Throughout the entire software ecosystem, the operating system plays a crucial role as the bridge between hardware and software. After decades of continuous iteration and evolution, the overall development of operating systems is steady. From a technical perspective, while there haven‘t been any groundbreaking achievements in recent years, many experts interviewed by InfoQ have indicated that significant changes are brewing. Currently, as the global digital economy continues to advance, enterprise digital transformation deepens, and Moore‘s Law becomes less relevant, new challenges are emerging for both hardware and software. These factors serve as important drivers for the transformation of operating systems.Looking back at the year 2022, subtle changes can be observed in the global operating system market. In terms of mainstream foreign operating systems, there were no major surprises in the field of desktop operating systems. In comparison to the previous year‘s major releases of Windows 11 and Windows 365, this year, Windows only brought about some minor updates.
In the mobile operating system sector, both Android 13 and iOS 16 were released successively, but they were considered routine upgrades. On February 11th, Google released the first developer preview of Android 13, and on August 16th, the official version of Android 13 was rolled out to Pixel devices and officially open-sourced. On June 7th, Apple officially launched iOS 16 and pushed out the first developer preview. On September 13th, Apple officially released the iOS 16 system update.
In the server operating system field, the development remained robust. In May, Red Hat officially released RHEL 9, which is based on the upstream kernel version 5.14 and derived from CentOS Stream. In October, SUSE introduced the industry‘s first prototype of an Adaptive Linux Platform (ALP), aimed at allowing users to focus on workloads by separating them from the hardware and application layers.
Looking at domestic operating systems, 2022 saw multiple version upgrades. In March, OpenHarmony 3.1 was officially released. In April, Euler, the first digital infrastructure full-scenario long-term support version, openEuler 22.03 LTS, was released. In July, Huawei officially released HarmonyOS 3 and multiple new products powered by HarmonyOS 3. In August, the OpenCloudOS open-source operating system community officially released the first Linux source community (L1) kernel version, OCKS 2207, which is also a core component of the OpenCloudOS source community project. In November, the Longene community officially released the public beta of Anolis OS 23, the next-generation operating system tailored for the cloud era.
In 2022, the domestic operating system market exhibited significant growth. According to EO Intelligence‘s calculations, the market size of domestic general-purpose operating systems is expected to exceed 34.1 billion RMB in 2024, with a growth rate of over 20%. In the first half of 2022, the number of new installations of server operating systems in China reached 1.95 million units, and it is expected to exceed 4 million by the end of the year. In the past two years, these numbers were 3.22 million and 3.5 million, respectively. This indicates that in the context of industrial digitization, the operating system remains a substantial incremental market.
Overall, in 2022, domestic operating systems experienced rapid development in terms of technology, community, and commercialization. In terms of technology, more enterprises and research institutions have invested in self-developed system projects, leading to a proliferation of original components and technologies. In the community aspect, leading communities have flourished, and new communities continue to emerge. In terms of commercialization, OSVs have shown noticeable business performance growth.
Another significant change is the rapid rise of China‘s open-source force, with domestic developers becoming increasingly involved in the construction of open-source operating systems. According to statistics on Linux kernel submissions, the proportion of developers from China has continued to rise, with the number of patches from China surpassing that from the United States for seven consecutive years.
As a foundational software, the security of the operating system is crucial, and the security of the operating system forms the basis of the information security of network systems. In 2022, there was a further emphasis on open-source software supply chain security worldwide, marking a significant step forward for open-source security this year.
On January 13th, 2022, the White House convened with government officials, Apache Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, Open Source Security Foundation, GitHub, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Red Hat, and other enterprises or organizations to discuss open-source software security issues. On May 12th, the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation proposed a two-year investment plan of nearly $150 million and put forward ten open-source security goals: security education, risk assessment, digital signatures, memory safety, event response, improved scanning, code audits, data sharing, software bill of materials (SBOM), and improved supply chain.
On the domestic front, on October 24th, the Open Atom Open Source Foundation jointly initiated the Open Source Security Committee with 27 organizations. The Open Source Security Committee is dedicated to formulating security processes and standards for open-source projects, providing security tools and platforms for open-source development, launching key projects for open-source security dependencies, and promoting international cooperation and exchanges in open-source security.
How to evaluate the development of domestic operating systems in 2022?
For the overall development of domestic operating systems in 2022, the interviewed experts have given positive evaluations, using keywords such as opportunities, acceleration, and collective efforts.
As the core foundation of information technology, operating systems are characterized by high complexity, large investment, challenging ecosystem construction, and low success rates. After more than twenty years of exploration and practice, China has the capability to develop a large-scale operating system. Meanwhile, in recent years, the rapid growth of the domestic operating system market, the improvement in talent reserves, and significant policy investments have presented new opportunities for the operating system industry. Against this backdrop, the development of domestic operating systems has accelerated, transitioning from non-existent to usable, and Chinese developers have rapidly completed this transformation in a short period of time. Furthermore, unlike other software, an operating system is a product with a strong ecosystem, which requires operating system manufacturers, hardware manufacturers, universities, internet companies, and other software vendors to work together to promote the construction of the operating system ecosystem.
Regarding server operating systems, the progress can be described as "full display of the landscape with steady advancement" in 2022.
In 2022, major cloud providers, server manufacturers, chip manufacturers, and traditional operating system vendors have all increased their investment in operating system research and operating system communities. With the continuous increase in China‘s research and development efforts in the field of operating systems, both the domestic open-source operating system community and commercial operating system products have seen a significant improvement in performance, and ecosystem construction has begun to take shape, demonstrating the ability for large-scale promotion.
