After the incidents of ZTE and Huawei, people in the scientific and technological circles have generally made it clear that they must prepare for the worst and prepare for the worst. This principle applies to both hardware and software fields. In fact, even America's allies, South Korea and Germany, have actually felt the threat of the United States wantonly using monopoly technology to obtain economic benefits. A few days ago, South Korea and Germany indicated that they were ready to give up Windows, which monopolized the global PC operating system market.
If the battle involving PC operating system hits China, will there be a spare tire "operating system" in China?
Ni Guangnan: The self-developed (PC) operating system is iterating to an advanced level, and the short board is ecology.
Although the domestic PC-side operating system market is almost monopolized by windows, many operating systems with Linux as the kernel have been independently developed in China. For example, Red Flag Linux was sealed as an industry benchmark 20 years ago; Constantly improve and iterate the "unified information UOS" system; Huawei's Euler system; New fulcrum system developed by ZTE.
Ni Guangnan, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, said in an interview with Beijing Science and Technology News | Science Plus Client: "Using a domestic PC operating system based on Linux is not a technological retrogression, because the operating system independently developed is iterating to a more advanced level. At present, the self-developed operating system is not inferior to Windows in terms of interactive experience, interface design, security and stability. However, ecology is a short board, and the establishment of ecology is a long process, involving the strategic layout of upstream and downstream manufacturers, R&D investment and many other issues. At present, most domestic eco-partners and some foreign partners have seen the future trend of self-developed operating systems and started to actively connect and adapt. These are all very good phenomena, and ecology is actually established in this way. "
△ Academician Ni Guangnan
Academician Ni Guangnan said that he has been paying attention to the domestic concentric UOS system for a long time. Concentric UOS operating system can be said to represent the highest level of domestic PC-side self-developed operating system, from bottom compatibility to interactive interface to application ecology. There has been a great improvement. "I hope that more excellent software and hardware enterprises and talents will focus on the self-developed operating system ecology and accelerate the construction of a safe and credible information technology system." Academician Ni Guangnan said.
△ Operating interface of concentric UOS operating system
Zhang Lei, chief R&D director of Tongxin UOS system, said in an interview that the PC-side operating system of Tongxin Software can be iterated continuously because of its good compatibility and stability, and dozens of upstream and downstream partners who have cooperated for more than ten years. But this scale is still too small to compare with the ecological scale of Windows.
At present, the problems faced by domestic PC-side operating system manufacturers are: small enterprise scale, tight capital, scattered technical force, lack of talents, and various domestic CPU systems (domestic CPU Godson, Tengfei, Guang Hai and Kunpeng each use different architectures, some use X86 architecture, some use MIPS architecture, and some use ARM architecture), which increases the research and development difficulty for operating system manufacturers and hinders them. The long-standing existence of the above problems has led to the rejection and low recognition of the general consumer market.
Different subjects of ecological construction have different pain points.
Generally speaking, personal computer users have three requirements for computer operating ecology: first, basic office needs, such as compatibility and adaptation of domestic WPS. The second is the daily use and entertainment needs, such as whether it is compatible with WeChat, QQ and audio-visual software. Third, special customization needs, such as antivirus, maps and other software.
Through cooperation with eco-partners, manufacturers of self-developed operating systems have solved the problem of ease of use, that is, meeting basic office needs. The ecological requirements of daily use, entertainment and special customization is related to whether the super hardware and software manufacturers are willing to join the self-developed operating system ecosystem with low market share. Therefore, the status quo of the self-developed operating system seems to be in an infinite loop: to meet the needs of users, it must be ecological; Without ecology, users' needs cannot be met; If users' needs are not met, there will be no market share; Without market share, there will be no super factories to join; Without the participation of super factories, there would be no ecology.
△ Ecological scale of concentric UOS operating system at present
Some experts in the industry pointed out that self-developed operating system enterprises or state-owned scientific research institutions have never stopped developing operating systems for the needs of national defense and information security, but such institutions only aim at specific applications and specific customer needs, and many of them are "top projects", that is, after solving a customer's problem, the task is over.
As a result, the persistence of technology research and development is not strong, and more energy is spent on solving the specific problems of specific customers, rather than on the gradual upgrade, improvement and iteration of the operating system. These institutions lack overall, systematic and structural planning and deployment in the work of self-developed operating systems. Although it also costs engineers a lot of energy and time, which promotes the development of self-developed operating system more or less, it may waste a lot of resources, time and manpower in the long run.
