China is still hard at work developing domestic operating systems to cut dependence on Windows and MacOS from the US

China's search for a domestic operating system has been going on for decades, but Microsoft Windows is still dominating.

China has created an open platform to accelerate the development of its domestic desktop operating system, in the latest effort to eliminate the country's reliance on foreign systems such as Windows. Microsoft and Apple's MacOS.

Kylinsoft, a subsidiary of China State Electronics Corporation, last week partnered with more than 10 major entities including the National Industrial Information Security Research and Development Center, to form a community. open source coin.

Dubbed “openKylin”, this open community will allow programmers to publish and share computer code related to the Kylin operating system.

The move comes amid rising tensions between the United States and China. China has been trying to promote local self-manufacturing of key technologies, from semiconductors to software.

Screenshot of one of Kylinsoft's desktop operating systems. Photo: Handout

The search for a Chinese domestic operating system has been going on for decades, with several candidates already on the market. Kylin was originally developed by the People's Liberation Army's National University of Defense Technology, which has licensed Kylinsoft for commercial applications since 2014.

However, those efforts have yet to lead to any significant results, as no Chinese homegrown system can match Microsoft Windows, the US company is leading the market with 85%. market share in mainland China.

Globally, Windows remains the dominant desktop operating system with a market share of around 74% as of December last year. Apple's macOS operating system, which has become more widely used over the years based on the popularity of the iMac and MacBook, has only about 15% of the market share.

Other Linux-based operating systems, including most of China's homegrown systems, still retain a fairly small market share. Early versions of Kylin used the same source code as the Unix operating system FreeBSD, while later versions were based on Linux, according to a report by research and consulting firm EqualOcean.

China's search for a competitive domestic operating system has been going on for decades, but has not yielded satisfactory results.

As part of China's efforts to reduce its reliance on Western technologies, the country runs its own open-source Gitee platform against Microsoft's more famous global version of GitHub.

China's state broadcaster CCTV said on June 30 that openKylin will help accelerate the development of Chinese operating systems.

Kylinsoft currently has three operating systems offered in the market, V10, V4, and NeoKylin V7.0. Among them, V10 has been configured to be compatible with the widest range of central processing units (CPUs), including products from Huawei's HiSilicon, Loongson, Sunway, Hygon and FeiTeng.