Myths and reality. ALT Linux distribution

W Loading from installation disk starts with a menu listing several boot options, with system installation being just one of the possibilities. From the same menu, you can launch a program to restore the system or check the memory. The mouse is not supported at this stage of the installation, so to select various options and installation options, you must use the keyboard. You can get help on any menu item by selecting that item and pressing F1. In addition to installing from laserdisc, several options are available for network installation and installation from a hard disk.

Pressing F2 selects the country. Firstly, the language of the bootloader interface and the installer depends on the choice of the country in the bootloader, and, secondly, which languages ​​will be available in the list of installation languages ​​- in addition to the main language for the selected country, other languages ​​of the given territory will be included in the list. The default is Russia. If you select the "Other" option, all possible languages ​​will be listed in the list of installation languages.

Pressing F3 opens a menu of available video modes (screen resolutions). This permission will be used during installation and boot of the installed system. To start the installation process, you need to use the up and down arrow keys to select the menu item "Installation" and press Enter. The bootloader has a short waiting time: if no action is taken at this moment, the system that is already installed on the hard disk will be loaded. If you missed the right moment, restart your computer and select the "Installation" item in time. The initial installation phase does not require user interaction: the hardware is automatically detected and the components of the installer are launched. Messages about what is happening during this phase can be viewed by pressing the ESC key.

2. Installation sequence

If the hardware initialization was successful, the graphical interface of the installer will be launched. The installation process is divided into steps; each step is dedicated to configuring or setting a particular feature of the system. The steps must be completed sequentially, the transition to the next step occurs by pressing the "Next" button. Using the "Back" button, if necessary, you can return to the already completed step and change the settings. However, at this stage of the installation, the ability to go to the previous step is limited to those steps that do not depend on the data entered earlier. If for some reason it became necessary to stop the installation, click Reset on system unit computer. Remember that it is perfectly safe to stop the installation only until the "Prepare Disk" step, since no changes are made to the hard disk until then. If you interrupt the installation between the "Prepare Disk" and "Install Boot Loader" steps, it is likely that none of the installed systems will be able to boot from the hard disk after that.

Technical information about the installation progress can be viewed by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, return to the installer - Ctrl+Alt+F7. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 will open the debugging virtual console. Each step is accompanied by a brief help, which can be called up by pressing F1.

During system installation, the following steps are performed:

• Rights Notice
• Keyboard customization
• Timezone
• date and time
• Disc preparation
• Base system installation
• Saving settings
• Additional disks
• Additional packages
• Installing the bootloader
• System Administrator
• User
• Network configuration
• Graphics system setup
• Completing the installation

3. Language

Installation begins with the choice of the main language - the language of the interface of the installer and the system being installed. In the list, in addition to the available languages ​​of the region (selected at the stage bootstrap), English is also indicated. The selected language will not only be the interface language of the installer and the installed system, but also the language of the second keyboard layout. Selecting English at this stage will result in the second keyboard layout being unable to be selected during the installation phase. However, layouts can be edited later in an already installed system.

4. Keyboard customization

A keyboard layout is the assignment of letters, numbers, and special characters to keys on a keyboard. In addition to entering characters in the main language, in any Linux system it is necessary to be able to enter Latin characters (names of commands, files, etc.), for which a standard English keyboard layout is usually used. Switching between layouts is carried out using specially reserved keys for this. For the Russian language, the following layout switching options are available:

• Alt and Shift keys at the same time
• Capslock key
• Control and Shift keys at the same time
• Control key
• Alt key

If the selected main language has only one layout (for example, when choosing English as the main language), this single layout will be automatically accepted, and the step itself will not be displayed in the interface.

5. Time zone

To correctly set the date and time, it is enough to correctly specify the time zone and set the current date and time values.

At this step, you should select the time zone for which you want to set the clock. To do this, select the country and then the region in the corresponding lists. Search through the list can be accelerated by typing the first letters of the searched word on the keyboard. Pay attention to the mark "Keep time in BIOS GMT". In the BIOS system clock, it is desirable to set not local, but Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In this case, the software clock will show the local time in accordance with the selected time zone, and the system will not need to change the BIOS settings for seasonal clock and time zone changes. However, if you plan to use other operating systems on the same computer, you must uncheck the box, otherwise the time may be lost when loading into another operating system.

6. Date and time

The installer defines the system clock (BIOS) time as local time. Therefore, the clock in this step shows either the time corresponding to your system clock, or, if the "Store GMT time in the BIOS" was checked in the previous step, the time corresponding to GMT, taking into account your time zone. This means that if the system clock displays local time, and you still checked the "Keep BIOS time in GMT" box in the previous step, then the clock will display the wrong time. Check if the date and time are displayed correctly and, if necessary, set the correct values. If your computer is connected to a local network or to, you can enable synchronization of the system clock (NTP) with a remote server, to do this, just check the "Install automatically" item and select an NTP server from the list.

7. Disc preparation

It may take some time to get to this step. The waiting time may vary and depends on the performance of the computer, the size of the hard disk, the number of partitions on
it, etc. At this stage, a site is being prepared for installing the distribution kit, first of all, free disk space is allocated. To install using one of the automatic partitioning profiles, you will need at least 7 GB on one or more hard drives on your computer. The installer automatically creates three partitions: for the root file system (/), for the swap area (swap) and for user data (/home) - the remaining disk space.
When preparing partitions manually for Linux Junior and Light Linux, it is recommended to allocate at least 5 GB for the root partition, reserve space for the swap partition, and place a /home partition in the remaining space. For the Linux Master distribution, you need to allocate about 6 GB for the root partition.

