A new Linux project lands on Kickstarter

Jul 2, 2015 07:42 GMT  ·  By

StratOS is supposed to be a new operating system that uses GNOME, and it's a project currently raising money on Kickstarter. Surprisingly, this is not the unusual part. Its developers are also claiming full convergence of the OS, for desktop and mobiles, which is highly unlikely.

StratOS claims to be an operating system that will be able to run on both desktops and mobile devices. From the looks of it, its developers have a plan to make this happen, somehow, with GNOME. In fact, the screenshots provided might just be from a regular Fedora installation with GNOME 3.16.

Its developers have put a video together, which is rather shady, in which they use a lot of big words like "reimagined," "revolutionary," and all kinds of similar words that would be much better suited in an Apple conference. They don't offer any kind of details or technical specifications, and they only just mention GNOME in passing.

The problem is that a lot of developers across the world are trying to make this convergence happen, and it's a very difficult task that takes years. It's doubtful, to say the least, that a few programmers (if they are that) in Sulaimania, Iraq, will be able to pull this off until January of 2016.

Alarm bells all over the place

First things first. The Kickstarter campaign is somewhat flexible. They are looking to raise $150,000 (€135,000), but the project will get funded if they just raise a tenth of that sum, which they already managed to do. Secondly, only Linux is mentioned and nothing else. Are they building this from scratch or are they using a known base?

Thirdly, they are asking money not to make the distro, but to basically purchase it. This is not illegal by any means, but it does looks very suspicious. The last problem is the convergence issue itself. They might have had a lot more success if they just stuck with the desktop OS, but they put together some screenshots (fake or concept work) with their OS running on the mobile phone, with GNOME. This is not happening anytime soon and not with GNOME.

It's also worth mentioning that they are using some stock images of MacBooks to illustrate their system, although it still looks a lot like Fedora. This is most likely a scam. Yes, it's bold, and it looks like they managed to scam some people out of their money.

Stuff like this should make anyone question this project. "StratOS Pro can run and install Linux apps, Windows apps and Android ones too while the regular version can only run and install Linux apps. The App Store is bundled with both versions, nonetheless."

StratOS (3 Images)

StratOS
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