openKylin is the new Chinese open source Linux distribution
Several days ago the launch of openKylin 1.0 which is classified as an independent distribution of Linux.
The openKylin project is being developed by China Electronic Corporation with the participation of more than 270 different Chinese organizations, educational institutions, research centers, software and hardware manufacturers.
About openKylin
OpenKylin has a user environment that uses the UKUI shell (Ultimate Kylin User Interface), which adheres to the classic PC desktop organization model and provides an optional tablet mode, controlled from the touch screen and compatible with the on-screen keyboard.
Initially, the user interface was founded as a fork of the MATE desktop, but was subsequently almost completely redesigned and translated into components written in C++ using the Qt library, but partially borrowed from KDE or built from scratch.
Moreover, a fork of the LXQt project panel is used it is used as the main panel, but the sidebar and menu are built internally, while window management uses a forked window manager from KWin that supports X11 and Wayland (selectable on the login screen).
KDE is also involved in the application control center and configurator, along with the PipeWire media server used to control sound, plus Peony offers itself as a file manager, a fork of Caja/Nautilus rewritten in Qt from MATE.
Of the specific characteristics of openKylin, highlights the process life cycle management mechanism “Graded Freeze”, which allows you to freeze unused applications without shutting them down, but returning the resources allocated to the processes to the system. Graded Freeze also makes it possible for different classes of applications to have different execution priorities and resource consumption.
The distribution also has built-in tools for integration with mobile devices which run the Android platform, organizing the interaction between system devices and Android devices, sharing the screen, synchronizing files and searching. To run mobile applications written for Android, a special KMRE environment is provided. Launching of Windows applications is provided using Wine.
openKylin 1.0
openKylin 1.0, is advertised as a distribution that supports its own package base, independent of other distributions. Packages are hosted in repositories in a format reminiscent of Debian and Ubuntu, since the base of the distro package is forked from Ubuntu, for example, Ubuntu references remain in many configuration files, the package with GCC 9.3 repeats the Ubuntu 20.04 package, there are Ubuntu Kylin 22.04 specific features to display information about the UKUI shell
The distribution comes with its own installer and includes the Linux 6.1 kernel. Firefox is used as a browser and WPS Office is used as an office suite. To listen to music and watch videos, its own media player is offered.
openKylin features a Windows-like application launcher that feels very intuitive to use; it has all the essential apps and tools in the right place. You can also set your favorite apps to stay pinned on the right side.
Regarding the system packages, we can mention that it has some quite interesting ones (besides the base of pre-installed packages), since it has diagnostic tools, biometric support, an independent graphic package installer and an included IDE, Kylin Code. , a forked version of VSCode from Microsoft.
As such, the distribution meets the security requirements of communications, transportation and energy companies, as well as Chinese government and financial institutions.
Finally, If you are interested in being able to learn more about the respecto You should know that the development is done under open licenses (mainly GPLv3) in repositories hosted at gitee.com. You can check the details in the following link
Download and get openKylin 1.0
For those interested in being able to get an image of the distribution, you should know that ready-to-install builds of openKylin 1.0 are generated for X86_64, ARM and RISC-V architectures in editions for PC/laptops, tablets and boards.
Regarding the ARM edition, we can mention that it is offered for the most commercial boards, such as Raspberry Pi, Cool Pi and Chillie Pi.
You can get the installation images from the following link.