The list of partitions lists partitions that already exist on hard drives (including removable USB drives connected to the computer at the moment

settings). You can find out which devices on your computer correspond to the names in the list in the "Naming disks and partitions in Linux" section. Listed below are the available

disk partitioning profiles. A profile is a disk space allocation template for a Linux installation. You can choose one of three profiles:

• Use unallocated space
• Delete all partitions and create partitions automatically
• Prepare sections manually

The first two profiles assume automatic disk partitioning. They are aimed at average workstations and should be suitable for most users.

The application of automatic partitioning profiles occurs immediately upon clicking "Next", after which the installation phase of the base system immediately begins. If there is not enough available space to apply one of the automatic partitioning profiles, that is, less than 7 GB, an error message will be displayed: "Unable to apply the profile, there is not enough disk space."
If this message appeared after trying to apply the "Use Unallocated Space" profile, then you can clean up space by deleting data that is already on the disk. Select "Delete all partitions and create partitions automatically". When this profile is used, the low space message is due to insufficient space on the entire hard drive being installed. In this case, you must use the manual layout mode: the "Prepare sections manually" profile. Be careful when using the "Delete all partitions and create partitions automatically" profile! In this case, all data from all disks will be deleted without the possibility of recovery. It is recommended to use this feature only if you are sure that the discs do not contain any valuable data.

Clicking "Next" will record new table partitions to disk and partition formatting. The partitions just created on the disk by the installer do not yet contain any data and are therefore formatted without warning. Already existing, but modified partitions that will be formatted are marked with a special icon in the "File system" column to the left of the name. If you are sure that the disk preparation is complete, confirm the transition to the next step by pressing the "OK" button. You should not format partitions with data that you want to keep, such as user data (/home) or other operating systems. On the other hand, you can format any partition that you want to "wipe" (i.e., delete all data).

8. Installation of the base system

• Receiving packages
• Installing packages

9. Saving settings

Starting from this step, the installer works with the files of the newly installed base system. All subsequent changes can be made after the installation is complete by editing the appropriate configuration files or by using the control modules included in the distribution. After the installation of the base system is completed, the step of saving the settings begins. It runs automatically and does not require user intervention, a progress bar is displayed on the screen.
This step transfers the settings made in the previous installation steps (setting the language, time zone, date and time, switching the keyboard layout) to the newly installed basic system. It also records information about the correspondence of hard disk partitions to file systems mounted on them (the configuration file /etc/fstab is filled). The repository located on the installation laser disk is added to the list of available sources of software packages, i.e., the apt-cdrom add command is executed, which writes to the /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file.

10. Additional disks

11. Additional packages

12. Installing the bootloader

Users

13. System Administrator

14. User

15. Network setting

16. Graphic system setup

Modern graphics hardware is auto-detectable in most cases, although some very new or rare hardware may not be in the database. Automatically detected and the monitor will be listed in the Detected Hardware section. The "Current Settings" section will suggest the most suitable graphics mode settings - these should be tried first. Quite often, a video card can work with several different drivers. By default, the one that is considered the best for this model is proposed. It should be noted that the optimal settings are not always the maximum possible values ​​(resolution, color depth, etc.). The recommended values ​​are based on the specific hardware and driver properties, so selecting higher values ​​may not necessarily result in better image quality. If the equipment is not automatically detected, then the driver for the video card and the monitor model will have to be selected manually.
You can check the performance of the selected parameters by clicking on the "Check" button. In case of successful activation of the graphics mode with the new settings, you will see a message on a black screen, where you can either confirm that the graphics mode is working by clicking the "Yes" button, or refuse the current settings by clicking "No". The "Stop" button is used to pause the delay time counter before returning to the graphics mode settings dialog. If you do not press any buttons in the video mode test window, for example, if due to incorrect graphics mode settings this message was not displayed on the screen at all, then after a few seconds it will return the initial state where you can choose more suitable settings.
Pay attention to the "Boot into graphical mode" checkbox: if you're new to Linux, you'll need to make sure it's checked. V otherwise the download will end with an invitation to register in the system (login:) in text mode.

17. Finishing the installation

The final installation step screen displays information about the location of the installation log (/root/.install-log directory). After clicking the "Finish" button and restarting the computer, you can download installed system normally.

In this article, an overview of the Russian distribution of Alt Linux 8.2 Work station.

A few years ago I reviewed Alt Linux version 7. I liked this distribution and when version 8 came out, I was going to check it out for a long time. But just now, what is called reached his hands.

Alt Linux official site

The official site of the distribution kit is www.basealt.ru .. There is also a separate Wiki site, the information there is so-so both in terms of content and organization. There is a lively and fairly large user forum.

alt linux download

You can download Alt Linux on both official sites, as well as on the site mirror.yandex.ru. I downloaded a full CD image of Alt Linux 8.2 Workstation with Mate GUI (this is the default GUI). The disk image size is 3.5 GB.

Burning Alt Linux 8.2 to a flash drive

Their Wiki site advises to use rufus program, to write the distribution to a USB flash drive. I used rufus version 2.18.

Installing Alt Linux 8.2

In the image boot menu, there are options "Run installation" and "Run in Live mode". I usually test distributions in Live mode, but sometimes I install on a computer. So this time I decided to do the installation.

The Alt Linux installer runs in GUI mode. The setup wizard starts first, then the installation is performed.

It is possible to manually partition the disk and even install Alt Linux as a second system "next to Windows". But if there is no free space on the disk, then you will have to change the disk layout manually. It is possible to reduce the size of the Windows partition. There is no option to automatically "Free up space and install". However, it's for the best. However, with manual markup, you need to understand what and how to do.

I just chose the installation next to Windows.

The disk partitioning tool is primitive, like in Windows 7.

From the unusual, in the installation settings, there is an option "set a password for the bootloader". There is also an option to select applications for installation, such as FreeCAD, Scribus, etc.

