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Red Flag Linux Distributor Joins OSDL
segphault writes "Ars Technica reports that Red Flag Linux has joined the OSDL." From the article: "Founded in 2000 through the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Red Flag's Linux software line includes desktop, server, and embedded Linux distributions. Red Flag's products are extremely popular in China, where their desktop Linux distribution is favored by many developers. Red Flag frequently collaborates with other Linux distributors in the region, like Korea's Haansoft and Japan's Miracle Linux."
If by "popular" you mean the government attempts to force people to use their state-sponsored Linux distro to reduce dependence on American software, only to find that people respond by formatting their hard disks and installing pirate copies of Windows.
Nope, they don't mean popular by that - noone forces anyone to use it. Frankly i'm astounded that you think the Chinese peole would not want to use a local distro with better support for Chinese Characters & popular applications.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the Chinese Government - no need to go round making up new ones.
It's kinda fitting really. I probably wouldn't want to use Linux anymore if the government were trying to force it on me. Especially if it were the Chinese government.
Well thanks for sharuing your thoughts with us. Care to let us know why you believe people are being forced to use Red Flag?
I'm sure its not because of some sort of irrational anti-chinese bias you have, so please provide links.
My pics.
> Red Flag's products are extremely popular in China,
I call crap on this. I have business interests in China that involve IT, and none of the shops I do business with uses Red Flag. They'll use Red Hat or Debian, but they refuse to use the state-sponsored Red Flag.
Linux has a miniscule usage in China anyway. This whole line of Linux being popular overseas is just one big stinking pile of crapola.
..when the first rumors of "Red Flag Linux" appeared and people took them as a joke on RedHat + Linux users being communist hippies. Then when their site first appeared it looked like crap with broken links and images and so on and in chinese only. But slowly it evolved and people realized it was for real. Blame the Taiwanese translators of MS Windows for embedding anti chinese easter eggs in the chinese version of MS Windows. Oh.. and I really dig their "propaganda" images.. :) .. Now let some professional karma whores provide links to all the above.. use "the wayback machine".. END RANT
That is the big question isn't it? I'm quite leary of Red Flag because while they are eager to take Red Hat and build some very nice improvements and tools upon it, they are rather reluctant to share the code. Red Flag has a history of not releasing the source and although they are less bad about it, they still don't release the source.
Case in point, Red Flag is presently shipping version 5 of their product. They offer several different version 5 servers for sale but there is not source to be found. In their download area you can download some trial versions and release candidates of their products but notice the lack of recent versions. If you probe their site, you can find this unlinked page that allows you to download Chinese versions of some of the newer server products but, again, no source.
Considering Red Flag's track record I'm very disappointed that OSDL let Red Flag in but, I guess money talks and since Red Flag is government backed, they have lots of money. Regardless of their OSDL membership, I still regard Red Flag as hostile to and the GPL.