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Red Flag Linux: Real, and Reviewed
Over at NewsForge (NewsForge is part of OSDN, as is Slashdot), Roblimo has posted his impressions of the long-awaited, much-ridiculed Red Flag Linux (English version). It may not be a big seller outside of the Chinese-speaking world (despite the available English-language install), but it's not a hoax, and it's available as an ISO for download. Update from Roblimo: I did not write the NewsForge Red Flag review. Matt Michie deserves all credit for this excellent work.
For reasons I couldn't determine, Red Flag was installing slower than Tux on a Sunday evening after gorging himself with fish.
We need better jokes.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Unlike a Red Hat install, I was never prompted to create a user or set a root password. I had visions of having to crack my own installation to even login. I tentatively typed in root, and wondered if I could guess what a Chinese developer would set as a default password, when I was presented with a root prompt!
That's right, they don't set a root password, and seem to expect users will be running as root right from the start. That's surely not the best way to introduce a newbie into best practices.
ObDisclaimer: This is certainly not intended as flamebait, although it will probably be modded so.
Given the mindset of a totalitarian government -- that is to say, all ideas and possessions are ultimately the property of the oligarchy (or in China's case the gerontocracy) -- doesn't it seem logical that a default install for an OS endorsed by the government to be open to the world by default?
Seriously, if you want to be able to access any system in your nation, and you know the average user doesn't know thing one about security, this sort of tactic would be on page 1 of Information Control for Dummies.
Or this could just be me being paranoid again.
They that would sacrifice their
it is safe to say:
Why is this so contraversial? Does this perticular distro go through the hands of the Chinese govt or something?
Why yes it does as a matter of fact.
"...certified by the Information-system Product Quality Inspection Center under the Ministry of Public Security of China in June 2001."
From here.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
I don't mean to become flamebait here but shouldn't all the *nix people be dancing around a fire singing the praises of Red Flag and the chinese govt's decisions to use it?
I mean, it says something that the world's largest gov't decided to pick Linux instead of any other operating system (Cough Cough; The Beast of Redmond). Sure their Distro isn't going to be the best - it's their first try after all. But eventually they could really but something together that is a nice, good, stable distro. Consider if any of the other Distros had the resources of an entire gov't behind them.
Allright, the chinese gov't isn't anything close to being perfect, or even tolerable, but you have to give them credit for making the right choice here by using a customizable, and free, product. Far from isolating themselves on the Tech Front i'd say they where doing a pretty good job of jumping in.
One last statement: Since Red Flag is GPL that means that the entire source code has to be realesed etc, etc. Quite neat isn't it? That a totalitarian, communist country is being 'forced' (yeah I'd like to see em prosecute them for a violation of the GPL) to release it's precious code to it's next-gen op system. Quite an accomplishment.
What's the old saying? "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide?"
It's a familiar modus operandi (or is it operandus in this case?) for Communist governments. And frankly, I feel vaguely uneasy that the average person is going to associate free software with a nation that jails and tortures people for wanting to go to church, or for saying, "Mao bites his farts!" (With apologies to P.J. O'Rourke.)
Am I the only one who thinks he hears a soft chuckle in Redmond? This isn't exactly the P.R. coup of the century, here.
They that would sacrifice their
(oh wait...)
It looks like the rf24.iso is unreachable via the link provided. I belive that http://ftp.cqu.edu.cn/linux/iso/rf24.iso is the same release.
errr my mistake this is the one
not sure if its a good or bad idea considering the no root password on install thing.
When encryption is outlawed, ou++1!@(93j++js-d9298yIUH(*Y24JKB!~
Red Flag Linux is made by Chinese Communists. Open Source software is not communist. The intriguing thing about Red Flag Linux is that it has been packaged specifically to suit the IT needs of the People's Republic of China. I know a little Kanji (which is called Hanzi in Chinese, but I don't know that) because I watch anime, but I'm going to install the English language version, because it seems like the least appropriate but most expedient way to review a Chinese distribution of Linux.