Installation, on a middle-aged computer, took about 20 minutes. Hardware - Intel p45 chipset, Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM, fairly fast HDD.

Alt Linux 8.2 Workstation Issues

I liked version 7 and what I found in version 8 came as a surprise to me. There were problems from the very beginning. During installation, I turned on the option "set a password for the bootloader" - it was necessary to see what it was. The result surprised. The GRUB bootloader and Alt Linux (from it) start without asking for a password. But if you select Windows in the bootloader menu, then the password is requested, and it is requested along with the username! Meanwhile, in the settings there was no username for the bootloader. As a result, it turned out that it was impossible to start Windows. I tried to specify an empty username, I tried the Alt Linux username - it does not work.

Here is the first problem, you have to reinstall the bootloader.

The second problem showed up on the first boot of Alt Linux. As it turned out, the GUI Mate (GUI Alt Linux by default) was not able to give a normal picture in Full HD resolution. Although the monitor was determined correctly and the correct resolution was automatically set in the display settings, 1920 by 1080, but in fact it was something like 800 by 600. Huge elements, windows do not fit into the screen. The task bar is halfway off the screen. In general, tin.

I tried to put a non-native, smaller resolution, but it's really bad there.

And these are not the only problems.

Alt Linux 8.2 Windows Network

I test all distributions for the ability to work in a heterogeneous local network (on a network where there are Windows computers).

I was able to connect to a Windows computer. Network browsing in the file manager does not work, but it is now in all new versions of all distributions. I had to write the network address manually and Alt Linux connected normally to the Windows computer.

And it was not possible to distribute files with Alt Linux. The Samba server was installed out of the box, but the GUI tool, the mate-file-manager-share extension, doesn't work. When I try to share a folder, I get an error net usershare. And there is no system-config-samba program in the Alt Linux repository. So only manual editing of smb.conf remains. I did not check this, by this moment I was already very angry and did not want to spend a single extra minute on this UG ..

It's strange that the "Workstation" build has such a rough joint. After all, work in a local network is a specificity of workstations. Don't developers check at least the most important functionality before posting a distribution for download?

Installing Third Party Applications

I recently added another test for Linux distributions. Ability to install application programs not from the distribution repository. This opportunity is relevant today. For example, the Google Chrome browser or the Skype Internet communication program is rarely available in any repositories, but they can be downloaded from official sites.

So. Alt Linux uses rpm type installation software packages. What did I get.

Browser Opera. The rpm package downloaded from Opera.com is installed and the browser is working.

Browser Google Chrome. An rpm package downloaded from Google.com does not install. This package needs to be converted according to the instructions found on the Alt Linux Wiki site.

Skype. The package in rpm format downloaded from the Skype.com site was installed. Skype started, although it gives two tray icons. On the Alt Linux Wiki site, there are some clarifications on installing this program under the KDE GUI.

teamviewer. The Alt Linux Wiki site has instructions, but I was unable to install this program.

In general, not great. For comparison, the previous distribution kit Alteros 1.5 I tested (in fact openSUSE) quietly installed these programs and a few more.

Other Alt Linux 8.2 Issues

The first user defined during installation does not have sudo available. And after installation, you need to edit the sudoers file.

For some reason, the command history is not saved in the Mate terminal.

In synaptic, for some reason, there is no list of installed files, in the properties of installed packages.

VLC cannot open some video files over the network (from a Windows computer), although these files are opened locally.

It is possible that there are some other problems, but I did not dig further. With this patient, everything is clear and there is not the slightest desire to waste time on him. As in the old joke - the doctor said to the morgue, then to the morgue.

Summary

After testing versions 6 and 7, it was unexpected for me that version 8.2 was a little less than completely unusable. Strange, was there a normal working distribution, how could they break it? Don't understand mine.

I have Alt Linux 5.0 Master with KDE4 graphical environment.
Everything described is also applicable to KDE3 and to other graphical shells, the difference will be to a greater extent only in the design and arrangement of desktop elements.
Remember that Linux is not Windows! And the usual work in windows for Linux is almost not applicable. But not everything is so scary and difficult.

So here is your desktop:

In the lower left corner of the screen there is a blue icon with the letter K.

Perhaps after looking at the proposed applications, you will understand that not all programs suit you, or there are no necessary programs at all. And you will have a natural question: - How to install the application?

Most of all programs in Linux are installed only from the software repository of this distribution.
The Synaptic package manager is used to install programs. We find it in the menu and run it.

A dialog box appears in which you are asked to enter the System Administrator password, enter it.

The package manager window is open in front of you. In it, you can view the availability of packages by section or status.
Now let's try to install the ktorrent program - this is a torrent client that comes with KDE. To do this, first make sure that we have our installation CD connected in the repositories. That is, the disk from which you installed the system. We go to the Settings menu item, select Repositories there.

We find cd-rom in the list and check for a checkmark in the column Allowed:

You can search for the package you need by name or description by clicking the appropriate button - Search.

Click on the Search button and in the dialog box enter the name of the program you are looking for.

Click search. The search result shows us the program we are looking for. Click right button mouse and in the dialog menu select - Mark for installation.

Installation will only happen when you click the button Apply. You will see a dialog informing you of the changes you are about to make. If you understand what you are doing and do not want to make additional adjustments, feel free to press the button Apply in this dialogue.

When the installation is complete, you will see a package manager message informing you that the installation is complete.

The program is installed.

Now consider the situation when you do not have the necessary application installed and the search on the disk did not bring you positive result. And what to do?
Let's go back to the Synaptic settings and connect additional repositories located in the Internet to the corresponding addresses specified in the URL field. To do this, you just need to tick off the repositories we need. It should be noted that at least two repositories must be marked. One for our i586 architecture and a second architecture-independent noarch. At the same time, with the "branch" repositories connected, it is advisable to disable (uncheck) your disk in the list of repositories and then all packages will be installed from the branch (from a server located on the Internet. In this case, an Internet connection must be available).

