…although maybe you shouldn't. Let me explain a bit more: The first time we heard about Red Star was in early 2010. The images of its version 3.0 leaked to the web in February of last year, and now, two hackers named Slipstream and Raylee have shared an ISO image of the operating system on the BitTorrent network. Its origin is impossible to verify, and it has probably been modified, but if that isn't enough to stop you, well...
It would be very strange to think that North Korea suddenly became “fashionable”. We know well what kind of country it is, the type of people who govern it, its vision towards all those it considers enemies, and the chronic lack of resources it suffers. But in recent weeks it has managed to stay on the media radar not for its classic threats directed at South Korea, Japan and the United States, but for the incident involving Sony Pictures and the film The Interview. Most experts believe North Korea did not organize the attack directly; however, we have noticed an increase in interest in knowing the current technological state of the so-called “hermit kingdom”. The few images circulating on the web show Kim Jong-un sitting in front of different computers, all of them desktops, and even one equipped with a Logitech Marble trackball.
From the outside, North Korea gives the impression of being a computer time capsule, and perhaps that is what attracts enthusiasts and professionals alike. Now, a unique opportunity has arisen to study North Korean software initiatives, thanks to the leak of its Red Star operating system, which is at version 3.0. Technically, we are dealing with a Linux distro with a bit of KDE that borrows many borrowed elements from both the interface and the general operation of OS X. Policy intervenes in different ways in the operating system, from time zones (Seoul is not an option) to wallpapers (which combine military posts with natural beauties), and on the side of its programs we must highlight “Naenara”, a modified edition of Mozilla Firefox, and what appears to be either an integrated version of Windows 3.0, or a variant of Wine that bears the name Windows and also goes by version 3.0.
A good reference to better understand Red Star 3.0 is Will Scott, the student who traveled to North Korea twice to teach computer science, and who was responsible for leaking the first images of the operating system. In his last talk at the Chaos Communication Congress (you can watch it here), Scott anticipated that someone had contacted him with the idea of leaking a Red Star image, and upon being contacted again, he said the ISO “seems to be legitimate”. Still, a curious aspect he mentions is that Red Star is not widely distributed in the country, but rather most systems rely on Windows XP, or isolated installations of Windows 7. That said, do you still want a copy regardless of the fact that it's entirely in Korean? Below you'll find a direct download link, but for your own sake, use a virtual environment.