Professional operating system research and development companies pay more attention to the integrity, systematicness and structure of products, as well as the establishment of training system and the layout of after-sales service team. Because only in this way can we ensure the continuity of products and the sustainability of development.
This kind of professional operating system companies are represented by Huawei, Tongxin Software and Shenji. They start research and development from the bottom of the system, pay attention to the demand pain points of industry users and ordinary users, formulate more standardized and sustainable standards through system research and development, and attach importance to laying the foundation for the rapid development of products through software copyright and patents.
Comparatively speaking, the insiders believe that professional operating system companies do better in operating systems, and such companies have a strong desire to open the general consumer market. However, this kind of science and technology enterprises are facing many problems, such as complex domestic CPU system, small scale, shortage of funds, lack of talents, fragmentation and so on.
An industry expert who asked not to be named told the reporter, "Self-developed operating system manufacturers represented by Tongxin Software must gnaw down three hard bones if they want to further develop the ecology. First of all, the operating system should support compatibility with different hardware platforms, such as different domestic CPUs using different architectures, so the self-developed operating system must be compatible with domestic CPUs with different architectures. Second, promote the migration and adaptation of major software vendors. Users use the software directly, and the compatibility, adaptability and richness of the software are very important for the market to embrace the domestic PC operating system with open arms. Third, eliminate the prejudice of end users. Existing market users may have reservations about domestic related products and services. To eliminate users' prejudice, we must impress users with good sales concepts, good products and good services, so as to gradually enrich and improve the ecology. " He predicted that "under the guidance of national policies, the prospect of creating a set of localized ecology through active coordination and linkage of all parties is bright."
Future path: enter the general consumer market and expand the contribution of code.
At present, the personal computer operating system market is still dominated by Microsoft, and it is difficult for the self-developed operating system to regain the market from Microsoft. But in the server field, the self-developed operating system can still occupy a place. At the same time, Linux performs very well in special equipment, industrial control and other scenarios. Then there is the field of self-developed operating systems for personal computers in the party, government, military, enterprises and institutions. It is extremely important to make the self-developed operating system bigger and stronger.
Zhang Lei of Tongxin Software reminded that although Linux is not controlled by a certain country or company, software companies and programmers all over the world can participate, but whoever has strong technical strength and more code contributions will have a greater right to speak. Zhang Lei said that many core kernel modules, such as scheduling and memory management, are maintained by foreign developers. If China wants to have the right to speak on core technologies, it must cultivate more talents and contribute codes, and join and participate in the maintenance queue.
Linux kernel adopts the roles of contributor and maintainer. The maintainer of the module can decide which patches or source codes of contributors can be included in the open source software, so different people have different voices in the open source software. People with strong technical strength and great code contribution will have greater right to speak.
In the field of Linux kernel, China enterprises represented by Huawei have made rapid progress. Huawei has rapidly grown into one of the top ten contributors to the Linux kernel in five years. Moreover, the Linux ecosystem has an additional advantage, that is, its widely used open source software protocol (GPL) can ensure the continuous open source of the source code and ensure the consistency and openness of the whole system.
At present, the overall contribution of China manufacturers is not high, but due to the openness of Linux ecosystem, domestic manufacturers can continue to study and improve on it and gradually become one of its main contributors. This goal is expected to be realized within five years. In addition, the ecology of general operating system is very rich, and domestic manufacturers can achieve multi-level (one explanation of multi-level is kernel layer, system service layer, human-computer interaction layer, application layer and so on. ; Another explanation is operational efficiency, functional completeness, reliability, user experience and so on. Interface replacement and standardization of operating system.
Moreover, with Huawei, Tongxin and other domestic manufacturers gradually familiar with and master the Linux kernel, it also laid a technical foundation for the self-research of similar software in China. On the basis of the participation and operation of Linux open source community, the openness, consistency and activity of ecology are ensured through open source license and community operation, and finally the ecological foundation is established and the ecology is prosperous.
The evaluation reports issued by many software evaluation agencies show that the self-developed PC operating system can "top the bar". In order to break the monopoly of Microsoft, it is necessary to remove the accumulated habits and institutional obstacles that hinder the rapid development of the self-developed operating system, speed up the training of talents, and attach importance to the ecological construction and improvement of the self-developed operating system.
An expert who asked not to be named said that their ideal is to gradually or even completely replace Windows by using the independently controllable Linux operating system and ecology, and finally develop and popularize a domestic PC operating system with completely independent intellectual property rights, which is different from Windows and Linux.
Editor Liu Zhao
New Media Editor Chen Zhenyu