[_Donny]

It has always amazed me that North Korea is able to create an OS like Red Star. I assume it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to stitch together such an OS, with fairly "unique" spying features not really seen in other distros.

Considering the limited access to the internet and not being able to ask StackOverflow users, how can they even manage building such a complex piece of software?

[Mikeb85]

Why wouldn't NK be able to make a Linux distro? Some distros are managed by only a few people. NK has 25 million people.

Also, they don't restrict information for everyone. Kim Jong Un went to school in Switzerland... They know about the outside world. Just not the plebs.

[dimitar]

Well they have nukes, so a Linux distro shouldn't be too hard.

[baybal2]

I would've reversed that statement.

[fgonzag]

You think a distro is a harder engineering project than a nuke?

[baybal2]

yes

[lillesvin]

Why would they restrict internet access for those that do the coding? And why wouldn't they allow them on forums/IRC? They would just be heavily monitored, at least that's my guess.

[dagw]

North Korean army has a pretty advanced cyber warfare division fully capable of doing that sort of thing.

[meruru]

It's just a Linux distro. Anyone can make one.

[_Donny]

Yes, but even though I myself have created my own Linux distro, I would absolutely not be able to do that with restricted internet access, without access to the guide-books, and without the help of IRC. I suspect this would be the case for most of my developer friends as well.

[thinkingemote]

The distros are not being created by independent developers and then the state uses the distros, the distros are being made by the very state itself. The same organisation that will lift internet access and guide books and send their staff overseas to get training.

[meruru]

I'm sure they can get access to necessary documentation.

If anything it must be easier to do it without the distractions of the web.

[sametmax]

My mother can't. You need a skilled, trained and informed team of technicians to do so.

In a dictature killing access to culture and education, it not weird to assume it is hard to breed those so you have a limited pool.

So yes, I understand the surprise. Which means NK has some resources we don't include in the picture.

[meruru]

One nerd is pretty much all it takes.

[sametmax]

Certainly not. Creation, customization, maintenance and deployement at the scale of one country is a huge task.

[meruru]

That's not true. A single person can do it at world scale provided they are not trying to do something overly esoteric (though you can actually get pretty far with a Gentoo base). There are even plenty of from-scratch distros that started as a one-man show. Take the recent Void Linux for instance.