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Installing Red Star 3.0, North Korea's homegrown operating system
- rdtsc 12y agoIn reference to DHCP vs static IP. There was an article about someone looking at their browser: https://blog.whitehatsec.com/north-koreas-naenara-web-browser-its-weirder-than-we-thought/ https://blog.whitehatsec.com/north-koreas-naenara-web-browse... That one is funkier. Some ancient netscape version. The most shocking thing to me was that the whole country seem to run on a single 10.x.x.x network!
- userbinator 12y agoThe most shocking thing to me was that the whole country seem to run on a single 10.x.x.x network! That would be the Kwangmyong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)
- digi_owl 12y agoReading that i find myself reminded of a corporate network in some kind of cyberpunk world...
- nunull 12y agoFrom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea: "North Korea has one known block of 1,024 IPv4 addresses: 175.45.176.0 – 175.45.179.255" Whooaa.
- quesera 12y agoUnburdened by the civilized world's chromatic biases, they've achieved a reasonably attractive use of ISO-POISON-GREEN.
- cheepin 12y agoEvery Villain Is Lime: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/414471971929206671/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/414471971929206671/
- chii 12y agomind blown at how much of osx they've copied.
- crdoconnor 12y agoKim Jong Il had a Macbook Pro.
- rdtsc 12y agoYeah just like the author, I was expecting something very ugly looking but was surprised that it looked good. One one hand it makes sense they copied -- why spend time and effort into drawing all those assets from scratch? Take the best out there, steal it and you are done. On the other and Apple is the epitome of your capitalist, western, company -- one that would surely be decried as a failure or an example of Western evil decadence by the propaganda. Perhaps those developing this are sort of things are given a more free reign and operate outside the "propaganda" domain.
- digi_owl 12y agoI find myself wondering if it is some artifact of their science/engineering elite being educated abroad, and ending up with Macs in hand because they are right the most readily available *nix out there.
- Ricapar 12y agoIt's not just the visuals either - they have a bunch of the apps down really really well. Finder, Calculator, Calendar, the top menu, etc. All really spot on. I'm playing around in it still. Managed to find my way to the Terminal, and I'm poking around the filesystem. It is Linux, and seems to be based on a stripped-down version of RedHat (going from some of the remnants of certain man pages). The UI is a modified/themed KDE. They did a really good job with the apps - for example, the calculator app is "Calculator.app", which is really a directory with a Contents/Resources, etc directories inside it; the same way OS X does it.
- dippyskoodlez 12y ago
- brooklyndude 12y agoIn photographs, I've noticed that Kim Jong-un has a Mac on his desk.
- sebastianavina 12y agoOr maybe is just a very good hardware theme
- godzillabrennus 12y agoI love that they made it look like Aqua from OS X. If only Apple could pull that off again...
- neutronman 12y agoMaybe they should hire Kim Jong Un?
- digisign 12y agoLooks better than Ubuntu, wonder if there are bugs he doesn't mention.
- bradgessler 12y agoI'm curious what network activity would come out of the VM if the author turned on the network interface.
- apt-bunt 12y agoExactly. I was disappointed that there was absolutely no attempt to look under the hood of this thing. That would actually be an interesting blog post to read: like a look at the system, pre-installed programs, the difference between it and PearOS, whether you can install whatever software you want on it, whether there is a package manager and, and then of course some wireshark captures.
- userbinator 12y agoThe UI is very OS X-like but the most obvious difference is the buttons aren't shiny enough. They have this slightly weird "depressed" look to them.
- higherpurpose 12y agoRed Star 3.0 is best OS on the planet.
- dennisbest 12y agoCopying Apple? I thought Samsung was a South Korean company. (Boom!)
- danjayh 12y agoApple clearly copied Red Star. Juche, bro.
- sitic 12y agoThere was a interesting talk on 31c3 by Will Scott, who spend a year teaching computer science in North Korea titled. He showed Red Star and their Android version (towards the middle of the talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w703MQZcDhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w703MQZcDhY
- markcerqueira 12y agoNice. Now all we need is someone Korean to come in and translate the messages that we can't infer (like that welcome screen).