Then we confirm our choice by pressing OK. After that, a window appears, warning us about changes in the repositories.

close the window and press the button Get information.

When you click on this button, the package manager will read the information about the packages in the repositories we have newly connected and re-create the index files. Then you can try again to search for the application you need.

If you still can't find the application you need or can't install it using Synaptic, visit the ALT Linux Wiki page:

Now the media talk a lot about the non-competitiveness of Russian products. But open systems is largely a self-regulating market. Most distributions are distributed free of charge, or they are charged a low price in the case of boxed products. This means that the user can focus solely on the quality of specific distributions, without looking at the price tags. Most often, it is enough to download the image, burn it to an optical disc, and you're done - you can start the installation. Against this background, the high popularity of ALT Linux on the territory of the CIS countries makes us take a closer look in the direction of this distribution.

The software product provided by the company was packaged in a DVD-box, additionally covered with a transparent film. It is made not in a bag (as is often found in pirated products), but in the form of a tight-fitting shell. The box itself is made of white matte translucent plastic.

Inside the box is a single-layer DVD with color printing. The disc is recorded on the writing drive. It's not stamped, as is the case with the Mandriva PowerPack. Important note - this disk is not readable on both computers where testing is performed software. The installation did not even start, the computer hung. On one of the machines, an attempt to copy disk files failed at 71%, on the second - at 80%. Question to a company representative: how is this possible when a paid product is distributed on unreadable discs? Answer: indeed, part of the circulation came out defective, but cooperation with the company that produced low-quality discs was terminated.

However, the poor quality of the media was not fatal. From the official site of the project, the distribution image was downloaded, self-written to disk. Subsequently, there were no problems with reading the data. This is an important difference between open systems and their closed competitors. You can always legally download a copy of the distribution and use it, with virtually no restrictions. For a simple user, the GPL license, one might say, does not impose any restrictions. The paid status of the product is determined only by additional services: a quality box and documentation, technical support, club memberships and other bonuses.

The text of the ALT Linux license is distributed on a separate document. Glossy paper, excellent printing, stylish design, large print - all this contrasts strongly with what was offered in Mandriva PowerPack. In the previous distribution kit considered, a small piece of paper with a license was invested, rather, for show. Here is a well-prepared document that is not only possible, but even pleasant to read.

The Mandriva PowerPack comes with a five-page insert with brief description product installation. The developers of ALT Linux offer real documentation: an 80 page book. And again we are met by high quality printing, convenient font, a lot of illustrations. Despite the technical specifics, the text is easy to read, its meaning will be clear, perhaps, even to beginners who install Linux for the first time. On the back cover is serial number. He is needed for technical support product. But we'll talk about it later.

Before installing ALT Linux (as well as any other distribution), you need to take care of the availability of free disk space. The product documentation details a set of steps that will help you save your data, as well as ensure the successful creation of new partitions. In addition, on the pages of the user manual, you can get acquainted with the basics of the Linux file system, with the appointments of some standard directories, and read tips on disk partitioning. It is clear that users do not like to read the documentation, but in the case of ALT Linux, for some reason this does not cause negative emotions. Instead of tedious studying the FAQ of various forums, saving individual pages, printing them out on a printer with running out of toner, we are offered a convenient single document.

Everything is ready? Set the BIOS to boot from optical media, insert the disk with ALT Linux into the drive and restart the computer.

The start menu of the disc is presented in Russian, which you will not find in foreign products. You can continue to boot from your hard drive, start installing Linux, or boot into LiveCD mode. A similar feature is available in Ubuntu. It lies in the fact that the system can be loaded directly from optical media. Installation does not take place. The user can work for some time in the system, evaluate its pros and cons, and make a final conclusion - whether it is necessary to install it on a hard drive.

If you leave the computer for a while, the first item will be selected by default - boot from the hard drive. You can immediately select the country, which is something like the installation language. In reality, it switches only for Russia and Ukraine. For Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russian is also used, and the Other item (that is, all other countries) is English.

The screen resolution selection point is a formality. On both computers where the distribution kit was tested, the list consisted of one item - 800x600. You can also list the sources of the software, but this article is about the DVD version. In this case, the presence of a network at the product installation stage is not required - everything you need is on the installation disk.

The next step in the ALT Linux installation wizard is to select the system language. Four points are offered: English, Russian, Tatar and Ukrainian. However, when choosing the third option, the language remains Russian. Why? Only KDE has been translated into Tatar. The distribution kit itself (the installer and branded packages), as well as most applications, do not have a Tatar interface.

Another important difference between ALT Linux and most competitors (including, by the way, Linux XP) is the documentation that accompanies the installation process. Here it is in Russian, and the text has a pleasant style, it is easy to read.

The license agreement is also presented in Russian. It is enough to agree with him, and the button for moving to the next step becomes active.

When choosing a keyboard layout, the default is the one used by Windows as an alternative. Many Linux distributions use caps key Lock for similar purposes. Here, apparently, the developers took the path of the greatest continuity of skills.

To specify the time zone, a list of cities of the country selected at the beginning of the installation is offered. Convenient solution. Most distributions harvest urban crops from all over the world.

It is possible to synchronize time with a special server. Only one address is offered. The system can itself work as a time server.

Modern Linux distributions contain partition managers hard drives. The product in question was no exception. Two automatic and one manual modes are offered. The system was installed on two computers. On one of them there was an unpartitioned disk, and on the second - pre-prepared partitions. The Mandriva PowerPack was previously installed there. In both cases, ALT Linux refused to work in both automatic modes.