The installer is slow. Incidentally, I'm running it in a VMware window. I wish I knew why the installer is so slow! Now the installer has crashed! I bet I could bring my system back up without rebooting if I knew how.
This looks like Red Hat! I'll poke around in the menus. This looks like Red Hat! I'll use it for another five minutes, and then finalize my opinion. This looks like Red Hat!
instead of "the choice of oppressive gov'ts etc" why not point out that you are forcing the Chinese gov't to release it's source code and pointing out the benefits of a free market system?
About the GPL, they are following it, the code is freely available. So far at least.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Disclaimer: I do not work at, nor own, Wal-Mart stock. I just find this fascinating.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The internet ready microwave oven is well on it's way to going in my shopping cart.
... the NEW icon.
I also like the way the "NEW" icon on their homepage is a hyperlink to
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
When setting up our office in China last year, we decided to give Red Flag a try, as oppossed to using Mandrake (our new Sysadmin thought it might be easier for staff to learn). The idea appealed to us, because Mandrake requires a lot of tweaking to get Chinese input and display to work correctly. As all new employees had never used anything but Windows, we decided to install four distros on four different boxen and see which one they took to better:
1. Turbo Linux (has good Chinese support out of the box)
2. RedHat linux tweaked to support Chinese input, etc.
3. Mandrake linux tweaked to support Chinese input, etc.
4. RedFlag linux
To cut matters short, all workstations are now running Mandrake 8.1. For applications we are using the latest Chinese build of OpenOffice. Staff seemed to like Mandrake best, and it seemed to be most stable on the desktop. We share printers, disks, scanners, cameras accross the network, and once configured we have a very stable and FREE OS on every single desktop.
RedFlag was just a little too buggy (all gnome and kde config bugs, we did not play with it too long, as Mandrake was stable from install). We have not tried the latest version of Redflag, BUT, I have told our in house IT guys to keep looking at it.
One of our IT guys has been to the RedFlag main development center. It is government funded, but penetration in the Chinese market is low, because one can pick up a pirated copy of Win98 just about on any other street corner for just over 1$. The government is hoping that RedFlag will be a suitable option once they really crack down on piracy, and MS starts to bleed the country for OS and productivity software license fees.
The key for linux on the desktop in China is the same as the rest of the world--productivity applications. C'mon Open Office, we are all cheering for you!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
[...snip...]/ 2211255) that you
expressed distaste for "Red Flag Linux", the version of linux sponsored
by the Chinese government. They quote you as saying:
While I can somewhat understand your view, it seems dangerous to drag left/right-wing politics into Open Source, surely the more people who adopt the Open Source philosophy the better, irrespective of how much you might disagree with their politics. For example, if the Chinese government were to express a desire to adopt the ideals of the Libertarian Party, would you make an argument like: Clearly, such an attitude would be deeply flawed. Regardless of how much you dislike a group, surely their adoption of something with which you think is a good thing should be encouraged?I was somewhat surprised to see in a recent NewsForge article (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/21
If you disagree, I would be interested in your response...
Anarchists and Communists, confused again. It has played over and over again.
Whenever there is a revolution, there are usually two principle revolutionary sides, Anarchists and Communists.
Both have similarities, and both have sharp differences. Generally, they both have socialist ends. But they differ on the nature of government: The Communists want strong central control. The Anarchists want deeply diffused democratic control.
The Free Software / Open Source movement is a case example of working Anarchy. Free Software developers are generally anti-authoritarian, and believe that the people doing the work call the shots. It's generally socialist, in the sense of sharing (but not in the Marx dictatorship sense). Work is done by a series of agreements and shared interest. Many are motivated to get particular things done, or out of a sense of solidarity. There is no ruler that can tell you what to do. Decisions are generally based on a consensus, but there are a few Linus Torvalds, and consessions made for expediency. The work has no chain of command, rather, it works by confederation. For example, there is the overall Open Source/Free Software movement. (We can draw humerous/interesting comparisons with the CNT/FAIR, respectively; One is more practically based, the other more ideologically based.) Above the OS/FS organization (in a certain sense), there is the KDE project. Above that platform lives the KOffice project. Above that lives the KWord, KSpread, and Kivio projects. I imagine that within those projects, there are other projects. And there are documentation projects, and usability projects, and they interact between projects, and they all work together. This is an Anarchist society, with minimal rulers and ruled. It is almost unthinkable that a member of the KDE organizing team would command a member of the KSpread team to do some particular thing, and that thing be done because of "orders from above". This is not to say that people don't argue and strategise and haggle; They do. But overall, the whole thing works. The operating system is a little "poor", and has a sort of "poor man's operating system" feel to it, but this is more than made up in the fun of it.
