Over the last few months we’ve seen significant traction with Ubuntu Kylin among users and PC hardware manufacturers. Downloads from the Ubuntu Kylin community sites in China are continuing to gain momentum, with over three million people downloading Ubuntu Kylin in the first 12 months. The initial adoption of Ubuntu Kylin 14.04 LTS, launched in April, has been phenomenal, with over one million additional new downloads.

The teams have been working hard developing fully tested and certified pre-installed images of Ubuntu Kylin for our PC hardware partners and are looking forward to working with them to bring a range of devices to the China market in the near future.

On that note, I’m pleased to announce that our first Ubuntu Kylin OEM partner is HP and we’re working closely together on some great products. HP brings a wealth of experience and support for open source on the desktop, having already shipped millions of HP systems preloaded with Ubuntu worldwide. We are excited by this partnership and look forward to seeing devices available for HP customers in the near future.

Typical of the growing user base in China is the Zhengzhou Commercial & Trade Technician College. Professor Zhang, HongZhi from the college has directed the deployment of over 120 Ubuntu Kylin computers in training classrooms across the campus. Professor Zhang attributes the college’s use of Ubuntu Kylin to the significantly improved usability and localisation elements, a result of the regional design and development efforts carried out specifically for Chinese users.

Ubuntu Kylin a Chinese-specific operating system locally developed by the China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Centre (CSIP), National University of Defense Technology (NUDT ) and Canonical. Ubuntu Kylin provides a flexible, open, and fully native Chinese option for users. The latest release, Ubuntu Kylin 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS), is supported and maintained for five years, making it the most stable, reliable and cost effective desktop OS for consumers as well as large scale enterprise and government deployments, specifically for those switching from Windows XP.