The history of the development of the DPRK National Red Star operating system

Recently in Russia are increasingly talking about the need to create its own operating system. Government officials attribute this to the fact that existing desktop operating systems - Windows and OS X, developed in The United States, which means that with their help, US intelligence agencies can monitor the work of Russian officials and ordinary citizens.

To nowadays to create its own national operating system, you need to take the example of North Korea, with its Red Star OS. That is a "Red Star" and how does it work, today we'll talk.

As the Red Star OS was in the public domain

We know very little of what is actually happening in an isolated from the outside world of North Korea. All the information that we have gathered together a small number of foreign guests who have decided to share their impressions of arrival at home, but also partly due to technological advances, which contributes to the leak of information outside countries.

It is believed that the first version of Red Star OS was released back in 2003. But the outside world had an idea of ​​the Red Star only in the form of jokes, who walked in while on the Web. It lasted not long until the Russian exchange student Michael bought a few CDs with bootable version 2.0 in Pyongyang and successfully merged them online when they return home.

Later it was discovered that Red Star has not been written from scratch, and was modified Red Hat Linux operating system and use KDE 3 environment. A bit later in the year, in the network leaked and the third edition OS with the help of the American computer scientist who was invited as a lecturer at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. In the second and in the Red Star OS third edition of all languages ​​have been cut except Korean, but it did not prevent to understand the navigation person who is familiar with Linux logic.

Minimum requirements at the "Red Star" were rather low and the OS will work fine even on a simple netbook with such minimal parameters: 800 MHz Pentium III processor with 256 MB of RAM and 3 GB hard ROM.

Such low system requirements due to the fact that North Korea is not able itself to produce more powerful components, and imports into the country is prohibited due to the international embargo.

The situation with the launch of the application on the "Red Star" is solved quite easily by using Wine, which allows after simple manipulations to run Windows-based applications. Also in the package includes applications such as of OpenOffice, a scientific calculator, antivirus and fairly simple game.

Desktop

Elements of public advocacy are present in almost all the operating elements of the system, including the local calendar, which was first introduced in 1997 and states that the first recorded date in the history of April 15, 1912 - the birth of Kim Il Hay.

Desktop Wallpaper in Red Star OS is generally a separate topic of conversation, which is visible and the countryside, and the cannon firing from the snowy slopes. Of course, the scene with artillery certainly was made with the help of Photoshop, in fact all the guns look exactly the same.

A well-lit countryside on the photo - just a myth, because we all know that in some parts of Pyongyang's electricity is available only 1 hour a day and only at night.

Also in the photo you can see a working farm with tractors. But in fact, meet the tractor in the countryside of North Korea just luck, because in most cases, farmers have to be content with improvised tools, and the richest in disposal is a bull (here it is Yes).

However, the main advantage of Red Star OS is not propaganda, but an additional opportunity to spy on the activities of their nationals.

Due to the fact that the OS is based on Linux, the government can directly monitor every line of code in all applications, as well as to know about all actions performed.

North Korean government can directly monitor every line of code in all applications, as well as to know about all actions performed

The statements are supported by the findings of researchers in the field of Science and Technology Institute of South Korea. According to the Korea Times, after careful analysis of Red Star OS 2.0 has been found that software software mainly designed to monitor the behavior of its citizens and control granted to them information.

The future state operating systems

No one knows why was created Red Star OS, because it was possible to take advantage of any available Linux distribution, but the North Korean government deems otherwise. Perhaps this is due to the fact that at the time such decisions were popular in Asia and many countries created their own OS build, for example in China it was established Red Flag, and in Japan at all 3 different version.

The only clue to the cause of the Red Star was found in the readme-file, which clearly indicates that the task was to build a system based on Linux «with traditional Korean style."

The international community widely believed that North Korea's leaders finally came to the conclusion that it is necessary to give more freedom to their citizens and make their society more open, because of the closed society in the 21st century there is even a chance of survival in the world, the main currency is information, and economic and political state of the country depends on how this information is fed.

Here is what one of the researchers of the DPRK:

"They find it difficult to find a balance. I think they want to realize the efficiency of modern technology, but modern technology allows effectively and easily share information, and as you know information is the biggest enemy of the North Korean mode.

The fact that the North Korean government lies to its people for so long that if you want to tell them the truth, then bring it to them will be very difficult. "

Perhaps, the North Korean government is considering a model of censorship, which is common in China and is planning to give their citizens a little more freedom on the Internet, but to restrict their users from a number of social networks, and create a search engine and Firewall.