A communist vision of OS/FS would be state control. Flip the pyramid. OpenSource/FreeSoftware as command structure.
When you hear people saying, "I don't understand, why doesn't the OpenSource community devote most of it's effort to XYZ", where XYZ is something like better graphics, or device support, or something that they see as critical (and could quite likely use a lot more work), they are assuming that the OpenSource/FreeSoftware world works according to a command structure, and that we are working on it because we feel like suplicating ourselves to some "great cause." The reality is that we are not supplicating ourselves to some "great cause". Rather, we are doing it because we want to. This is Libertarian (the 1890's version of the word, which was anarcho-socialist, rather than the modern, anarco-capitalist meaning of the word) beliefs incarnate and applied: By acting on our natural impulses, we can do good. Note that RMS and the GNU foundation has focused on the same. When people assume that we are command structured (authoritarian), but also working for the good of our fellows (socialist), they assume that we are Communist (state socialism). Rather, we are socialist libertarians. Or at least, speaking for what I see of the OS/FS movement, it is based and functions within socialist libertarian parameters. (Much has been written about the anarcho-capitalist ideas that many geeks like.)
This is not the first time that Anarchists have been confused with Communists. If you read the history of the Spanish Civil War, it's usually described as "The Facists vs. The Communists". But there was a third side, and a very powerful side at that. Several towns belonged to the Anarchists, and the Anarchists helped fight (but ultimately, defeated by the German & I believe Italy as well Fascists, commanded by Franco). The Anarchist revolution was very real, and quite extraordinary. But because the Anarchists were socialists, the war is usually just "simplified" into "The Facists vs. The Communists".
Now you know, and... {:)}=
The difference between the two is compultion. That's the same as between any other "system" and Anarchy.
Everyone already cooperates and compromises every day. You deal with the people you wish to deal with, in the ways you wish to deal with them, or you ignor them and go on your way.
That is the essence of Anarchy!
Communist, Socialist, Democrat, Republican, all depend on FORCE to achieve their ends. Each and ever one of them differs only in the ways they rationalize the use of force to achieve the ends which the people in power want. They are mearly different ends which all use the same means.
To those who equate "Anarchy" and "Chaos", I would suggest a few of the articles and texts on the Ludwig von Mises institute web site until you can understand how they're fundimentally different. Human Action may be a little difficult, but do give it a try.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
While the Chinese government could readily be labeled authoritarian, it hardly qualifies as totalitarian.
To begin with, like the United States, the Chinese government is a constitutional government -- something which is antithetical to a truly totalitarian regime. Like its American counterpart, the Chinese constitution proscribes and limits the powers and reach of the government. Conversely, a totalitarian government has no limits (hence the name 'totalitarian'). Americans may take issue with some of the particulars of socialist rule in China, but in fact the Chinese system has more in common with American- (or British-) style government than it does with truly totalitarian regimes, from a parliamentarian law-making body, to an independent justice system, to democratic elections (yes, the Chinese DO freely elect their local officials).
The Chinese enjoy nearly every individual right the American does: freedom of speech, of worship, of belief, of assembly, to own property, privacy, to engage in business. Yes, China limits most of these rights, but neither are they unlimited in Western countries (as every American knows, for example, freedom of speech does not include the right to cry 'Fire!' in a crowded movie house, nor does freedom of the press include the right to slander). The difference is not that Americans possess individual rights and the Chinese don't, but merely that Americans object to some of the ways in which China limits and circumscribes those rights. (The converse is also true. For example, most of the world objects to the fact that America still puts people to death, something considered outside of America to be a violation of the most basic human liberty, the right to life.)
