14 DAY TRIAL // North Korea Linux 3.0 is the best and latest from the state of North Korea. The ISO images of this elusive operating system have been made available and everyone can get to test it. Knowing Korean is a plus, but you can get the idea even without it.
The North Korean state has been working on its own operating system for many years and they made it look like other systems in the past. In fact, the 2.0 version was trying to copy Windows 7, but that has changed now. As you can easily see from the screenshots we made available, North Korea Linux 3.0 is now trying to look like Mac OS X, although it does have a particular feel.
It's hard to tell what's what, especially if you don't know the language, but it seems to be running some sort of GNOME version that's been heavily modified. Given the fact that it's using a very old Linux kernel, 2.6.38, this is probably based on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but it's difficult to say for certain.
North Korea Linux 3.0 could be worse
The one thing that really stands out is that it's not bad. You might think that just because it's coming from North Korea, one of the last totalitarian regimes left on Earth, it would be a lousy system. They probably did what they could with what they had, although it's funny to see that on one hand they hate USA, but they are also working very hard to mimic the desktops used in operating system from that country.
There is also the concern of privacy. This comes from a country that wants to control the movements and actions of every citizen, so it's very likely that it's full of stuff able to track what you're doing, at least at a basic level. The point is that it's not safe. We're not going to link to it, but you can find it online if you really want to give it a go. Make sure that it doesn't have any internet access before testing it.
