
A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows - bane
http://qz.com/505383/a-first-look-at-the-chinese-operating-system-the-government-wants-to-replace-windows/
======
simonh
So they took Fedora and a dead end fork of Open Office and re-skinned them to
look like Windows XP. Additional applications are installed using Yum.
Microsoft are toast!

Edit: BTW, what ever happened to Red Flag Linux?

~~~
snogglethorpe
Actually the biggest fear I have of this sort of thing is that they'll end up
with standalone unshared forks of stuff, which won't benefit from newer
developments and bug fixes in other forks, and vice-versa.

~~~
rwmj
Another problem is they may violate licenses by not distributing source. We
may end up with forked versions of the kernel and other major components, with
useful new features implemented and no corresponding source. (Note: I have no
evidence that this is happening).

~~~
chaostheory
Didn't Redhat complain that the company behind RedFlag didn't distribute
source?

------
kalleboo
Man this article has the most pointless and annoying use of Animated GIFs. I
want to read that uname line, damn it, what's the point of animating the
typing in of it? Over and over again in a loop?

~~~
notfoss
Yeah, it was a huge pain. I usually deal with fast GIFs by left clicking on
the GIF at the required frame and then dragging that away from the GIF. That's
the only way I can deal with such GIFs other than decompiling.

------
wsterling
Can we please stop referring to spins and skins of existing Linux
distributions as a whole new OS? There doesn't appear to be much hear that a
highschool kid could not do in a few days. Pretty under whelming for an effort
of a nation state of 1.3 billion people.

~~~
intopieces
What does the population have to do with the complexity of the OS project?

~~~
wsterling
It has a direct impact on the resources the state has available to it.

~~~
intopieces
True, but when we've already established that this kind of project is trivial
in nature, does that really come into play here? North Korea built their own
OS based off of linux, and they've not nearly the population of China.

------
vinceyuan
Nobody uses it in China. Dell installs it on computers just because a computer
without an OS is not allowed to sell in China.

~~~
leni536
Why don't they just install any other distro or free OS?

~~~
vinceyuan
Though NeoKylin is not a free OS, I guess Dell may get paid for preinstalling
NeoKylin from China Standard Software. According to this source (in Chinese)
[1], China Standard Software got 0.5 billions RMB funding ($800M) from the
gov. The gov measures its performance by some methods including the shipping
number of NeoKylin. It's natural for Dell and China Standard Software to have
such a contract. One preinstalls NeoKylin for money. The other has the number
to get funding from the gov. Though nobody uses it, two companies get money.

[1]
[http://baike.baidu.com/view/4920982.htm](http://baike.baidu.com/view/4920982.htm)

------
tempodox
It seems quite logical that the Chinese don't want an OS that shovels data to
the NSA. They want an OS that shovels data to their own agencies.

~~~
unKlever
While this is likely true, do you think they can't get that data another way?
I would speculate that with pre-installed root certificates and total network
control they could get a lot of data. This wikipedia entry estimates that in
09 ~80% of chinese software sold was pirated. Pirated versions of windows and
chrome are distributed on the black market. This software may have changes for
the cracking program so the hash will mismatch the authentic software. Placing
spyware on chrome and windows copies and distributing them would allow them
the ability to harvest this data anyway. I agree with your appraisal. As a
cynic, I assume they are trying to control data flowing out of china and this
is one of many ways to control data, especially the type of people who would
use this operating system which I would assume could be gov't controlled
institutions like schools and research labs, as well as party officials.

Edit: forgot to cite source:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

------
userulluipeste
Their efforts could have been actually beneficial for everybody if they
decided to contribute to ReactOS. That way they could have had something
instead of LibreOffice skins and a dead-end Linux fork.

~~~
jarcane
Considering the Russians have been footing the bill for ReactOS for a while
now and it's still no closer to being actually usable, I highly doubt it would
make the slightest difference.

------
livatlantis
<aside> Is it just me or is this title missing a preposition?

Surely it's 'A first look at the OS with which the Chinese government wants to
replace Windows'.

Or perhaps, 'A first look an the OS the Chinese government wants to replace
Windows with' if you don't mind dangling prepositions. </aside>

Interesting how far they went to make it look like XP. What are the chances
that someone using it is frustrated when they learn they can't install <insert
Win package name here>?