Neither does the Chinese government seek to control all ideology, or every aspect of its citizens' lives, as a truly totalitarian state is wont to do. It is only those who make themselves an enemy of the state (admittedly, as measured by the state itself) who are the subject of "oppressive" measures. In fact, the vast majority of China's 1.3 billion people are left in peace to lead lives which are, on balance, quite free of government control or meddling. I have freely discussed democracy over tea in the tea houses of Shandong Province. I can attend church regularly. My in-laws have a thriving franchise business in Jiangsu Province which is, on the whole, subject to less governmental interference than it would be in, say, San Francisco. To list but three examples.
I am not a Chinese citizen. As a resident of Taiwan I have no love for Beijing, nor any desire to live under the Chinese government's rule. But given the choice between living in China and, say, Iraq, a Talibanesque state, or even fascist Italy, I'd choose China in a heartbeat.
Now, to keep this post on-topic, many people in this forum are confused about Red Flag Linux. Red Flag is NOT the Chinese government. The company which produces Red Flag Linux is a private entity, neither owned nor controlled by the government. The only associations Red Flag Linux has with the government in China is that A) it is partially funded by a venture capital firm which itself is partially funded by the government, and B) has been selected as the "official" operating system of the government -- a rather hollow honour at best, considering that the vast majority of the government still conducts its business on Windows-based machines.
netcraft shows that the site redflag-linux.com is running Black Cat Linux, which was a Russian distro based on Red Hat but now joined ASP Linux. Hell the redflag site even runs something called "rus/PL29.4" which I assume is Russian module for Apache.
The article to which I am responding is written by a pro-China Chinese
1. Read my post before replying to it. If you had, you'd have noticed that I specifically denied both your assertions: that I am pro-China, and that I am Chinese. I am, in fact, neither.
2. Don't post AC. Do you have the courage to stick by your opinions when your name's attached to them?
3. I especially invite you to spend a year with the Taiwanese.
* The Chinese from "poor, little, scared" Taiwan have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China.
You might want to take a closer look at home before pointing fingers. China is one of America's largest trading partners, and the fastest growing American export market. 60% of all American shoe imports, for example, come from China. Kodak owns more than half the film market in China. The largest soft drink company in China is Coca-Cola (15 times larger than its nearest competitor). KFC and McDonald's dominate the Chinese fast food industry. The US Department of Commerce estimated that in 1999 U.S. corporate assets in China and Hong Kong were worth $81 billion (compared to $30 billion for all of Eastern Europe), with sales of $66 billion and profits of $3 billion. Of the 500 largest American corporations, more than half have investments in China.
Taiwan ... investments continue to grow at double-digit rates.
As do American. Through the 1990s, US-to-China exports increased by over 16% on average annually. The first five months of 2001 alone were up 20.9% over the year previous.
According to Amnesty International, China is a society that does not honor human rights.
And have you taken a look at what AI says about America? Didn't think so. You could start with its website at www.amnesty.org.
As I have already stated, I'm am neither Chinese, nor a supporter of the Chinese government. I am, however, an opponent of bigotry where I see it, including anonymous Slashdot posts.
Most Chinese in Taiwan support mainland China.
Your knowledge of the Taiwanese is almost laughably ignorant. It was, I suppose, all these "pro-China" Chinese in Taiwan who voted out the pro-reunification Kuomingdong merely on suspicion of its having ties with Beijing. It was these "pro-China" Taiwanese who in the last three Taiwanese elections elected the most independence-minded candidates (just ask Beijing what it thinks of Chen Shui-bian, or the DPP, or Annette Wu). The reason Beijing refuses to negotiate with Taipei is precisely because Taipei refuses to accept "one China" as a precondition for talks.
I'll give you credit for an active imagination, if little else.