Curious: outdated version product ALT Linux 3.0 Compact, which has a similar partition manager, passed the test perfectly on a clean hard drive! Same computer, identical hardware. It would seem that the new version of the product should bring only improvements. But in practice, everything turned out differently.

You can create and delete sections. But with a change in their size, the situation is more complicated.

It is allowed to create new sections. You may not want to format it right away. In this case, it is possible to change its size. As soon as a file system is added, the shrink or grow options are gone. In other words, formatted partitions and, moreover, those with any data, cannot be touched in the ALT Linux installer. For this reason, the functionality of the partition manager of the distribution in question is approximately on the same level as the similar component of Windows XP.

All the previous variants of Linux considered had more functional disk preparation components, allowing you to resize even NTFS partitions, without much risk of data loss. Despite this, in the case of using a clean hard drive, you can get by with the ALT Linux installer. It supports two file systems used in Linux - ext3 and XFS.

After the creation of partitions and their formatting, the installer immediately proceeds to transfer the main packages. No questions are asked. Installation starts immediately. The proposed set is already enough to run Linux and perform most application tasks in it, such as navigating the Web or preparing documents in a word processor.

The bootloader, unlike Linux XP, can be installed on any disk, on any partition. LILO is used, not GRUB as in most modern distributions. On a computer with Windows XP installed and two hard drives, as many as three Windows systems! In fact, only one link in the bootloader turned out to be working, leading to the correct section.

You can install additional packages. They are a linear list. Under the item selection window, the amount of disk space required for your set is shown. V early versions ALT Linux user was forced to puzzle over the choice of individual packages. Luckily, that's no longer the case, installation just got a whole lot easier.

Administrator account in open systems called "root". The ALT Linux installer does not impose restrictions on password length, as other distributions do. Indeed, it is better for the user to know how long to use the password. Moreover, he is a system administrator.

Following the entry of the root account, at least one user must be specified. However, at this stage, the installer will not allow you to enter more than one account.

During the installation phase of the product, you can configure the network settings. A list of discovered devices is displayed. By default, the automatic configuration option via DHCP is offered. However, you can switch to manual mode. The IP address is entered by the user. The subnet mask is selected from the list. You can also enter the name of the local computer.

The installation of the system is gradually approaching the end, and now, it remains only to check the video parameters. The default is an open driver. However, it is immediately proposed to replace it with a closed analogue (applicable for NVIDIA and AMD) in order to make it work hardware acceleration opengl. And in this case, the video settings cannot be tested. The system displays a message about a driver conflict (for example, nv and nvidia).

In addition, on both tested computers, immediately after the installation of the system, the resolution was set to 800x600, despite the fact that other values ​​were specified in the settings. On one machine, the monitor showed up as "unknown, 1024x768" even though its native resolution is 1280x1024. In addition, 16-bit color depth was offered by default, although after manually switching to 32-bit (16.7 million colors), everything worked fine.

Next, a window appears with a message about the successful installation of the product. The system goes into a twenty-second reboot waiting state! The rest of the distributions are deprived of such a not entirely clear pause.

Installing ALT Linux has changed a lot since version 3.0. The design of the installer has become more pleasant. Dark, oppressive, acidic tones were replaced by a light, “vegetal” range. Some points that complicate the process have been removed from the installation. Most notably, there is no longer a choice of individual Mandriva-style packages. The user who installs new system, most likely, does not know such subtleties, and forcing him to make a difficult choice at the current stage is not the best way out. However, the principle of installation remained the same. Two stages. The base packages are migrated first. Then, the user can add additional applications.

The installation process in ALT Linux 4.1 Desktop is not rosy. Firstly, it is desirable to have prepared partitions on the hard disk in advance, or at least, it is necessary to provide free space. The installer does not know how to resize partitions without losing data in them. Second possible problem is the definition of a video card. There is some chaos going on here. Driver conflict, wrong resolution, wrong color depth. However, there is nothing fatal here. Everything is fixed manually, after the installation of the system. And we will talk about how ALT Linux 4.1 Desktop behaves further in the next part of the article.

To my surprise, around the domestic distribution kit ALT (recursive acronym ALT Linux Team) there was a lot of level: "I did not use it myself, but I condemn it." I will not look here for the reasons for such myth-making, but I will try to dispel these myths.

But first, I'll briefly talk about my acquaintance with Alt. In December 2009, I received a new issue of the Linux Format magazine with a CD containing ALT Linux Centaurus 5.0. Before that, I used Ubuntu versions 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 for a year. And before Ubuntu, the Mandriva 2008 distribution. I liked the Centaur for its stability and out-of-the-box. It was not necessary to download codecs, install additional programs(this was critical for me, since each megabyte via GPRS cost 5.5 rubles), the sound in games did not crash (there was no Pulseaudio in ALT yet). I then fell in love with the distribution kit. Registered on the forum, in bugzilla. I liked that you do not need to know English to communicate with developers.

In the spring of 2015, feeling that I should thank the creators of the distribution, at least with help on the forum, I began to help users on the forum on an ongoing basis. In the summer of 2015, I wrote the ldd-requires script, which does all the work of determining which packages are missing to run the binary for the user, and issues the command apt-get install such and such packages to him. As a result, I was offered to join the ALT Linux Team. And I agreed. And now for a year and a half I have been one of the developers of Alta.

Now about myths.

1. ALT is another Red Hat/Mandriva clone

In reality, ALT has been an independent distribution since 2001 (started in 1999 as the Russian Mandrake). Over the past decade and a half, there has been no hint in ALT that it started as a remake of Mandrake. All the basic components of the distribution are their own. The RPM package manager and the rpmbuild build utility are patched so much that they can be considered a fork for a long time.

