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Russian Blogger Touts "Red Star" Linux OS, Looks Like Windows

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News Posted: Fri, Mar 5 2010 11:06 AM
If it looks like Windows and acts like Windows, then it must be...Linux! Or at least that's the case with the North Korean government's "Red Star" operating system, as Russian college student and LiveJournal blogger "ashen_rus" (real name Mikhail) tells it.

Mikhail posted a review of the Red Star OS on his blog, and while none of us here speak Russian, Google Translate did a good enough job to give us the gist of what he hammered on his keyboard.



According to Mikhail, Red Star was created at the behest of Kim Jong-il, though why exactly that's the case isn't entirely clear. Other details are less fuzzy, such as there being two versions of the OS, including server and client, both of which run $5.

Mikhail notes that installation took just 15 minutes on his AMD Athlon XP 1500+ system. Minimum system requirements call for at least an Intel Pentium III 800MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM, and a 3GB hard drive -- incredibly low by today's standards, and a staple of most Linux distros.



There's no mention of what kernel Red Star is built upon, but Mikhail did note that it's not a completely stable release, so there's still work to be done. What is clear, however, is that Red Star tries very hard to combine the look and feel of a Windows OS with the inner workings of Linux.

For a bunch more screenshots, see here.
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rapid1 replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 1:03 PM

It looks and sounds kind of like KDE build to me. KDE is often not the most stable implementation of the Linux package at least to my experience. I have tried several build with in the KDE version the newest being Ubuntu.

Either way I might try to find and run one of these, just see how Kernel Red Star run's. One of the things I do notice especially in regards to Kim Jung IL having this built is the Red Star title. I also find the blog authors implementations to flow along with that, with Red particularly being the color of the communist party.

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gibbersome replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 2:21 PM

Hmmm, and I thought North Korea were closed off to all foreign influences, yet Microsoft managed to find a way in.

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3vi1 replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 5:53 PM

>> "Looks Like Windows"

This "looks like Windows" only as much as any other GUI "looks like Windows". It looks like they installed a version of KDE 3.5 Linux desktop circa 2007 and threw worlds ugliest icon theme on top of it.

I *seriously* wonder who's going to be using this OS, given that most of North Korea doesn't even have electricity. Look at this satellite photo of Korea at night:

It's quite easy to see where South Korea ends.

What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?

++++++++++++[>++++>+++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>+++.>++++++++++.-------------.+++.>---.>--.

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3vi1 replied on Fri, Mar 5 2010 5:57 PM

Just did a web search - Yep, that's the KDE 3.5 desktop.  I guess they don't have any hardware capable of running the current version (4.4).

What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?

++++++++++++[>++++>+++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>+++.>++++++++++.-------------.+++.>---.>--.

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rapid1 replied on Sun, Mar 7 2010 1:55 PM

Thats exactly what I thought it would be (or some iteration of KDE), which I have used. I actually really like KDE, but have never stuck with it as it has always seemed less stable to me Vs. other versions of Linux builds.

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ClemSnide replied on Mon, Mar 8 2010 5:35 PM

"...In Russia, computer system uses you!" --Yakov Smirnoff (not actually a Russian)

"I didn't cry when Bambi's mother was shot... but I cried when HAL was turned off."

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