The release of the Linux distribution openKylin 3.0 has been announced, developed by the China Electronic Corporation with the participation of hundreds of various Chinese organizations, educational institutions, research centers, and software and hardware manufacturers. The distribution develops its own package base independent of other distributions. Development is conducted under open licenses (primarily GPLv3) in repositories hosted on gitee.com. The ready installation builds are prepared for the X86_64 (8 GB), ARM64 (6.7 GB), Loong64 (4.3 GB), and RISC-V (5 GB) architectures, available for both server and desktop systems.
The distribution features a custom shell called UKUI (Ultimate Kylin User Interface), which adheres to the classic desktop organization model for PCs and provides an optional mode for tablets, controlled via a touchscreen and supporting an on-screen keyboard. Initially, the user shell was based on a fork of the MATE desktop, but it has since been almost entirely redesigned and ported to components written in C++ using the Qt library, with some parts borrowed from KDE or created from scratch.
For the main panel, a fork from the LXQt project is used, while the sidebar and menu are developed in-house. The application management center and configurator are based on components from KDE. Multimedia functionalities are utilized for sound management. server PipeWire is employed. Peony is proposed as the file manager, rewritten in Qt from the Caja/Nautilus fork of MATE.
One of the distinctive features of openKylin is the process lifecycle management mechanism called 'Graded Freeze', which allows unused applications to be frozen without terminating their operation, thereby reclaiming resources allocated to the processes back to the system. Graded Freeze also enables the assignment of different execution priorities and resource consumption to various classes of applications.
The distribution includes built-in tools for integration with mobile devices running the Android platform, facilitating interaction between system devices and Android devices, providing screen access, file synchronization, and searching. A special environment called KMRE is provided to run mobile applications written for Android. Windows applications can be executed using Wine.
Changes in version openKylin 3.0:
- The integration of the AI agent KylinBot has been provided, allowing AI to be utilized across all parts of the system. The AI toolkit Kylin-CUA has been added for automating actions on the desktop. Using the MCP protocol, the AI agent can interact with system utilities, perform tasks on the desktop, and manage the system, display, network, and peripheral devices. Support for connecting alternative AI agents such as WorkBuddy, OpenClaw, and Raccoon Work is available. An AI SDK is proposed for developing custom AI extensions and engaging alternative large language models.
- Support for the Air Gestures mechanism has been implemented, allowing system control using hand gestures in front of the camera (for example, a wave of the hand up and down for scrolling or clenching a fist for taking a screenshot).
- The desktop has been upgraded to version UKUI 4.24. A new composite manager WLCOM is in use, which utilizes Wayland.
- The taskbar has been divided into three independent visual zones for pinned/running application icons, widgets, and the system tray.
- Support for voice input and a screen reader has been added.
- Dynamic desktop wallpapers have been implemented.
- The file manager has expanded content preview capabilities and batch operation functionalities for groups of files.
- Support for post-quantum encryption algorithms ML-KEM-768, ML-DSA-2, and SLH-DSA-128s has been integrated. The openHiTLS cryptographic library, developed by Chinese organizations, has been utilized.
- Alternatives to the wget and time utilities, rewritten in Rust, are included.
- Support for 18 languages, including Russian, has been added.
- Updated versions of software components include Linux kernel 7.0, GCC 15, glibc 2.42, LLVM 22, JDK 25, glibc 2.42, Python 3.14, Mesa 26, Wayland 1.24, Qt 6.8, GTK 4.22, OpenSSL 3.5, NetworkManager 1.54, PipeWire 1.6, FFmpeg 8.
Source: opennet.ru
