
N. Korea launches out-of-date OS - fogus
http://technology.canoe.ca/2010/04/06/13480176-reuters.html
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mdasen
So, this isn't exactly breaking news. There was a review posted of it (albeit
in Russian) over a month ago. While in Russian, it does have lots of
screenshots (<http://ashen-rus.livejournal.com/4300.html>). I'm not so
familiar with KDE to recognize which apps everything are in Korean, but it
looks like a pretty standard KDE Linux installation with Firefox, office
programs, etc.

Since that blogger got a hold of it, I'm sure it's available outside of North
Korea, but I wouldn't want it on my machine. It's noted that it's not
completely stable and I'm guessing it doesn't measure up to Ubuntu, Fedora,
OpenSUSE, or any of the well-polished Linux distributions that we're used to.

It's an interesting idea - that an authoritarian regime would use a freely
modifiable OS to create something it probably wants very closed. The question
is whether they have the ability to make all their people use it (or if that's
their goal at all).

~~~
egor83
> Since that blogger got a hold of it, I'm sure it's available outside of
> North Korea,

He is a student in Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang.

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ZeroGravitas
It looks like an up-to-date Linux with KDE 3.5 so the comments about it being
a 10-year-old Windows knock-off are amusing, but surely this is just South
Korean propaganda that's being mindlessly repeated?

~~~
colonelxc
It does say a lot when non-techies view fairly recent linux desktops as "10
year old" software. I guess if they used kde4, the article might be calling it
a Vista knockoff.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Actually, I think if you squint KDE 3.5 looks most like Windows XP which,
while still wildly popular, is in fact 10-year-old software.

Still seems like propaganda to me though just the clever kind where you say
something factually true in a way that most people misinterpret to your
benefit.

One other thing I found out while reading about this is that this is a new
venture for NK and in fact most computer users (though apparently there aren't
that many) are in fact using Windows XP.

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pgbovine
_The Linux-based Red Star system borrows heavily from early versions of
Microsoft and has knock-off copies of the computer giant’s word processing,
spread sheet and power point programmes, the report said._

ha, excellent, OpenOffice is now a knock-off copy of MS Office

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Wasn't it always?

~~~
pgbovine
yep, it was, but it's sort of sad that most laymen use the derogatory term
'knock-off', since that implies some form of piracy

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barnaby
They built a crippled Linux distro? Didn't China try the same thing with red
flag os?

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orblivion
Can we get a copy? I'd love to try this. I'd worry about the North Korean
government spying on me though.

~~~
nym
If they are in fact phoning home, wouldn't that be interesting to know?

~~~
jrockway
And it seems like the legal repercussions of DoSing the phone-home server
would also be minimal. For someone in the US or EU, I mean.

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anigbrowl
I wonder whether the 'out of date' refers only to the interface conventions
etc., or goes right down to the kernel. It does strike me that with NK's
dreadful economy, it probably needs to be able to run on oldish hardware. Even
if they can circumvent sanctions to get the latest and greatest components for
Kim Jong-Il's personal workstation, or their defense department, most of the
country is probably saddled with Pentium IIIs or similar.

~~~
scdlbx
You can easily run the latest kernel on a Pentium III without issue.

~~~
anigbrowl
Indeed - I was thinking more of kernel modules using things like SSE2 or the
like that I'd just take for granted now. I didn't mean to imply kernel bloat
or a lack of backwards compatibility, but rather wondered if the paranoids in
NK might be suspicious of current builds.

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bobbyi
So their OS is the equivalent of Windows 2000? Is that really as terrible as
the article implies?

