Red Star Linux Operating System: Like to live dangerously? Why not download and run North Korea’s homebrew Linux distribution on your main computer? This distro is split into two .ISO files, and I am assuming you know what to do with them if you’re endeavouring to download them. The first disc is bootable, and allows you to install the North Korean OS, whereas the second disc is supplementary software.
Caveats:
1) I don’t support you running this for anything other than curiousity purposes. This Korea Herald article specifically states that the OS was designed to monitor and report on web usage. I doubt running this outside the country will be able to report anything back to the reclusive state, but out of an abundance of caution, you may want to run this with the network unplugged.
2) This is entirely in Korean! You won’t get an option to choose your language.
That being said, it’s a perfectly usable OS with decent driver support. It’s a couple of years out of date, but otherwise comes equipped with an Office suite, Firefox, games and other goodies. It’s quite useful right out of the box! Software installation is RPM based, and those at home on Red Hat Linux distros should be relatively comfortable here. I’d really like to dig further into its internals, but the language barrier is holding me back. A good fellow at the Desktop Linux Reviews website has an indepth review, if you’re interested.
These downloads are big, so out of respect for my otherwise very affordable hosting company, please download one file at a time. This site isn’t really that busy traffic-wise, but if Bluehost asks me to take the files down because they’re getting hammered, I will. So without further a-do…
Red Star Linux Disc 1 (.iso) – Bootable installation disc, all you need if you’re just playing. (720mb)
Red Star Linux Disc 2 (.iso) – Additional supplementary software. (700mb)
5 comments
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Tim
March 23, 2012 at (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks
Nick
December 20, 2012 at (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How interesting — thanks so much for hosting the OS images. I look forward to playing around with the software, to explore what reporting goes on as it is running.
Mitsuyuki Hiyoshi
February 13, 2013 at (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thank you very much.
Inseri
March 7, 2013 at (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I tested it on an IBM R52 Laptop and the first thing I will say will be this OS work quite fine. The OS boot quite quickly (about 30 sec on a old ATA drive and on a 8-year-old computer), it comes whit a text editor suite named “Uri” (it seems to be an Open Office fork), a web browser( a fork of Firefox named Naenara), a firewall (the famous Pyongyang Fortress)(it seems it this one that monitoring the system (at least, it record all your connections on the machine, with Internet or not)), an antivirus (I don’t know why there is an antivirus on a Linux Distro but this one is efficient [more than some Windows antiviruses]), a multimedia program (it is good, it read all the files I wanted (MP3, some *.avi and other formats), a “Wine” program (not very efficient this one, Paint shop Pro 5 (this is a very old image editor)don’t run and a lot of programs need windows .NET extension or at least win xp SP2), CD/DVD burner program (not tested). Except for the names of some programs and the naenara website at the default page of the browser, there are not too many propaganda inside the system (just some “idealized” scenery of DPRK).
However, it is impossible to update the system (maybe the update servers are only available in DPRK or they are simply down)
Animedude5555
April 6, 2013 at (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I found the Korean flash games are now all broken links. If someone here managed to download the SWF files for the flash games on their site, please send them to me at animedude5555@gmail.com
Thanks in advance.