The independent Linux distribution openKylin 1.0 has been released. The project is developed by the China Electronics Corporation with the participation of more than 270 various Chinese organizations, educational institutions, research centers, software and hardware manufacturers. Development is conducted under open licenses (mainly GPLv3) in repositories hosted on gitee.com. The finalized installation packages of openKylin 1.0 are available for X86_64 (4.2 GB), ARM, and RISC-V architectures, in editions for PCs/laptops, tablets, and boards. The ARM packages support boards such as Raspberry Pi, Cool Pi, and Chillie Pi, while the RISC-V package supports boards like VisonFive2, HiFive, SG2042 EVB, Lichepi4a, and Lotus2.
The distribution utilizes the UKUI (Ultimate Kylin User Interface) as its user environment, following a classic desktop organization model for PCs and providing an optional mode for tablets, controlled via touchscreen and supporting an on-screen keyboard. Initially, the user interface was based on a fork of the MATE desktop but was subsequently almost entirely redesigned and transitioned to components written in C++ using the Qt library, with elements partially borrowed from KDE or created from scratch.
The main panel is a fork of the panel from the LXQt project, while the sidebar and menu were created independently. For window management, a window manager branched from KWin is used, supporting operation with both X11 and Wayland (which can be selected on the login screen). The application center and configurator from KDE are also utilized. For audio management, the multimedia 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 also includes built-in tools for integration with Android-based mobile devices, facilitating interaction between system devices and Android devices, providing screen access, file synchronization, and searching. A special environment, KMRE, is provided for running mobile applications written for Android. Windows applications are executed using Wine.
openKylin 1.0 is announced as a distribution that supports its own package base, independent of other distributions. Packages are hosted in repositories similar to those of Debian and Ubuntu (it was previously claimed that openKylin is continuing the development of Ubuntu Kylin). The distribution comes with its own installer and includes the Linux kernel 6.1. Firefox is utilized as the browser, and WPS Office is used as the office suite. A custom multimedia player is offered for listening to music and watching videos. The distribution meets security requirements for communication, transport, and energy enterprises, as well as for government and financial institutions in China.
Source: opennet.ru