No, I haven't read Marx. Actually, I haven't read Marx for a very explicit reason: I'd like to be able to say to people, "I haven't read Marx." This is primarily a political maneuver. There is a fear of anyone who has read Marx in certain circles, and I'd like to be able to talk with those people.
Given that, I have a friend who's a died in the wool Russian communist, and we argue very frequently, and with much shouting and rivalry. I have asked him to explain Marx's ideas to me, at least as best he understands it, and I have asked others the same.
Here is basically what I have learned (that is relevant to this conversation): There are three stages. The first is capitalism, and people eventually feel oppressed. Then there is a revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat rises to power. This middle stage is called "Socialism". Then finally the dictatorship dissolves itself, and you end up in a Communism.
I asked my friend what the Communism stage is like, and after he described it to me, I said, "Well, that's an Anarchy!" Regional democratic control of things, stuff like that. So, I understand that, and I agree with that point.
The trick is that middle stage, and that's where Anarchists and Communists disagree. The Communists insist on a dictatorship in the middle. I've read some pretty scarry Maoist stuff in that respect. In fact, after the revelution in Russia, there were several communities that just skipped the middle stage. They went straight into Anarchism. But I have read that the "All power to the Soviets (Communities)" was betrayed, and they were taken, by force, into the State Communism. Because apparently the theory demanded it. They couldn't just go right into an Anarchy, they had to belong to the State first.
Anyways: This is how Marx has been described to me, and this is what I read, and how I interpret it.
As far as I can tell, power is never given up readily. It doesn't matter who's taking it, or receiving it, or whatever; It's just like the One Ring from Mordor. It's addictive, and terribly dangerous.
No "Revolution of the Proletariat" for me.
I don't know; Maybe I'm wrong about Marx. Maybe he didn't actually say that there should be those three stages. I haven't read him; This is just hearsay. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I should note- My Communist friend, who I spoke about earlier- he believes that the third stage, the Anarchy, what he called "Communism"- he thinks it's a mistake. He thinks that a government of the proletariat should rule. He thinks that it should never disband it's power. He is, basically, a Facist. He believes that a strong and powerful government should rule everything, and just "be nice".
Well, I don't know; There are a handful of Fascist systems that have worked. For example, Thailand is a Monarchy (not exactly facist, but it's close), and they have a great thing going- for the time being, with the current Emporer. No sarcasm- the people there really Love him, and with good cause; He's been, from what I understand, a fair and good guy. Everyone hates the congress, but they take their Emperor very seriously.
So I suppose if you get the good king out of a million, you're all right. But the vast majority are bad, and state communism, state capitalism, state whatever- I don't trust.
I've rambled too much.
Its difficult for most North Americans (unfortunately I include my Canadian Countrymen) to see through simple Jingoist myopia and McCarthyism when talking about Socialism and Communism (and any Socialist/Communist States).
Most dont see any difference between Fascism (Totalitarianism) and Socialism. McCarthyism did a fine job in making the two synonymous -- when in fact Communism (Socialism) is more compatible with a Democratic (and rep.democratic (like Canada)) state, and Capitalism is more in line with Totalitarianism.
For everyone that cannot compile the concept of personal/individual Liberty and Freedom in a Socialist or Communist State please see Political Compass.org which illustrates the concept, they are in fact totally and completely separate.
Capitalism leads to Plutocracy...dont agree? Plutocracy is the Totalitarian rule by the Moneyed Class. Have you heard about the concentration of wealth in America? How about Enron literally choosing the heads of Federal Commissions.
Sometimes I think that if the US had dissent movement which was as strong, developed and dangerous as the one in China, we would respond even more repressively than China does. Fortunately for our government, and unfortunately for our people, the US media has convinced its consumers that it's independent of the government, despite being nothing more than its mouthpiece. The Chinese media has not succeeded in the same regard, and most Chinese citizens know better than to trust it completely. They instead seek a balanced view by comparing local media with stuff from overseas (which the government can't prevent them from seeing, though it occationally tries). Americans, on the other hand, are easy. We don't even bother looking at non-US viewpoints in the foreign media, even though we can. For us, something is balanced when we have seen both the opinion of the reactionary Republicans (FOX news) and centrist Democrats (Washington Post). Still, the real range of reasonable political views is much broader than this. Both of these sources, as well as the rest in the US, are just bitches of the two barely-articulated wings of the same government. In this way, China is far more advanced and effectively less totalitarian than the US. Their citizens are exposed to far more political ideas than US citizens have ever seen.
