Kylin (operating system)

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. By 2019 NeoKylin variant is compatible with more than 4,000 software and hardware products and it ships pre-installed on most computers sold in China. Together, Kylin and Neokylin have 90% market share of the government sector. A separate project using Ubuntu as the base Linux operating system was announced in 2013. The first version of Ubuntu Kylin was released in April 2013. In August 2020, v10 of Kylin OS was launched. It is compatible with 10,000 hardware and software products and it "supports Google's Android ecosystem". In July 2022, an open-source version of Kylin, titled openKylin was released. 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" (a website sponsored by PLA Daily of the Chinese People's Liberation Army) reported the "successful development of the Kylin server operating system", which it said was "the first 64-bit operating system with high security level (B2 class)" and "also the first operating system without Linux kernel that has obtained Linux global standard authentification by the international Free Standards Group".