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Chinese Gov't Pushing Linux In Rural China With Subsidies
nerdyH writes "The Chinese government's 'Go Rural' program offers subsidies up to 13 percent for rural residents who purchase approved nettops or netbooks. The systems come with a version of Red Flag Linux built on the Moblin stack. Along with Internet access, the software is said to provide apps for crop and livestock management, farm production marketing, remote office access/automation, and even online tour and hotel booking systems. Of course, Windows dominates the China market, and if traditional patterns hold, about 30 percent of these subsidized systems could ultimately wind up re-installed with Windows."
They have to distribute the source code for it as well. Thus it should be much easier to spot every code that does not really belong there and aimed at spying on/restric/keeping in line the population
Chinese authorities don't need to do a thing. Just bundle a browser (IE on Windows, FF on Linux) and preconfigure its phishing checker to report all URLs to a server that is ran by the government. Preconfigure the checker to be ON by default. 99.999% of the intended audience will never realize what's happening. Those who know what it is will turn it off, but they are too smart anyway for *this level* of monitoring.