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Goodbye Windows: China to create Ubuntu based home-grown OS


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Canonical strikes deal with China to expand open source software usage.

Ubuntu maker Canonical has signed a deal with the Chinese government to create a new version of Ubuntu. For China, this is widely seen as an attempt "to wean its IT sector off Western software in favour of more home-grown alternatives," the BBC reported.

In other words, it's an attempt to move from Windows to Linux. According to NetMarketshare statistics, Windows has 91.62 percent market share on the desktop in China, compared to 1.21 percent for Linux. The other 7.17 percent is OS X.

China is developing a new reference architecture for operating systems, based on Ubuntu. The Chinese version of Ubuntu—called Ubuntu Kylin—will be released next month in conjunction with Ubuntu's regular release cycle.

"Ubuntu Kylin goes beyond language localisation and includes features and applications that cater for the Chinese market," Canonical said in its announcement. "In the 13.04 release, Chinese input methods and Chinese calendars are supported, there is a new weather indicator, and users can quickly search across the most popular Chinese music services from the Dash. Future releases will include integration with Baidu maps and leading shopping service Taobao, payment processing for Chinese banks, and real-time train and flight information. The Ubuntu Kylin team is cooperating with WPS, the most popular office suite in China, and is creating photo editing and system management tools which could be incorporated into other flavours of Ubuntu worldwide."

This won't just be a desktop operating system. Canonical said "future work will extend beyond the desktop to other platforms" such as servers, tablets, and phones. To work on the software, Canonical and China have set up a joint lab in Beijing to host engineers from Canonical and Chinese government agencies.

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smallhagrid

There've been a few Chinese-made XP work-alikes, but for non-Chinese folks they weren't so good...

Even the ones with a choice for english only did about 75% english and lots of menu items stayed Chinese.

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has anyone bought second hand fake handsets, tablets or computers from china which looks identical and at times better than original in looks but who ever said they are leaders in software besides for China to adopt this is more of a political game and not to compete in the IT industry! eyebrows raised if you read between the lines where this is leading

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Its about tme. Now linux needs to spread the joy.

Exactly :showoff:

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I fail to see how an OS made in China is going to be goodbye for Windows - unless I'm missing something really miraculous, here. :think:

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I fail to see how an OS made in China is going to be goodbye for Windows - unless I'm missing something really miraculous, here. :think:

China is a big (pirated :P ) Windows market. Moving to Ubuntu and having govts. backing towards means Windows is destined to have an hard hit - something that Microsoft doesn't want, cause Microsoft is having a big time anti-piracy / anti-pirated Windows propaganda in China from last couple of years, with lot of money invested into China by MS.

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smallhagrid

Adding to what DKT27 just posted - if the Chinese folks make a really good windows work-alike that can be 100% used by english speakers, and is free - it's likely to put a HUGE hurting on mikro$leaze.

Between something like that, Android tablets, Google free apps and the growing Linux userbase their time of domination is shrinking... shrinking... shrinking !!!

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Plus if they can attract Chinese developers to a Linux OS there will be a whole new load of apps written for everyone. Hopefully if it becomes big somewhere it will get support from hardware makers who will then sell it on in other markets. And who knows maybe even the WINE project will get a boost and if anyone on Linux can use 95% of their old apps/games then what will stop people from switching to a free OS instead of a pay for one.

I hope Steam also kicks this off and attracts developers to the Linux platform.

Microsoft are already getting screwed in the tablet and phone markets and quite rightly so, because they make inferior products. But in the desktop market they have the monopoly on support from developers and hardware makers.

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