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