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Comment by sandGorgon | Hacker News Reader

there are fairly good China-specific Linux distros (that comply with chinese regulations) . Like Ubuntu Kylin - http://www.ubuntukylin.com/ and Debian Deepin - https://www.deepin.org/en/

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But according to the article: "This latest report suggests that any Linux variation would not meet the standards of the secure by design brief from the ISILG."

Get the feeling Linux is a bit too "secure" for them.

That doesn’t make any sense. They could make it as insecure as they wanted without having to write a brand new OS.

I'm not following? You'd still need a government sanctioned distro.

Simply downloading Debian from a valid mirror isn't the same.

yes - but the chinese govt has a large initiative in a custom built linux distro called Red Flag.

Red Flag was made mandatory in a lot of public access points like cyber-cafes.

_Had_ a large initiative. Red Flag shut down years ago.

Linux Deepin Is Spyware - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v25Dy66AtNI

that is an atrocious and absolutely wrong claim that had no basis in reality but has screwed over the deepin folks.

What the creator of that video identifies as 'spyware' was telemetry of the app store because it was built with web tech (cnzz, the chinese equivalent of google analytics). Calling it spyware given that we're talking about Chinese users is clickbait of the worst sort.

But analytics in an OS is spyware, doesn't matter who does it.

no, it's absolutely hyperbolic and it spawned a dozen articles convincing people that somehow the Chinese government controls Deepin or whatever. There's a lot of people working on the thing and throwing terms like this around does them a disservice. The Stallman lingo isn't helpful.

"The Stallman lingo" has unfortunately been correct far too many times to call it "not helpful". A spying "feature" built by third parties that ends up with the same end result than one built by first party then it doesn't matter who made it.

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