China has released its first homegrown open-source desktop operating system, named OpenKylin, state media said, as the country steps up efforts to cut reliance on U.S. technology.
Released on Wednesday, and based on the existing open-source
Linux operating system, China's version was built by a community of about 4,000
developers, and is used in its space programme and industries such as finance
and energy, they added.
China's massive market for operating systems was worth 15.5
billion yuan ($2.1 billion) last year, state media said, citing an industry
report.
Developing an operating system independent of U.S.
technology has been an important goal for China's tech industry in recent
years, with many companies and organisations having contributed to the
development of the OpenKylin system.
It most notable backer is the China Industrial Control
Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team under the purview of the industry and
information technology ministry.
More than a dozen Chinese companies are trying to develop
operating systems that could replace Microsoft's Windows and Apple's MacOS
operating systems.
One such company, UnionTech Software Technology Co Ltd, has
been developing what it calls the "Unity operating system".
The Chinese authorities had in 2019 ordered all government
offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and
software in three years.
“A lot of the major software, especially Windows, is
controlled by US companies,” said Associate Professor of Computer Science Ben
Leong from the National University of Singapore. “There is nothing stopping the
US from passing some law to force US companies to stop support for China and
Chinese companies.”
China is still a long way from dislodging the incumbents,
such as Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s MacOS.
According to Statcounter, which analyses Web traffic,
Windows accounts for around 85 per cent of desktop operating systems in China
as at June 2022. MacOS has expanded its market share in recent years to about 8
per cent.
Beyond existing sanctions, the US has reportedly been
mulling over further legislation to prohibit American investment in Chinese
companies working on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and
quantum computing.
Officials at the launch of the Linux-based OpenKylin called
for support from related industries to propel China forward as a technological
power. Software that is open-source is meant to be publicly available for other
users to help develop, encouraging greater use and innovation.
OpenKylin has a user interface that looks similar to
Windows’, is available in Chinese and English, and has pre-installed apps such
as the Firefox Web browser and a Chinese-developed office suite that works with
Microsoft Word and Excel documents.
But the challenge is getting people to adopt OpenKylin, with
the average computer user likely to be more concerned about whether the
programs and apps he uses can work, than the OS itself.
One tech enthusiast who posted his experience on Chinese
social media app Xiaohongshu demonstrated the OS’ touchscreen functions and its
ability to run photo-editing software, but noted that there are bugs to be
fixed.
China will need to create an ecosystem of software
developers who can further make the software more alluring to users for this
home-grown OS to gain traction, said Prof Leong.
“The holy grail for China would be for OpenKylin to have all
the software that the Chinese people need so that they will not need to turn to
any products built by US or Western companies.”
The US banned Huawei from doing business in America in 2019
over spying and intellectual property rights concerns, forcing the Chinese
telco giant to develop its own OS called HarmonyOS, which is now used on its
smartphones.
The OS, which shares similarities with Android, also runs on
its other products such as smartwatches and tablets.
Mr Manoj Harjani, a research fellow at Singapore’s S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said China could also be pushing
for its own home-grown OS as a demonstration of power or status, although
developing an OS is not in the same league as designing chips or quantum
computers.
Launching such an indigenous software could be a way to
exercise power over society, he added. “Controlling one more piece of the
technological stack that undergirds daily life makes sense given the level of
control already exercised in China by the state over the Internet.”
The Chinese media has hailed the development as yet another
step to reduce reliance on Western technologies. The government had in 2021
unveiled a plan to build “two or three open-source communities with
international influence” by 2025, with the aim of boosting its software
industry.
Such communities have grown rapidly, with Chinese users now
the second-biggest contributors on popular code-sharing platform GitHub after
the US.
Mr Harjani, who specialises in regulation and governance of
technology, believes mass adoption will take off only when people buy computers
with OpenKylin pre-installed as the default, which could take a while.
More people now skip owning desktops as smartphones cover
most of their computing needs, he said. “Even if OpenKylin is a superior
alternative to other operating systems, it is difficult to see most users
putting in effort to install a new OS.”