it would be nice to be certain, and both would be a definite advantage. Also, how is the support for handwriting input?

Bootnote: I'm also named after the kylin, 戴雅麟

[Liam Proven]

Re: Traditional, Simplified or Both?

These are legit questions, but I can only read a handful of hànzì and I can't tell the difference unless they are side-by-side.

I don't have any hardware suitable for testing handwriting input -- to be honest, I'm not even keen on trackpads. And if I did, I doubt it could read my terrible scrawl of

你好吗？

... which was the peak of my achievement. Well, that and

吃素的

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: Traditional, Simplified or Both?

"I can't tell the difference unless they are side-by-side"

To be fair, quite a few are the same, there's not much to simplify in 一二三.

"I don't have any hardware suitable for testing handwriting input" How well it copes with the available device(s) would be an important question in itself. I've tried with a mouse before (dreadful) and the most popular Windows-based pen input devices have (or had, maybe it's changed) no Linux drivers. For many people, handwriting input on their phone has become their preferred method, they might respond well to the same experience on a desktop.

[Auntie Dix]

Hungry an Hour Later for Another OS

How many programming languages are written in Chinese? Japanese? Korean? Klingon?

That would be zero...or damn close to it.

Have fun with the localization, but Ubuntu's a hobo snooze, even in English.