More than a package manager high level apt-rpm is used. Alt's apt-rpm has supported installing local packages for many years with the command:

apt-get install patch/to/package.rpm

In Debian, only very recently this functionality has appeared in the apt-2.0 package, which will only be included in the next stable release of Debian.

To manage repositories, there is a handy apt-repo utility. Through it, you can not only manipulate the sources of repositories, but also test test tasks. For example, like this:

apt-repo test job_number

Another feature of Alta is the kernel update. In Alta, the kernel is not updated with apt-get dist-upgrade. For this it serves special utility update-kernel. Alta has several cores. std-def is the current stable kernel, un-def is the latest kernel. On newer hardware, the un-def kernel helps a lot. Updating the kernel does not remove the old one. And this is very good, because in case of problems with the new kernel, you can boot with the old one.
To develop the package, gear repositories are used, which are specialized git repositories. The gear repository allows you to track changes, explain your actions to other maintainers using commit comments. The gear utility also allows you to automate the assembly of the package, up to the fact that it will be automatically updated by the gear-cronbuild robot.

The actual assembly of the package is carried out in an isolated hasher environment, which is also the development of Alto. Hasher guarantees package build reproducibility, which allows for distributed package building. The whole Sisyphus, and this is 17662 source packages at the moment, is completely rebuilt for Saturday-Sunday.

To build distribution images, mkimage-profiles (m-p) and mkimage-profiles-desktop (m-p-d) build technologies are used, also of our own development, based on hasher technology. Every week on the basis of Sisyphus, regular seasons with all possible DEs are assembled. And every three months, based on the current stable branch, starterkits are assembled, also with all possible DEs plus a server. Regular games and starter kits are licensed under GPLv2+.

2. Alta doesn't have a community

Most members of the ALT Linux Team are not employees of Basalt SPO. forum.altlinux.org is a very active forum. It has an active user community ready to help solve problems for Alta users. Activity does not stop for a day, even on holidays and during summer holidays.

There is also a club of active ALT users on forum.russ2.com. They maintain their own repository, develop graphical interfaces for building their own distributions: Distro-Navigator and mp-gui. We build our own distributions.
And due to the fact that the distribution kit Alt Education for legal entities is paid, tema began to collect the distribution kit Comet, which is free for everyone.

3. Viola appears only where it smells like cutting budget funds

Let's start with the famous Ponosov case. There is a stubborn myth that Alt became interested in schools only after this case, i.e. in 2006. In reality, ALT Linux was first introduced into schools in the southern federal district back in 2004. And the prototype of ALT Linux Junior version 1.0 school distributions was released back in 2001. Those. Alts were interested in schools from the first days of the independent life of the distribution, long before the fight against counterfeiting began, and the state decided to cut the budget.
And, despite the fact that the state has long given a damn about domestic programmers and carries bags of dollars to Microsoft, Altovtsy continued to release school distributions without earning a penny on it. And in connection with the creation of Basalt Free Software at the request of the CPI investor, reluctantly, the developers made Alt Education 8.0 paid for legal entities. At the same time, the distribution build profile itself is open, please change the branding and build your distribution. Changing the branding of alt distributions is extremely easy, as they are separated into a separate set of packages, unlike Ubuntu.

4. ALT buggy distribution

As in any other distribution, ALT distributions have bugs, not all packages are tested for functionality. Alt's user community is much smaller than Ubuntu's, so user feedback isn't very good. It happens that no one simply uses the packages being assembled, and the maintainer puts the package on automatic assembly, since it already has more than two hundred packages hanging on it (Igor Vlasenko has 3084 packages, of course, most of them are assembled by robots written by him). As a result, this package at some point becomes not quite functional, and there is no one to inform the maintainer. And it happens that the user, having met such a package, does not tell anyone, is silent and accumulates anger. And at some point he just comes to the forum and pours out everything that boiled in his soul. Your Alt is a buggy distribution, nothing works, I'm leaving for Ubuntu!
The reality is that despite the fact that Alt is developed mainly by first-class specialists, Alt's maintainers are critically lacking. Automatic tests, like the Repocop technology, do not help here either.

Alta distributions are polished and work out of the box. They provide features necessary for enterprises, such as quick deployment of Actve Directory, 1C: Enterprise, installation of Crypto-pro (cryptopro-preinstall package), firefox-gost browser. The Alt Linux Education distribution has built-in classroom management tools and many other features that teachers need.

But naturally, ALT faces the harsh reality when interactive whiteboards used in schools have Windows-only drivers, or some proprietary program is nailed to Ubuntu, moreover, to a specific version (I encountered such a problem on the forum). Here, the distribution developers are not to blame at all.
Also, alas, at the moment you can fully work with state sites only under Windows. The only exception site is https://www.roseltorg.ru You can fully work with it under Alt. What can I say, our officials care about the competitive advantages of Microsoft.

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On what terms?

Anyone can join the ALT Linux Team. You just need to prove that you have sufficient qualifications. You are assigned a mentor who prompts, checks your specs, skips your tasks in Sisyphus. At some point, the mentor says, you are ready, and you are accepted. Joining the ALT Linux Team gives you the ability to send packages to Sisyphus, write to the devel mailing list. Well, that's basically it.

In addition to what you can view in your GitHub account, is there anything else open source?

I also wrote the templates script: git.altlinux.org/people/antohami/packages/?p=templates.git;a=summary
I am not a programmer. The task of the maintainer is to write specs, patches and test packages, as well as fix bugs. I collected more than 60 packages in a year and a half, more than 40 of them from scratch.

What is the benefit of crossing a grass snake with a hedgehog?

Barbed wire ;-) Historically, it happened that way. In 2000, apt-rpm was still Mandrake's package manager, from which Alt forked. On the plus side, the commands are the same as in Debian/Ubuntu, so there is no need to relearn. I appreciated it at the time. As they say apt-get warms the soul :-)

What about the meaning? Here I put local packages using dpkg -i. Am I somehow deprived?