~~~
xsznix
<aside>It looks right to me. The adjectival clause describing the OS says "the
Chinese government wants the OS to replace Windows". There's an implied "that"
between "the OS" and "the Chinese government".</aside>

~~~
livatlantis
<aside>I see what you mean, but I don't think it's the implied 'that' that's
problematic.

The subject of the second clause is 'the Chinese government', the verb 'to
want to', the object 'replace Windows'.

This whole thing qualifies the first clause, 'the OS'.

But the semantic relation between these two clauses ("with") is not
established.

It's like saying "A detailed look at the mountain John wants to dance with an
elephant".

Doesn't make sense without the "on" which links the two bits. </aside>

PS: Excuse my pedantry; this stuff really interests me.

~~~
canjobear
On the aside:

You are right that the sentence is ungrammatical if you take the object of
"want" to be "replace Windows" and the subject of "replace" to be "the Chinese
government". But it is grammatical if you analyze it as an instance of the
construction "X wants Y to Z", where Y is (semantically) the subject of the
infinitive Z.

To a first approximation, relative clauses in English are formed by taking a
sentence and moving some noun phrase to the front, while optionally adding
"that" after the moved noun phrase.

E.g., "I saw the man" -> "the man that I saw _" (where _ marks the place where
"the man" would have been if it was a regular sentence; called the gap or
trace in linguistics.)

In this case the transformation is "the Chinese government wants the OS to
replace Windows" -> "the OS that the Chinese government wants _ to replace
Windows."

I agree it sounds somewhat awkward.

~~~
livatlantis
Ah, I see it now. I wasn't reading it the way the author intended. The Chinese
governments wants the OS. With the goal of replacing Windows.

Excellent explanation, thank you canjobear! (And jameshart).

~~~
saurik
That is still not how I read it. I think it is reasonable to say "Ogg Vorbis
is trying to replace MP3". I thereby feel it reasonable to say "I want Ogg
Vorbis to replace MP3". If we now want to refer to this thing, we can replace
"Ogg Vorbis" with "a file format". However, we care which file format among
many, so we qualify it as "the file format saurik wants to replace MP3". I
think the difference here is that I am quite happy using the name of these
software products as a way to refer to their projects, which I then am more
than happy to treat as actors capable of trying to accomplish abstract tasks.
"Uber wants to disrupt the taxi industry." "Uber wants to replace taxis."
"Random people on Hacker News want Uber to replace taxis." "A first look at
the new service random users on Hacker News want to replace taxis." (I also
think this is more what canjobear meant, as Y has become the subject. It isn't
that X wants Y with a goal of Z, it is that X wants Y to accomplish its goal
of Z.)

------
hiram112
In the long run, this is probably a benefit for Linux users. I always use Dell
Precision laptops, and they usually support Linux pretty well (you can buy
them with RHEL and even Ubuntu on some models).

Once sales and accounting begin to realize that using OEM devices poorly
supported on Linux (e.g. Broadcom) means Chinese customers won't buy the
hardware, they'll begin using more Linux friendly vendors such as Intel.

------
snowy
I wonder what spyware they have embedded in it?

A distro brought to you by the Chinese government. I would trust that as much
as a distro brought to you by the NSA.

~~~
cuckcuckspruce
>I would trust that as much as a distro brought to you by the NSA.

So do you run a version of the Linux kernel where SELinux[0] has been merged
into the mainline?

[0]
[http://selinuxproject.org/page/Main_Page](http://selinuxproject.org/page/Main_Page)

~~~
rndmind
SELinux is open source, is there any validity to a claim that SELinux performs
anything other than securing the local operating system?

~~~
cuckcuckspruce
There are no claims that SELinux does anything other than secure the system,
but if you're going to distrust things based solely on who sponsored them
(Chinese government for this Linux distribution) then it makes sense to ask if
this logic is applied consistently.

To make it crystal clear: I'm not saying SELinux is untrustworthy. I am just
asking the poster if they would trust SELinux knowing that it came from the
NSA. I ask the same question of people when they claim that Windows/OS X is
untrustworthy because the NSA may have made changes to spy on the user through
it.

