"National" operating systems; what's up with that?

[zridling]

- Turkey has developed Pardus Linux (based on latest stable release of the kernel) <-- thanks to gorinw13 for the tip!
- The Philippines has developed Bayanihan Linux (based on Debian GNU/Linux) <-- thanks to Paul Keith for the tip!
- China has developed Red Flag Linux (based on Fedora)
- Cuba is developing Nova (based on Sabayon Linux)
- Brazil has developed Litrix Linux (based on Gentoo Linux)
- Russia is developing ALT Linux (based on the free GNU/Linux code)

As is often the case, the key advantage that would flow from the creation of such a "national OS" is the control that it would give governments -- something it doesn't have with Windows, say, or even generalized free software produced elsewhere. The move is designed to reduce a country's need to rely on foreign software and licensing agreements. And the open code solution for Russia, a Linux/GNU derivative, will give it a greater degree of customization, as well as increased control over how the potentially free OS is used and accessed.

This all seems like a huge development, especially if these governments fund open source software (FOSS) at the school and government level as is done in Brazil.
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Here's the mascot for Russia's national OS? A penguin bear! 

[attach]

[Shades]

The 'bearuin' looks kinda suicidal to me. Ah well, that is not that far from the truth (regarding the state of their national coin). 

[cranioscopical]

- China has developed Red Flag Linux (based on Fedora)
- Cuba is developing Nova (based on Sabayon Linux)
- Brazil has developed Litrix Linux (based on Gentoo Linux)
- Russia is developing ALT Linux (based on the free GNU/Linux code)

Here's the mascot for Russia's national OS? A penguin bear! 

Is it true that Cuba, being a little warmer, has adopted the bare penguin?

[Paul Keith]

Not sure if this is the official mascot:



Bayanihan Linux Philippines

[40hz]

There's good arguments to be made for standardizing on a distro that has complete support for your local language. But I think there's a bit more behind it than that in some of these places.

Linux is only as free as you're willing to let it be. And the best way to control it is by creating your very own distro.

One very obvious step would be to lock the distro into certain "approved" national software repositories, and also hard code it not to allow the addition of any others. Such repositories could contain modified versions of popular applications and utilities such as a web browser that checks for certain key search terms, or a torrent client that always reports what it is doing to a central monitoring database. This wouldn't be done to restrict freedoms, but rather to prevent media "piracy" - and the distribution of "kiddie porn."

It's an argument would play well even in the so-called Free World. It's an argument that already has played well in the UK and Australia.

And in those countries where the government rules with a free hand, it wouldn't even be subject to discussion.

Maybe we'll eventually start seeing FOSS give way to FORCE (Free and Open Regulated Community Edition) software.

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force. - Darth Vader

Hmm..guess even George Lucas saw it coming. 

[gorinw13]

not to forget that Turkey developed Pardus Linux Operating system.

[zridling]

Pardus has always been one of the more elegant distros, and is widely translated. Here's the English site, and Pardus's ABOUT PAGE explains a lot on this very topic. Thanks gorin!

Also, thanks Paul for posting about Bayanihan Linux. Very nice!
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Oh, and that penguin/bear does look so depressed, as if he's about to drown himself.

[40hz]

Pardus has always been one of the more elegant distros,

+1 on that Zaine!


Pardus is an excellent piece of work. The now nearly defunct Linux.com website did a nice review on the 2008 release back in August 2008. It can be found here:

http://www.linux.com/feature/144002

I had it running on a test machine for a while. It was one of the better non-mainstream distros I've tried. And having DVD playback work right out of the box was a real plus. All in all, a rather pretty looking distro that worked exceptionally well.

[iphigenie]

are we saying that the governments are building the distros? or just that a team from those countries has created a distribution that has good language support and good local community and therefore is quite logically a good choice locally?

It used to be that (DLD and) SUSE were "german" distributions, and Mandrake was french etc. - but they transcended this

[Paul Keith]

Yep, government.

[zridling]

As long as the code is open source, it's a worthy project for a government. IT -- and its ongoing costs -- are playing a much larger role than it did for governments from ten years ago. Something about self-protection.