What if dependencies are not met? For example, for installation it is required to remove some package, or vice versa to install. dpkg -i, like rpm -i, will end with a curse that you need to install such and such a package or, on the contrary, remove it. And apt-get will do everything on its own, destroy dependencies if possible.

Why? What's special about it that other distributions don't?

Out of the box, you can get a working computer for the teacher and the student. To be honest, I did not use school distros, so I only know about them by hearsay.

Why then does no one (except amateurs and enthusiasts) take advantage of this opportunity? Here Bolgenization of Ubuntu is in full swing - only the lazy one has not washed down his version of Ubuki. Why nobody wants to cut their own version of Alt?

Ubuntu is popular, but Alt is not. Until now, Alta has not been engaged in PR at all. Maybe something will change after 150 million spent on PR.
Specifically, I don’t drink my distro, because starter kits suit me completely. I think most people think the same way.

And here Alto faces an interesting dilemma: become crooks and offer bureaucrats a cut, or be honest, but fly again, as Monsieur Fanier flew over Paris in his time.

Now the situation in the country has changed somewhat. The pie that can be cut is rapidly shrinking. Our officials are already eating each other. Criminal cases have been initiated against many governors and their deputies, as well as mayors. I think that now officials will start thinking about how not to sit down, and not about how to cut more.

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You just need to prove that you have sufficient qualifications. You are assigned a mentor who prompts, checks your specs, skips your tasks in Sisyphus.

What if dependencies are not met? For example, for installation it is required to remove some package, or vice versa to install.

Ah, I understand. But in fairness it should be noted that I have never encountered such a situation, although I do not deny the theoretical possibility of its occurrence.

Ubuntu is popular, but Alt is not. Until now, Alta has not been engaged in PR at all.

Also how they did it. Not for 150 million, but free, but they wrote about Alt as much as about any other distribution. In the context of the drama with Ponosov. But the publicity didn't help. Don't you think that it's not about PR, but that Alto had nothing to offer? In addition to Russification, which improved very quickly even in imported distributions. By the way, partly thanks to Alt.

Criminal cases have been initiated against many governors and their deputies, as well as mayors. I think that now officials will start thinking about how not to sit down, and not about how to cut more.

An official who lives on one salary? :)) Here I could object, but the discussion will go beyond the topic of the post, so I will refrain.

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I started my acquaintance with this distribution. Bought officially. ALT Linux Junior 1.10. For 24 UAH. CD with a small book.
I also tried Mandrake, Suzya and some others in parallel (I don’t remember already). ALT was the best. Although not infrequently there were moments / nuances / problems / glitches that really spoiled life. But others were worse.
Then I bought a box of ALT "a 2.20 Master for 220 UAH. With a bunch of disks (9 pieces) and books. This was the pinnacle of distro building of this office. True, and the problems grew incredibly.
For example, I looked with envy at the fonts in the same StarOffice in Mandrake, and then with disgust at them at ALT "a ...
The guys from ALT seem to have decided that they are the coolest and best. And they stared. Or starred.
Help / advice had to be begged and begged. Periodically, they deigned to casually answer something. Not really explaining. And after all even on quite simple questions. For example, why don't a bunch of printers work stubbornly in ALT, while in ALL the others that have been tried, they work out of the box? And this is at an office with a fleet of 80 PCs ...
But the guys from their ALT didn't give a shit about such a client, to put it mildly. Of course they didn't get it. There, with might and main, the young Gentoo, which is rapidly gaining popularity, has unfolded with might and main.
Version 2.40 was a complete failure. How I cursed and spat... And I'm not alone. Even the ardent fans of ALT "a, who got me hooked on it.
The pain lasted for six months. Throwing on distribution kits has begun again. And once I ran into a distribution kit, which, for some unknown reason, stubbornly did not catch my eye. Debian. Since then I have only used it.

With each release of a new version of ALT "and I tried to put it next to me - what if they suddenly came to their senses? But they only aggravated.

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If you want a salary in Basalt, send your resume, and if you pass the selection, you will be hired. Participation in the ALT Linux Team is supposed to give you experience and achievements that can be converted into bonuses when applying for a job. Or you are already working in some company that makes its decisions on Alta. Basalt cannot employ everyone. Well, and finally, if Alt suits you, but you need such and such a package that no one else needs. Then you join the ALT Linux Team to support the packages you need.

Don't you think that it's not about PR, but that Alto had nothing to offer?

The point is rather in the Russian mentality that developed in the 90s. Domestic a priori cannot be better than imported.
Canonical does nothing but promote Ubuntu. As far as I know, Canonical is still a losing company. Alt has never been unprofitable. At the same time, investments have always been very bad. Alt was the first to make major investments. I hope this will have an effect.
Each member of the ALT Linux Team, and indeed the ALT community in general, is interested in keeping the LLC afloat, otherwise all our work will go to waste. In Russia, it is unrealistic to support Sisyphus with the help of a community that deals with it in their free time and maintains the entire server infrastructure at their own expense. In Russia, people are poor, and therefore they are capable of altruism to a very limited extent.
It turns out a kind of symbiosis between a commercial company and the community. Everyone is quite satisfied with this. And those who are not satisfied use other distributions without investing in their development, as a rule, nothing.

An official who lives on one salary? :))

Rather not. An official who is forced to steal less so that he is not planted by larger officials who do not want to steal less ;-)

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The 4th point is not a myth, but an absolute truth.

What about real facts? Memories of the beginning of the 2000s are out of place here, since a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.

So what exactly am I talking about? And about that, gentlemen! ALT is one of the most disgusting distributions out there. Yes, and the people there ... Not chocolate, of course, but the color is the same.