~~~
rndmind
I understand what you are saying now.

------
AdmiralAsshat
So it's a Linux kernel and TTY prompt with what looks like some kind of X11
skin designed to resemble Windows XP.

Does anyone else think that actually sounds kind of awesome? I mean without
the crippling censorship and the high likelihood that everything you do is
being reported back to the Chinese government, of course. But otherwise, it
just seems to go one step beyond MATE/Mint (i.e. a "Windows-like" GUI with a
Linux backend) and make what essentially looks like a Windows frontend on top
of a Linux backend.

~~~
outworlder
> Does anyone else think that actually sounds kind of awesome?

Is it, really? I've seen themes for the gnome desktop that look prettier and
closer to Windows than that. So much so, that I've spent a couple of days
working alongside my colleagues until one of them noticed that something was
off.

To me, that looks like an amateurish throwback to the beginning of the
century. I was expecting some reporting on how they would have Wine pre-
installed and customized so that users could run Windows applications
effortlessly or something like that.

------
smaili
Why are two girls sitting in the middle of the street?

~~~
josteink
And with a Macbook too.

In an article about cheap laptops sold with a Windows look-a-like Linux-
distro.

It makes no sense what so ever, so I will have to assume this is a random
stock-photo chosen without too much consideration.

------
open-source-ux
I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is
obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China
Standard Software over the visual design.

I am against the idea that interface ideas (visual design and interaction
design) can be patented or copyrighted. However, I'm also against someone
slavishly copying someone else's design to the point that it's practically an
identical copy.

Or do folks consider this to be an acceptable practice? After all, someone can
take an open source project and make minor (or major) tweaks to the code and
re-release the software. Is such an approach considered acceptable in the case
of UI design? Or only if that design is attached to an open source project?

~~~
uremog
Likely a moot point. Even if MS did anything, China would say, "nah it's just
a coincidence" or, "doesn't look similar to me!"

------
eloisant
So what's the desktop environment?

Did they theme an existing one like Gnome or KDE or did they wrote one from
scratch?

~~~
zingmars
They skinned MATE -
[https://i.imgur.com/5J3f1Kf.png](https://i.imgur.com/5J3f1Kf.png)

~~~
dTal
The GNU gnu blended with nyan cat? What message are they trying to send?

------
mahouse

      uname -a | grep Linux
    

/golfclap

~~~
sleepychu
They were suspicious when a unix terminal (telltale sign you might have
accidentally installed linux) popped up so they did some forensics!

------
cyorir
The article mentions that NeoKylin may be based on a recent version of Fedora,
which has me confused. Isn't NeoKylin derived from Kylin, rather than Fedora?

~~~
nsonnad
Hello, I'm the author of this article. From what I can tell it appears that
both NeoKylin and Ubuntu Kylin (a collab between Chinese state actors and
Canonical) have simply adopted the Kylin name purely for its familiarity as
meaning "Chinese OS." The original Kylin was a government project based on
FreeBSD whereas NeoKylin:Fedora::UbuntuKylin:Ubuntu

~~~
scholia
"That’s pretty ironic, given how similar it feels to a product made by
Microsoft, long the enemy of open-source Linux evangelists."

You're a few years behind the times ;-)

~~~
sounds
I'm a Free Software evangelist.

Microsoft has been my enemy for a long time.

Please be specific: what has Microsoft ever done that has significantly
improved end users' ability to run Free Software?

