The Ylmf workshop has officially confirmed the purchase of xp.com domain name at $100,000 which is possibly used to promote this open source OS. At the time I wrote this article, the domain name XP.com is redirected to the homepage of the highly simulated OS www.ylmf.org .

The homepage explains the release of Ylmf OS is to commemorate the anniversary dissmission of their former team, so they change to a highly simulated Windows theme, making the interface simple and elegant.
Unsurprisingly, Ylmf OS integrated with a bunch of popolar and localised softwares including Openoffice suit, Firefox, QQ, SMPlayer, Sogou Cloud IME and Wine etc. All of the packed softwares are optimized according to Chinese users’s habits.Currently Ylmf only released a Chinese language version, aiming at the China market.

In China, pirated Windows XP is widely used in many areas, but the government has strengthen its determination to protect intellectual property rights and closed down many p2p websites in recent time, it is reasonable to assume if orgial Windows copies are too pricey to Chinese residents they would opt to the very alternative that looks and operates like Windows. However, it is not realistic to expect customers to replace their pirated Windows with Ylmf OS, they are different in general (someone has the same idea).

So what is Ylmf’s strategy to hit the market? An informed personnel points out the company is contacting with many laptop manufacturers in Dongguan and Shenzhen, China. If everything goes well, netbooks with Ylmf OS will appear in the market soon.

This does make sense, because most netbooks in China are installed with various free Linux operating systems, but those OS are very different from widely accepted Windows OS, therefore, most customers will install illegal Windows instead after buying the netbook. This is an embarrassment to those netbook manufacturers who are trying to build up their own brand name. Some  believe Ylmf OS will eliminate copyright problems.  Via