The release of the JingOS 0.9 distribution kit has been published, providing an environment specially optimized for installation on tablet PCs and laptops with a touch screen. The project is being developed by the Chinese company Jingling Tech, which has a representative office in California. The development team includes people who previously worked at Lenovo, Alibaba, Samsung, Canonical/Ubuntu, and Trolltech. The installation image size is 3 GB (x86_64). The developments of the project are distributed under the GPLv3 license.
The distribution is based on the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, and the user environment is based on KDE Plasma Mobile 5.20. The plans include the transition to its own shell JDE (Jing Desktop Environment). To create the application interface, Qt, a set of Mauikit components and the Kirigami framework from the KDE Frameworks are used, allowing you to create universal interfaces that automatically scale to different screen sizes. On-screen gestures are actively used for control on touch screens and touchpads, such as zooming by pinching and changing pages by shifting. Supports the use of multi-touch gestures.
For JingOS tests, the developers use Surface pro6 and Huawei Matebook 14 tablets, but in theory the distribution can run on any tablets supported in Ubuntu 20.04. OTA updates are supported to keep the software up to date. To install programs, in addition to the regular Ubuntu repositories and the Snap catalog, a separate application store is offered.
Components developed for JingOS:
- JingCore-WindowManger, a compositing manager based on KDE Kwin enhanced with support for on-screen gesture control and tablet-specific features.
- JingCore-CommonComponents is a KDE Kirigami-based application development framework that includes additional components for JingOS.
- JingSystemui-Launcher is a basic interface based on the plasma-phone-components package. Includes the implementation of the home screen, dock-panel, notification system and configurator.
- JingApps-Photos is a photo collection software based on the Koko app.
- JingApps-Kalk is a calculator.
- Jing-Haruna is a video player based on Qt/QML and libmpv.
- JingApps-KRecorder is a sound recording software (voice recorder).
- JingApps-KClock is a clock with timer and alarm functions.
- JingApps-Media-Player is a media player based on vvave.
The new release is notable for continued optimizations for touch screens, tools for working in several languages ββ(including via a virtual keyboard), automatic adaptation of the interface layout depending on the screen settings, adding additional settings (desktop wallpaper, VPN, time zone, Bluetooth, mouse , keyboard, etc.), new visual effects and integration into the file manager of features for working with compressed data.
For the ARM platform, an extended environment is being developed that allows, in addition to stationary desktop applications such as LibreOffice, to run applications created for the Android platform. A hybrid environment is proposed, where Ubuntu and Android programs run side by side. The formation of assemblies for ARM and support for Android applications is promised to be implemented in the release of JingOS 1.0, scheduled for June 30th.
In parallel, the project is developing its own JingPad tablet, shipped with JingOS and using ARM architecture (UNISOC Tiger T7510, 4x Cortex-A75 2Ghz + 4x Cortex-A55 1.8Ghz). JingPad is equipped with an 11-inch touch screen (Corning Gorilla Glass, AMOLED 266PPI, 350nit brightness, 2368Γ1728 resolution), 8000 mAh battery, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB Flash, 16- and 8-megapixel cameras, two noise-cancelling microphones, 2.4G/5G WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/Glonass/Galileo/Beidou, USB Type-C, MicroSD and an attachable keyboard that turns a tablet into a laptop. It is noted that JingPad will be the first Linux-tablet supplied with a stylus that supports 4096 levels of sensitivity (LP). Pre-orders are scheduled to begin shipping on August 31st and mass sales will begin on September 27th.
Source: opennet.ru