~~~
scholia
First, almost all open source software runs on Microsoft Windows. As such, it
provides and curates the biggest market for open source PC software, and I'd
guess that Windows generates the majority of the money earned by the
developers of open source applications (ie not the OS).

You can see that in action at Steam, which is fuelled by Windows users (over
90% of the user base), and from which Linux gamers (less than 1%) derive huge
benefits.

Second, Microsoft created a compatible x86-based PC market, which created high
volume sales, which drove down prices. This is exactly the market on which and
for which Linux was originally developed. The people who run free software
have saved far more money through Microsoft-driven economies of scale than
they would ever have paid for Windows.

Third, Microsoft is a major contributor to open source, including the Linux
kernel, and it has a large number of projects on both Github and Codeplex.
Sure, it's self-interested, but it's no more self-interested than IBM, Google,
Red Hat, and dozens of other companies that make money from software.

Why do you think Microsoft is the enemy? (I'm old enough to remember when
Microsoft was a spunky young bunch of freedom fighters, pioneering desktop
Unix, among other things.)

~~~
beagle3
> Why do you think Microsoft is the enemy? (I'm old enough to remember when
> Microsoft was a spunky young bunch of freedom fighters, pioneering desktop
> Unix, among other things.)

I'm old enough to remember Microsoft was always an abusive back- stabbing
company, often abusing their position. Yes, Excel was the better product than
1-2-3, and Word was better than WordPerfect. That said ...

Windows 3, the killer MS app, refused to run on DR-DOS.

Their contract with SpyGlass said SpyGlass would get a share of the profits of
selling IE - which MS gave for free. Though IE3 was acceptable, that was not
enough to win the hearts and minds, so they kludged IE4 into the operating
system, thus leveraging their OS monopoly to gain browser monopoly - which
they cemented by having e.g. Word and FrontPage emit IE-specific markup.

Microsoft was continually spreading FUD, making vague threats about viral
licenses, various ip issues and other problems with free software. They still
make more revenue off Android patent threat agreements than they make on
Windows phones.

They stacked the ISO vote for OOXML, which took a couple of years to clear in
some countries (beyond the specific OOXML damage done, in some countries the
new members that voted only on this issue ground work to a halt because of
quorum requirements).

Not to mention all of the "protected path" issues, which are actively working
against users.

While only the last three items have anything to do with free software,
Microsoft is a bully, and has been one for 30 years. "Freedom fighters" is not
a title I would associate with Microsoft at any point in time. They have been
behaving better recently, but only because Google and Apple managed to beat
them into submission. I don't think the company culture actually changed. Two
years of behaving is not enough to be convincing, after ~30 years of bullying.

~~~
scholia
Microsoft's record of back-stabbing is rather small and trivial compared to
some other companies, such as IBM and Oracle, and is a long way in the past.
The company has been under government attack since 1995 (when it signed Janet
Reno's consent decree) and was under very close day-to-day judicial
supervision for a decade after losing its anti-trust case (it paid many
billions for its sins).

So, for the past 15 years or so, Microsoft's behavior has been far better than
average for the software industry. For the past five years, it has been listed
as one of the world's "most ethical" corporations.

Pretty much all the people who did bad things departed in a previous century,
and the company culture is radically different today.

~~~
beagle3
> So, for the past 15 years or so, Microsoft's behavior has been far better
> than average for the software industry.

OOXML happened in 2006. Android racket is still going on. Proxy fight against
linux through SCO (yes, MS financed it) went through 2010.

Microsoft can only be considered ethical in comparison to Oracle. But then,
anything is ethical compared to Oracle.

~~~
scholia
Ah, I didn't realize "ethical" just meant things you don't like.

> OOXML happened in 2006.

Standard technique re committees, and Microsoft isn't the first to use it.
However, on balance, it was a good thing to do. Frankly, I don't see how any
sensible person can object to the opening up and standardization of ubiquitous
file formats (and again, that's a common industry move). It's good for users.

> Android racket is still going on.

Microsoft was one of the pioneers of desktop computing and desktop Unix, so I
can believe it has some IP (though I don't know what it is).