- barosl 12y agoThe welcome screen says: > The operating system of our own style, "Red Star" > "Red Star" OS 3.0 for users is a system of our own style, whose stability, performance, ease of use and security are achieved at a high level.
- tomkadwill 12y agoIs it compulsory that all North Koreans use Red Star 3.0?
- blinkingled 12y agoAccording to the CCC talk by a guy who went there to teach CS, most everyone uses WinXP - Red Star is used in industrial setting mostly. If that's the case wonder why they went all the way to so meticulously clone OS X UI.
- mikeash 12y agoPerhaps the reason is similar to the (apocryphal) tale of how the Tu-4 was manufactured with bullet holes copied from a captured, battle-damaged B-29 because Stalin said to copy it exactly.
- blinkingled 12y agoThat or they're planning to transition from XP to Red Star for everyone whenever it's 'ready' - which would be quite an ambitious plan!
- anonova 12y agoThe hosts of a VICE documentary were able to visit a computer lab [1] last year, and looking at the start button(?), it looks like an older version of Red Star OS. [1]: http://youtu.be/IrCQh1usdzE?t=15m43s http://youtu.be/IrCQh1usdzE?t=15m43s
- kyberias 12y agoWait did they really implement all this OSX cloning in North Korea? Are you sure this isn't subset of some skin developed outside of NK? It must have required a considerable amount of resources and skills. Do they have it?
- kennyledet 12y agoNot that hard to clone something when the resources are already there, comrade.
- alt219 12y agoPerhaps if NK doesn't possess the technical resources, they would at least have the financial resources to contract with a Chinese developer.
- drinchev 12y agoThere is another good article [1] on this topic that explains how to change the language to English ( even for the installer ). 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856979
- the_rosentotter 12y agoHipster level: Running Red Star 3.0 Linux
- barosl 12y agoAs a South Korean, it is interesting to me that their translation of the technical terms which originate from English is quite different to ours. In general, the loanwords in North Korean tend to follow the meaning of the original words, whereas those in South Korean follow the pronunciation of the words. For example, "system memory" is translated as "시스템 메모리" in South Korean, which is basically a transcription that reads as [siseutem memori]. In contrast, the same word is translated to "체계기억기" in North Korean, which is composed of 체계(=system), 기억(=remembering), 기(=machine), as shown in the last figure. And also, they tend to use less word spacing in general. "관리자가입정보설정" in North Korean would be written "관리자 가입 정보 설정" in South Korean. It's much alike German word compound vs. English word composition (Bundesverfassungsgericht vs. Federal Constitutional Court).
- Svip 12y agoI know this might be an irrelevant comment, but I prefer translations that translates the meaning, not the sound. And I feel it goes for my native language, Danish, as well, which has unfortunately been heavily populated with English loanwords, whose pronunciation has not changed. Which creates an unfortunate circumstance for the language, wherein a speaker has to know how a word is pronounced, and cannot necessarily guess it from its spelling.
- ptaipale 12y agoMore irrelevance, but I beg to differ. My mother tongue is a small language (Finnish) and much of the time this kind of translations don't really work for me. To convey a meaning, you often need new words and concepts. And when translations try to use "native" words which are new, not established and not widely understood (even if they are approved by the official body that recommends new words), they are not any more understandable - vice versa. Translations that just use slang, typically derived from English, are more understandable. This phenomenon is so strong that I actually prefer to use English versions of operating systems and applications, because the translations that make up their own words to "explain meaning" are complete gibberish. My wife often asks me to help with translated Microsoft software, and I tend to be at loss about what they're trying to say. If it is in English, there's no problem. If someone says it in slang that relies on words that come from the sound of English words, there's no problem.
- dojo999 12y agoSomehow I find it ironic to see that Red Star OS 3.0 uses (NSA's) SElinux to lock things down.
- scjody 12y agoAny idea if they based their distro on Pear OS or if it was reskinned from scratch?