"Currently, domestic operating systems are gradually moving towards maturity and usability. In the next 5-10 years, it may be the golden age of domestic operating systems," stated one interviewed expert.
Key Trends and Interpretations of Changes
The most significant change in the Linux kernel in 2022 was the addition of support for the Rust language. Additionally, new technologies that emerged in the past two years continued to bring about new changes in 2022, such as eBPF technology and the RISC-V architecture.
Rust for Linux
Due to its memory safety features, Rust has garnered increasing support from developers in recent years and has been voted as the "most loved programming language" in Stack Overflow‘s developer survey for seven consecutive years. The 2022 survey results showed that 87% of developers expressed a desire to continue using Rust.
The long-standing requirements of the Linux kernel community for performance, stability, and security align well with Rust‘s safety features. Therefore, several years ago, some developers had called for the integration of Rust language support into the Linux kernel.
At the Linux Plumbers Conference in September 2022, there was a small meeting discussing whether Rust would appear in Linux. During this meeting, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, stated in a media interview, "If nothing unexpected happens, Rust will appear in version 6.1 of Linux." On December 11th, Linus Torvalds released the latest stable version of Linux 6.1, officially introducing support for Rust.
Rust for Linux has brought significant benefits, with notable gains in security.
In terms of security, an example from Windows can be referred to. Previously, a Microsoft engineer revealed that about 70% of all vulnerabilities resolved through security updates in Microsoft products each year were related to memory safety issues. This is because Windows is primarily written in C/C++, two "unsafe" programming languages.
Linux faces similar challenges. As the size of the Linux kernel codebase grows and the number of contributors rapidly increases, system security issues become increasingly prominent. Rust was designed to address memory safety issues, and rewriting with Rust would result in a threefold increase in security while maintaining the same functionality. Furthermore, the performance requirements of the Linux kernel are high, and Rust‘s execution efficiency is almost identical to C/C++, making it a suitable language for low-level system programming.
Currently, Rust for Linux is still in its early stages. For a long time, the mainline Linux kernel codebase has been mostly written in C/C++, and accepting Rust requires the community to supplement and improve a large amount of peripheral work.
Additionally, for kernel maintainers, the integration of Rust into the Linux kernel will bring some challenges.
Firstly, there is no silver bullet. Although Rust‘s design considers memory safety, thread safety, and more, there is a steep learning curve and reduced convenience for users when implementing certain functionalities. Furthermore, the kernel is a program at the lowest level, close to the hardware. Some language features that are commonplace in user-space have different implementations in the kernel. For Rust, there is still a lot of exploration in how to work better in the kernel.
Secondly, as with natural languages, computer languages reflect culture. The culture reflected by C/C++ is different from that of Rust. For experienced Linux kernel maintainers who are deeply familiar with and identify with the culture of C/C++, accepting Rust is challenging.
For the future development of Rust for Linux, most experts have given positive evaluations, stating, "In the long run, there will be more and more new code implemented in Rust."
The Era of eBPF
eBPF, or Extended Berkeley Packet Filter, originally evolved from BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) technology without requiring changes to the Linux kernel code, enabling programs to run in the kernel.
In 2014, eBPF first appeared in the Linux kernel. After continuous iteration by the community, eBPF technology has become very mature, leading to a surge in its applications. While eBPF was initially intended to serve the Linux kernel, several eBPF-based projects have emerged in recent years. In May 2021, Microsoft initiated a new open-source project, eBPF for Windows, aimed at allowing developers to use familiar eBPF toolchains and application programming interfaces (APIs) on existing versions of Windows. To further promote the development of eBPF, the eBPF Foundation, a non-profit organization under the Linux Foundation, was officially established on August 12, 2021.
In 2022, eBPF remains a highly popular technology, and it is one of the hottest technologies at present. eBPF technology has brought significant benefits. On one hand, mainstream operating systems, including Linux and Windows, have a monolithic kernel with limited scalability, while eBPF technology allows non-intrusive extension of the kernel. On the other hand, eBPF provides good security, scalability, and compatibility.
Many interviewed experts have expressed that the future prospects of eBPF are broad, and it can be said that the era of eBPF has arrived.
"The development of eBPF technology has exceeded my expectations. Prior to the application of eBPF technology in the Linux kernel, the entire kernel was static. The functionalities implemented when writing the kernel were the only ones available during runtime, with at most some parameter adjustments, but unable to bring about more complex functional changes. After the application of eBPF technology, sandbox programs can run in the Linux kernel, compiling related bytecode and loading it into the kernel without the need to modify the kernel source code or load kernel modules," said one interviewed expert, indicating that eBPF technology provides a new possibility for the kernel and brings fundamental changes to the kernel.
For the future of eBPF, the eBPF summit 2022 presented several directions for evolution:
Enhanced programming capabilities: The current eBPF programming capabilities have limitations (such as lack of support for variable boundary loops, limited number of instructions, etc.), and the goal is to provide Turing-complete programming capabilities.
Stronger security: Support for type safety and enhanced runtime verification, aiming to provide security programming capabilities comparable to Rust.
Broader portability: Enhanced CO-RE, strengthened portable capabilities of helper interfaces, achieving cross-system and cross-platform portability.
Greater programmability: Support for accessing/modifying any kernel parameters/values, achieving stronger kernel programming capabilities.
Embracing RISC-V