14 DAY TRIAL // The Chinese market is adjusting itself after Windows XP reached end of life, but it's not all that keen to get hooked on another Windows OS, so it's looking for alternatives. The Ubuntu Kylin OS is having a real impact, and Dell is just one of the mediums used to propagate this operating system.
Windows is still a powerful player in China, but it's not the same situation that we had a decade ago. The ecosystem is much more varied, and we find that there are a number of very successful Linux distributions present. Ubuntu Kylin is just one of them, but it's the one officially supported by the Chinese authorities, and that support carries a lot of weight.
As you can imagine, the private sector wants a piece of this huge pie, and Dell is one of the companies that figured out how they can get a foot in the door, and that is by providing PCs and laptops that ship with Ubuntu Kylin instead of Windows.
Dell is really feeling the Linux love
Dell has been shipping computers powered by Ubuntu for a while now, and the company is making sure that people know about this. They can't just ship a regular Ubuntu OS in China, but luckily, there is a dedicated Ubuntu Kylin present in this country since 2013.
Now, according to a report from South China Morning Post, 40% of all Dell computers sold in China are now powered by Ubuntu Kylin, and that is a huge number. It might not be impressive in the Western world, but China is a huge country, and 40% is a lot.
Ubuntu Kylin is part of the regular Ubuntu family, and it's following the same release schedule. Every six months a new version is offered, and the latest one is Ubuntu Kylin 15.04. The upcoming 15.10 version is expected to land in October.