Monetizing your IP is a standard American practice, in which IBM has long been
a world leader. I wouldn't expect the US DoJ to disapprove of it. Indeed, it
appears the whole US legal, economic and political systems encourage it.

> Proxy fight against linux through SCO (yes, MS financed it) went through
> 2010.

Which Microsoft didn't finance.

~~~
beagle3
> Ah, I didn't realize "ethical" just meant things you don't like.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are unaware of what was going
on. I've attached references so that you can educate yourself. If you think
they are wrong, please have the courtesy to provide references that counter
these.

> However, on balance, it was a good thing to do.

What exactly was a good thing to do? Stacking ISO committees with inactive
members[0], that took years to clear so the committees went back to function?
(No, that's not standard practice). Or was the good thing ignoring requests to
join the OASIS ODF standardization process? Or was it the actual OOXML
"standard" itself, which is so convoluted that at the time it was published,
no software (Including Microsoft Office) supported it, and in general, no
software CAN really support it because it has settings like[1] "auto space
like word 95", which is not specified anywhere except in the Word 95 source
code? It's not a standard, it's a joke, and it's a mockery any community
process. And I've been on committees before - politics is rampant, but what
Microsoft did is not.

> Microsoft was one of the pioneers of desktop computing and desktop Unix, so
> I can believe it has some IP (though I don't know what it is).

You were saying microsoft has changed and has been better than most companies
for the last few years. I would say this contradicts your position. It is no
worse than IBM or Oracle, but that doesn't make Microsoft ethical.

> Which Microsoft didn't finance.

"The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually
all of SCO’s financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital.”[2]

[0]
[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080825162905...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080825162905645)
and [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/08/30/AR2007083000723.html)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=OOXML+%22auto+space+like+wor...](https://www.google.com/search?q=OOXML+%22auto+space+like+word+95%22)

[2] [http://techrights.org/2010/05/25/microsoft-sco-and-then-
acac...](http://techrights.org/2010/05/25/microsoft-sco-and-then-acacia/)

~~~
scholia
Anybody who seriously references anything from techrights is so deluded as to
be beyond argument. Sorry.

~~~
beagle3
What can I say, you have the winning argument. It also totally trumps groklaw
and hundreds of independent google results.

------
mtgx
India has one too:

[http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/indian-government-is-
la...](http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/indian-government-is-launching-
its-own-operating-system-boss-to-replace-microsoft-windows-245255.html)

~~~
FilterSweep
This might be a long shot, but I wonder if the now-well-known Telemetry of
Windows 7,8, and 10 created an incentive for foreign governments to avoid
using Windows OS

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Are they moving off home-grown Lenovo hardware because of superfish and other
spyware? Governments disable all this stuff anyway.

------
mkesper
The user interfaces for these are also very similar to those of Microsoft
Office, and they work pretty well. One reason might be that, as one Chinese
blogger analyzing NeoKylin (link in Chinese) found, NeoShine appears to be
based on code originally in OpenOffice, a now-defunct open-source productivity
suite.

Why didn't they use LibreOffice?

~~~
cwyers
LibreOffice was released in 2011, and this is apparently version 6.0 of
NeoKylin, maybe they forked OpenOffice before the LibreOffice fork and haven't
had the time/resources to switch.

------
pmelendez
They weren't joking when they said it would be a WinXP replacement. The look
and feel is almost identical.

------
stinos
I cannot tell from the article but I wonder if this OS is completely open
source? If not it seems a bit pointless to replace one with another one, which
might have security problems just as well? Or is it just done to not have to
pay a foreign company for an OS?

------
kazinator
> _The Kylin name—an odd English rendition of qilin—comes from .._

... comes from the obvious unacceptability, to the Chinese, that this word is
already known to English speakers as "kirin", by way of the via the Japanese
language.

------
clw8
The most laughable part is that you can't install Chrome or any other software
created by companies that the government doesn't like.

------
issaria
I still prefer the Red Star linux.

