China renewed efforts to develop a homegrown operating system (OS) that could be an alternative to Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s macOS.
The South China Morning Post reports that the Chinese government is leading these efforts through Kylinsoft, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Electronics Corporation.
In pushing these efforts, the first task for Kylinsoft aims to set up an open-source community called openKlyin to encourage more programmers to contribute.
It would be an uphill task to replace the existing and most dominant operating systems, but China is putting in the effort. Windows is the most dominant OS in the country taking up about 85 per cent of the market share. macOS takes about six per cent and Linux distributors have also set up shop with several distributions around.
Some researchers have painted a sceptical market outlook for a Chinese OS. A veteran analyst in China’s capital Beijing said that there are several challenges to surmount, noting that “ Replacing mature operating systems that have been in development for decades is a monumental task, and Chinese tech companies are known for copying the homework of their Western counterparts.”
Kylin at one point was found to have plagiarized 99 % of its code, an affair that damaged its reputation. This notwithstanding, China is unlikely to halt its efforts to build a formidable homegrown OS.
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