China is standardising on Ubuntu for the country's open source operating system.
Government agency, the China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Centre (CSIP) has selected Canonical’s Ubuntu for a reference architecture to be the basis of a standardised operating system.
The Chinese government has a five year plan to promote open source software and accelerate the growth of the open source ecosystem within China.
CSIP, Canonical and the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) have formed the CCN Open Source Innovation Joint Lab in Beijing.
The Joint Lab hosts engineers from each organisation who will accelerate the development of a China-focused version of Ubuntu for desktop and cloud.
"CSIP, Canonical and NUDT share the goal of widespread adoption of high quality Linux on personal devices and in the cloud," said Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical.
The initial work will focus on the development of an enhanced version of the Ubuntu desktop with features specific to the Chinese market.
The new version is called Ubuntu Kylin and the first version will be released in April 2013 in conjunction with Ubuntu’s global release schedule. Future work will extend beyond the desktop to other platforms.
