Kylin is an operating system developed by academics at the National University
of Defense Technology in the People's Republic of China since 2001. It is
named after the mythical beast qilin. The first versions were based on FreeBSD
and were intended for use by the Chinese military and other government
organizations. With version 3.0 Kylin became Linux-based, and there is a
version called NeoKylin which was announced in 2010.
In 2013, it was announced that a new Linux-based operating system with the
same name would be released using Ubuntu. The first version, Ubuntu Kylin
13.04, was released on 25 April 2013. FreeBSD version
Development of Kylin began in 2001, when the National University of Defense
Technology was assigned the mission of developing an operating system under the
863 Program intended to make China independent of foreign technology. The
aim was "to support several kinds of server platforms, to achieve high
performance, high availability and high security, as well as conforming to
international standards of Unix and Linux operating systems." It was created
using a hierarchy model, including "the basic kernel layer which is similar to
Mach, the system service layer which is similar to BSD and the desktop
environment which is similar to Windows." It was designed to comply with
the UNIX standards and to be compatible with Linux applications.
In February 2006, "China Military Online" reported the "successful
development of the Kylin server operating system", which it said was
"the first 64-bit operating system with high security level" and "also the first
operating system without Linux kernel that has obtained Linux global standard
authentification [sic] by the international Free Standards Group".
In April 2006, it was said that the Kylin operating system was largely
copied from FreeBSD 5.3. An anonymous Chinese student in Australia, who used
the pseudonym "Dancefire", carried out a kernel similarity analysis and showed
that the similarities between the two operating systems reached 99.45 percent.
One of Kylin's developers confirmed that Kylin was based on FreeBSD during a
speech at the international conference EuroBSDCon 2006.
In 2009, a report presented to the US-China Economic and Security Review
Commission stated that the purpose of Kylin is to make Chinese computers
impenetrable to competing countries in the cyberwarfare arena. The Washington
Post reported that: China has developed more secure
operating software for its tens of millions of computers and is already
installing it on government and military systems, hoping to make Beijing’s
networks impenetrable to U.S. military and intelligence agencies.
The deployment of Kylin was said to have "hardened key Chinese servers".
Kylin Linux With the advent of version 3.0, Kylin
has used the Linux kernel. In December 2010, it was announced that
China Standard Software and the National University of Defense Technology had
signed a strategic partnership to launch a version called NeoKylin. China
Standard Software is the maker of the "NeoShine Linux" desktop series.
NeoKylin is intended for use by government offices, national defense,
energy and other sectors of the Chinese economy.
The operating system of the Tianhe-1 supercomputer is 64-bit Kylin Linux,
which is oriented to high-performance parallel computing optimization, and
supports power management and high-performance virtual computing zone.
The newer Tianhe-2 also uses Kylin Linux.
Ubuntu Kylin In 2013, Canonical reached an agreement
with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's
Republic of China to release an Ubuntu-based OS with features targeted
at the Chinese market. Ubuntu Kylin has been described as "a
loose continuation of China’s Kylin OS". It is intended for desktop and laptop
computers. The first official release, Ubuntu Kylin 13.04, was on 25 April
2013. See also
LiMux – a similar project of the city council of Munich
GendBuntu – a similar project used by Gendarmerie in France
References External links
Kylin Official Website What is Kylin, Project Mission
Statement, September 2004, at the Internet Archive
Official Kylin website, April 2006, on the Internet Archive
NeoKylin NeoKylin Operating System at China Aid
Software Service Center