A New Round of Asian Linux Releases

It would appear that, after several years of downturn during which Turbolinux and Hancom Linux nearly went out of business, the Asian Linux distribution scene is once again alive and well. The coordinated effort of Asianux has certainly given it some momentum, but even companies outside the Asianux consortium, such as Turbolinux, have reported profits in recent years. There is also much excitement about popular open source software and Firefox is now about as widespread in Asia as anywhere else - despite the fact that many Asian web sites have historically been coded for Internet Explorer only. And the arrival of SCIM, a universal input method editor for (not only) Asian languages and its convenient way of mixing characters and languages in documents, has meant that Linux is now considered a viable operating system for many companies and individuals across the Asian continent. Red Flag Software, Turbolinux and Haansoft are working hard to exploit this market.

China's Red Flag was the first company to release a new distribution based on Asianux 2.0. Its Red Flag Linux 5.0 Workstation was completed last month and made available as a free download from a number of mirrors. The product comes on four CDs of which only the first two are needed for installation, while the remaining discs contain extra software, documentation and development tools. Red Flag Linux 5 supports Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Japanese and Korean, as well as English. The installer, a slightly simplified and re-themed Anaconda, is identical to the one that ships with Asianux. The distribution is largely based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 with a few enhancements and some additional software, but most applications are now fairly outdated for a desktop system.

Red Flag 5 boots straight into a KDE 3.3.1 desktop with root as the only user (no provision for creating users is available during installation). Like all recent Red Flag releases, the new version continues in the tradition of tweaking the desktop to resemble Windows 98 as much as possible. It includes a few custom utilities, such as the "Display" dialog, that are amazingly good clones of their Windows counterparts and, as in Windows, they are launched from Konqueror's "CtrlPanel" folder rather than the KDE Control Center. The K-menu is opened by clicking on a button labeled "Start". The system's encoding defaults to UTF-8 and the SCIM input method editor is pre-configured for typing Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters using a number of popular input methods.

I was unable to locate any way to update the distribution. There is no apt, yum, up2date or any other mechanism to keep up with security and bug-fix updates and there is no icon in the system tray periodically checking for new software. Also, there seems to be no update directory on any of the Red Flag mirrors. This, together with the distribution defaulting to logging in as root, looks like a serious security omission and I would be reluctant to use a product that makes no effort to ensure that all newly discovered security vulnerabilities are dealt with. Surprisingly, Red Flag 5 comes with no office suite - a rather unusual decision for an operating system designed for workstations. Maybe Red Flag's boxed edition is better populated with useful software, while the free edition is meant as an evaluation product, with several vital components clearly missing.

Besides Red Flag, Japan's Turbolinux also announced a new release in late November. Turbolinux 11 "Fuji" is the company's first major release in over two years and, like Red Flag Linux 5, it is also designed for workstations. The company continues in its effort to develop a very user-friendly operating system to entice Windows users, but instead of focusing on cosmetic interface changes, the developers of Turbolinux have included components that many desktop Linux users will appreciate. As an example, the product ships with a licensed Linux edition of PowerDVD. It also includes a third-party emulator for Windows applications from the Philippines-based SpecOps Labs, ATOK Japanese input method editor and a Windows anti-virus tool from Kaspersky Lab. Turbolinux 11 is only available as a retail package in Japan for an equivalent of $145 (a basic edition excluding the proprietary components sells for about a third of that price), but an international edition is planned for release early next year.

Another Asian workstation product, currently in early development, is Haansoft Linux 2006. Scheduled for final release in March 2006, the first beta of the product was made available to beta testers earlier this week. Although Haansoft is a member of the Asianux consortium and its installer is just a re-themed Anaconda from Asianux 2.0, its application set is much more up-to-date than the one in Red Flag Linux 5. The first beta of version 2006 includes Linux kernel 2.6.14, KDE 3.5.0, GNOME 2.12.1, Firefox 1.5, and GCC 4.0.2. It also comes with "Haansoft Updater" in the form of a flashing system tray icon. Although the first beta is still somewhat buggy, this is an promising product that will further solidify Haansoft's position as the most prominent Linux company in Korea.

Based on the three new product releases, it is clear that the Asian Linux scene is alive and kicking. Recent reports from China indicate that adoption of Linux in business and awareness of open source software among the country's population are on the increase. In a country whose government maintains strict censorship over the Internet and prevents its citizens from viewing web sites that it deems objectionable, it is refreshing to see a growing number of technology web sites, such as the Slashdot-like Solidot.org, informing about open source software and allowing readers to exchange information freely. While Linux adoption levels in Asia might still be low, interest in open source software is very much on the rise.

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