Chinese State media uses new release of local Linux to troll Trump

‘Washington's endeavors to suppress Chinese progress may not be as successful as anticipated’ says China Daily

China’s national cut of Linux – KylinOS - has emerged in a major new release and one of its important new functions is a symbol of the nation’s ability to get ahead despite US trade bans.

“Galaxy Kylin Advanced Server Operating System V10” emerged last week with support for locally-designed chips using the MIPS, SPARCv9 and Arm architectures. The OS also supports x86 CPUs flowing from the AMD’s joint venture in China and others derived from Via’s abandoned tilt at the x86 market.

KylinOS developer Kylinsoft, a part of the state-owned China Electronics Corporation, said the new release is ideal for Kubernetes, Docker and LXC virtualisation. Open-source projects like OpenStack Ceph and GlusterFS are all supported too.

Trusted platform modules are enabled and the OS is recommended for “Cloud environment … government, national defense, finance, education, finance and taxation, public security, auditing, transportation, medical treatment, manufacturing and other fields.”

In other words, a solid cut of Linux that should scale well and can run the stuff needed to get modern computing done.

There’s also a desktop cut of the OS that supports Android apps and has somewhat curiously been trumpeted as compatible with Panasonic printers. Take that, Windows!

Which brings us to State-run organ China Daily and the English-language Editorial about the new release it offered up this week.

After opening with an observation that Huawei’s in trouble outside China thanks to US actions, readers are told that “Kylin V10 operating system no doubt adds to popular confidence that Washington's whole-of-government, worldwide endeavors to suppress Chinese technological progress may not be as successful as anticipated.”

The Editorial singles out the operating system’s ability to bring Android to locally-made kit and says if it works well “it is indeed a major step forward for the domestic information technology sector, which is under tremendous pressure as the White House seeks to throttle Chinese high-tech development in the name of national security.”

The Editorial goes on to say that the fact Kylin powers China’s Yinhe and Tianhe supercomputers, and is present in its space program, “suggests these are the real deal.”

But it also acknowledges that the OS has not led the world.

“However, the fact that the genesis of Kylin dates back to the turn of the century and has taken even longer in terms of research and development by multiple participants under a key tech-breakthrough initiative in itself illustrates the need to focus on indigenous innovation over the long term,” the editorial says. “That there is still an undeniable gap between many domestic and international technologies means these indigenous alternatives are essentially substitutes, and there remains much to do to make them appealing as mainstream international competitors.” ®