You will be hard pressed to find a Taiwanese citizen anywhere who claims to be Chinese. Not a few, in fact, will take great umbrage to being called Chinese. If you don't believe me, find a Taiwanese sometime and ask him whether he's Chinese. It's not an issue of heritage or ancestry, but of political and national identity. The Taiwanese neither deny nor are they ashamed of their Chinese ancestry; but they in no way consider themselves to be citizens of the PRC.
China isn't going to sit down a negotiate with Taipei if they insist on claiming independence.
Taipei has never claimed independence from China. Quite the opposite: up until ten or fifteen years ago, Taipei continued to claim to be the rightful government of China.
Conversely, for Taiwan to accept a priori any "one China" policy would be to concede the game before the opening buzzer.
No? I was raised in the west (Wisconsin, USA to be precise; educated at UW-Madison, to be even more precise), which means that, unlike you, I have personal experience living under both systems.
if you think the way the Chinese gov't limits freedom ... in a manner resembling the way western gov'ts limit them
I did not say East and West limit freedoms in the same manner. I simply said both East and West limits freedoms. It is not the limiting of freedoms which is at issue here, it is merely the particulars relating to the nature and methods of the limitations which are at odds.
(Falun Gong), if I were to join my cult in a peaceful demonstration ... the authorities would let me do this without sending in the army.
You're conflating Falung Gong with Tiananmen Square. The PRC has never used the army to deal with the Falung Gong.
But if you're looking for examples of governments using military might to crush dissident religious movements, you need look no further than Waco, Texas. Before you go decrying genocide in Bosnia or Uganda, you should reflect for a moment on the blatant genocidal policies perpetrated by the American government on Native Americans in the last century. Before you parade human rights abuses in Chinese prisons as examples of the barbarism of "communist" China, you would do well to examine your own prisons to make sure you're not just a pot calling the kettle black.
The difference between America and the PRC is not that America has never been repressive; the difference is Americans seem incapable of recognizing their own fallibility. Their all too willing to excuse in themselves the kinds of behavior they seem so eager to chastise in others.
As a case in point, though you may be too young to remember it, there was the Korean Airlines incident twenty-odd years ago, in which a Korean airliner was shot down by the Soviet military over the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia. The Soviet regime claimed the airliner had invaded military airspace, was flying over top secret military installations, and refused to respond to repeated attempted radio contact.
America predictably went apoplectic, claiming that this was exactly the sort of behavior one ought to expect from the "evil empire", as Reagan had recently styled the Soviet Union. Six months later, it was America's turn, as the American military shot down a civilian Iranian jet flying over the gulf of Iraq. The strident American press went suddenly silent, and the American excuses sounded strangely reminiscent of the Soviet pleas six months earlier. Quoth the American captain of the naval vessel that fired the fatal shot: "They were flying in a threatening manner."
Now the Soviets had at least this much in their favor: the KAL flight was off course, flying outside of commercial airspace. Not so the fated Iranian airliner, which had been flying a normal route in heavily trafficked commercial airlines when it was blown out of the sky by an American missile. I recall a poll taken shortly after the Iranian airliner incident in which Americans by large margins dismissed the Soviet excuses as "communist propaganda", but were all too willing to accept the eerily similar American excuses at face value.
Now, my point to all this is not that America is as evil as the Soviets, but simply that Americans are all too often unwilling to extend the same benefit of the doubt to others that they pamper themselves with. Americans simply need to learn a little humility and acknowledge that we are all flawed human beings journeying together, rather than pontificating at the rest of the world about how superior Americanism is.