North Korea Linux (Red Star OS)

This was more of an excuse to make political statements on N.Korea rather than Linux distro assessment. Kidnapping, attacking or invading other countries is just not N.Korean specialty or its exclusive domain, there is a country called US of A, that does it quite well and in far more larger scale, except they call it hearts and mind and liberation. Next time do a Linux review, don't bring in politics and turn it into a mud slinging fest, we got enough of that on other forums.

It doesn't surprise me that there isn't any propaganda - only the party elite would possibly have access to a computer, so there would be no need for any heavy-handed indoctrination.

Moreover, Kim Jong Il and the others in charge of North Korea aren't foolish enough to think that releasing their own Linux distro would ever endear them to the outside world, nor, I imagine, do they care. Their government seems to be concerned with keeping power, not making friends or influencing world opinion.

The worls is going crazy, there are supporters of the North Korea regime? Do me a favor, go live there…

I don't see this review as political at all. But those of you who are defending North Korea should read this story:

North Korean defectors, victims speak at human rights conference
http://www.examiner.com/romance-travel-in-toronto…

"Young-Cheol Kim and Mi-ran Kim both may have completely different backgrounds but they share the same stories. At the International Conference on North Korean Human Rights, the North Korean defectors discussed their horrifying experiences and escape.

Malnutrition, torture, severe punishment, executions, unsanitary conditions, prostitution, rape, violence, human trafficking, slavery and oppression are the key terms to describe the present situation in North Korea where violations of human rights continue to escalate and human suffering soars."

Is this the government you want to defend? Seriously? OMFG.

Way to defuse the politically charged atmosphere of the comments by openly attacking yet another country that isn't even mentioned by name in the article… stay classy.@ Arup:

One thing that drew me to read this is, have they developed any programs of their own?

Then I could see myself curious. Otherwise it's just a distribution, but abit out of age (KDE 3.5 and kernel?).

Oh well, it's a sad situation in N Korea. Could have been a good contributor to the world, if the regime was different.

N. Korea Linux is not the only Red linux out there. There are 4 or 5 distros coming out of China with some regularity. One of the is Red Flag.

Its hard to believe that anybody can look at what the government of North Korea has done to their people and then complain that this article is "political"! Would it be "political" to denounce the actions of Adolf Hitler? Murder, torture, and mass starvation are terrible no matter who is responsible.

Hardcore lefties often will turn a blind eye to the awful abuses of basic human rights by Stalinist regimes, but will happily denounce fascist right wing governments. Please take a minute to think about it…coercive governments are a huge problem the world over, regardless of what economic or political ideology they subscribe to (and to some extent that even includes the US government for much of its history, particularly the last 10 years).

North Korea just happens to be the absolute worst example in the world today of statism gone completely awry resulting in an incredibly backward regime still clinging to this Marxist crap that has been a sore on the face of the world since it began.

Voluntary human interaction and the right to pursue your own interests in life are things that no government has the right to interfere with. This is what makes Linux so great; people getting together on their own accord to make something that can benefit us all, without any government interference. Microsoft has to hide behind very anti free market copyright law to make their money and bestow upon us crappy software :)

So in conclusion, anything the reviewer wrote that reflected badly on North Korea was completely deserved. Lil' Kim and company are absolutely nuts. Even though I'm very anti war/anti interventionist, if for some reason the US does end up having it out with them, I really hope he gets what he has coming to him in the form of a bunker buster.

@ commenter:

American have been in three places imposing their ideology in the last 15-20 years. Iraq -ruled by evil genocidal ruling maniac- Afghanistan -ruled by Racist bigoted Organisation who organise rape and stonings as punishment regularly- and Kosovo -the most horrific crimes were commited since world war two and EU was too neutered by bureaucracy to act.- The first two truly needed 'liberation',though I do not defend America doing them for selfish reasons and badly executing them. And Kosovo I applaud.

We will have different opinions here and America have done terrible things but DO NOT make a generalised statement about incredibly complex things. North Korea good/bad is not complex, the worlds only Necrocary. Not governed by any outside Law OR observation by media. Everything is controlled by goverment where possible and nothing is free where possible. Miss anything? Rhetorical question but please denounce America is fine. Defending N.Korea even on some Global relativist morality? Not cool.

