“There’s a lot of news flying around at the moment about the
latest Russian attempt to create a national, Linux-based operating
system. Let’s take a look at some of the issues that surround the
creation of national Linux distributions.“The first point to make is that this isn’t the first Russian
attempt adopt open source software. In 2007, the Armada group won
the government tender to supply Russian schools with a Linux based
operating system, making use of ALT Linux, a Russian fork of
Mandrake Linux. Red Flag (China), Pardus (Turkey) and Bayahnian
(Philippines ) were all created to meet the requirements of state
institutions.”