Ariszlo wrote:

You can turn it to English by manually editing some config files:

In /etc/sysconfig/i18n, change this line:

LANG=”ko_KP.UTF-8?

to this:

LANG=”en_US.UTF-8?

Then in /usr/share/config/kdeglobals, find this section and change Language from ko_KP to en_US:

[Locale]

Country=kp

Language=ko_KP

That is excellent information! Thank you for sharing it with us.

LOL at the Western chauvinism in this post and the comments. I mean, what do you expect from an article that from the get-go links to an awful documentary by some douchebag sounding real intelligent by calling their country "insane" and North Koreans 'crazy'.

Yeah.. that place is so insane. Only an insane place would guarantee their citizens health care, education, a job, housing, food, child care, and adequate maternity leave BY LAW. After living my entire life in the US, we have NONE of those things guaranteed to us. Just food for thought. Anyways, to the critiques…

The Author of this article writes: "All of that said, I hope that someday the North Korean people are able to really learn about Linux. It would be wonderful if they were truly exposed to the ideas of openness, free software, and adaptability that Linux is all about."

Oh please. They know about it and use it frequently. This false sympathy for an imaginary reality is really ridiculous and shows that the author knows nothing of the situation in the DPRK.

"the North Koreans are usually heavy on the propaganda stuff"

So is just about everywhere, you just don't see it.

"Instead, they released it only in Korean."

Uh, gee… maybe because it's intention was to be used for Korean speakers?

User 'Person' writes: "only the party elite would possibly have access to a computer, so there would be no need for any heavy-handed indoctrination."

That's absolutely not true. Computer labs are frequent in libraries across the country. For example: http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/thai/slides/SAM_10… and http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/thai/slides/SAM_10…

Wow. Look at those Party Elites! Oh wait, they are teenage boys and girls.

User GreenLantern writes: "Is this the government you want to defend? Seriously? OMFG."

So, by your logic, you support propaganda perpetrated by powers that want to make the DPRK exactly like South Korea. By that I mean, they want to open up sweatshops, only pay starvation wages, and open up North Korea to foreign investors who will rape every bit of culture and every bit of achievement that the DPRK has. Yeah, sounds like a great idea.

Andrew wrote:

It’s not odd that it’s only available in Korean. They don’t want to spread their communist agenda because of their unique “Juche”-philosophy.

The North Koreans believe they’re not only [obviously] ideologically superior but *racially* superior to all others!

After the Eastern Europeans, Russians and even the Chinese succumbed to capitalism they see themselves as the only one’s strong enough [racially] to continue! It’s sick but true.

They wish to be *fully* self-reliant and having their own OS fits nicely with their philosophy.

They believe they are "racially superior"? So that's why they don't wanna push their propaganda? :dizzy: Come on, give me a break… Since when the "red" ideology is about race? Last time I checked it was about internationalism, and all worldwide ideologies that talk about race came from the west. Not that you would notice, with your western-exclusionism cold war mind and your CNN-is-always-right attitude. You obviously never tried to look the other side of the coin. If you said they are paranoid of western intervention and that they fear internet you'd be absolutely right. If you said they impose harsh censorship on 'online' contents (none really) you'd be right again. And saying that this distro is made unattractive and so uniform for a uniform man is the point of the matter. For a reason.

This distro is fascinating. I kinda like it since it has the windows look alike desktop and seems easy enough to use. I am trying to get the distro version however doing cat /etc/issue shows some wacky korean writing and uname -a doesnt give much.

I really would like to get ssh installed on this thing then I can use it as a main OS, the only feature I need is ssh so can anyone tell me the closest distro so I can attempt an rpm install?

Cheers

DongPyo Sa

“It’s a curiosity created by an oppressive government, and it’s a travesty that the open nature of Linux was used in this rather perverse manner.”

Uh, excuse me? Then what is the point of open source software if only certain people are allowed to use it or develop it for their own needs? I mean, I can see that comment making sense relative to NK’s use of MS products, but come on, the “open” part of “open source” advertises itself able to be used by all, not just by those “more equal than others”.

I love linux and the shockingly-productive systems I can tailor with it, but come on, there is way many self-sanctimonious users that define “freetard” too well.