Thanks for the flattering compliments to the community. Everyone sees the world as it is. A cunning man sees cunning people around him, a scoundrel sees scoundrels, and a good person sees good people.

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Real facts from personal experience or in general with the "average temperature in the ward";)? After that, it won't be surprising if you get bombarded with negative reviews!
I especially liked the mention in the articles about ALT, about the completion of work on the development of software for Elbrus and Baikal, really sad...

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Real facts from personal experience

Preferably.

I especially liked the mention in the articles about ALT, about the completion of work on the development of software for Elbrus and Baikal, really sad...

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Well, if you want, a brief overview of personal experience from the implementation in an ordinary high school, an ordinary Siberian town with a population of 150k!
I tried to implement it personally in 2007, the choice was between Alt and Mandriva 2007 Power Pack, I settled on Mandriva (I honestly bought licensed boxes with disks and "paper footcloths" for my own money), because of:
1. Support out of the box, various network adapters (all sorts of intels and realtechs, etc.) on various school PCs, about 25% for Alta and 75% for Mandriva! That means two computer labs with a dozen user hosts and one server per classroom!
2. Interactive whiteboard (3 units, I don’t remember who the iron manufacturer was for years ago) Mandriva, after dancing with firewood, nevertheless installed and worked "until the death" of these devices, everything was not just bad for Alta, but fatal!
3. The overall responsiveness of systems, with the same set of software and the general profile of use by users on all hosts, was then measured for Alta by 45% lower than for the same Mandriva!
Here is a real personal experience I had with Alt in 2007! By the way, with Ubuntu in 2009, there were fewer dances with tambourines by an order of magnitude and in another school where they put it instead of Alta, I personally know their admin, helped him in the evenings in migrating to Bunta!

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I have already spoken about Alt here, and I realized that the more I know this distro, the more questions I have. I cannot get answers to them, because the information that is on the network does not contribute to this at all. I know my peculiarity of writing lengthy lyrics, so I decided to step on the throat of my own song and once again speak out only about Alta's attitude towards monetization (licensing).

In the time that has passed since the previous critical article about Viola, I managed to install Viola Workstation in Virtual Box and drive it a little. Given the fact that some distributions are quite capricious, Alt is worthy of praise - no problems installing in a virtual machine. For the "smoothness" of the installation in Virtual Box, I would rate it 10 out of 10. This allowed me to "poke" and see what the Alt Workstation consists of. By the set of applications - typical Linux, i.e. the system menu consists of ordinary and 99% familiar packages. In this regard, the issue of licensing again arose.

Then I watched the video of Mr. Shigorin five years ago vimeo.com/23718493, where he very extensively and sometimes frivolously interprets the provisions and approaches to licensing both proprietary and free software. It is possible to tell more softly - philosophizes on a subject of licensing. One way or another, it became clearer to me that this topic is not new for Altovites, most likely there were some behind-the-scenes discussions and paid licenses - this is not coercion of investors, but an agreed choice of investors and developers.

I personally take this negatively and with great regret. From my point of view, the developers of Alta have sent the traditions and principles of the Linux community far and wide, choosing a proprietary and as much as possible corporate (as far as it is possible in the world of free software) development model. Few people dare to demand money for Linux distributions, but, as a rule, these are companies that invest in the development of Linux themselves (for example, Red Hat). I would say that the greater the contribution to the promotion of Linux, the greater the moral right to take money for your own distribution. Basalt does not have such a contribution to the promotion of Linux and is not yet expected, but distributions are already being sold with might and main.

All of the above does not apply to enthusiasts who maintain and develop Alt distributions at the expense of their own time and effort. This automatically raises questions for the company's management about the attitude towards such employees and simply adds another moral aspect to the problem of distributive monetization. Moreover, the circle of these enthusiasts is narrow: altlinux.org/Alt_Linux_Active_Users_Club - a list of 29 (!) Active members of the club.

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Moreover, the circle of these enthusiasts is narrow: altlinux.org/Alt_Linux_Active_Users_Club - a list of 29 (!) Active members of the club.

Alta community is not only a club. The entire Alta community can be divided into four categories: employees of Basalt and Etersoft, members of the ALT Linux Team, members of the Alt_Linux_Active_Users_Club, active members of forum.altlinux.org. As a rule, company employees are the backbone of the ALT Linux Team, who do not go to the club or the forum. The exception is scull and Mikhail Shigorin, they participate in the life of the forum and the club. In the ALT Linux Team, most of the employees of Basalt and Etersoft are not. But as a rule, they also do not go to the club or the forum, with rare exceptions. Club members are also naturally active members of forum.altlinux.org, but not all active members of forum.altlinux.org are members of the club. In total, there are four sets that partially intersect.

Now let's try to count Alta communities. We look at the ALT Linux Team: packages.altlinux.org/en/Sisyphus/maintainers We see that there are 181 developers in the ALT Linux Team. Unfortunately, many of them in development have ceased to accept. Approximately 30-40 people, maybe more. In total, there are about 140 developers in the ALT Linux Team now. There are 29 people in the club minus real, may his memory be blessed. We will also remove Timovites from the club: minus 6 people. We get 22 people. At the forum, if we consider the activity in recent months, we see about 60 people helping and advising. We remove Timovtsy and the club, we get 30 people. So, now we add up 140 Timovtsy + 22 club + 30 forum users. Altogether, the community of Alta is approximately 192 people, including employees. There are 30 people in the ALT Linux Team. A total of 162 enthusiasts. Yes, not enough, but there is a community.
By the way, the number of users on the forum: 18417.

Then I watched the video of Mr. Shigorin five years ago vimeo.com/23718493, where he very extensively and sometimes frivolously interprets the provisions and approaches to licensing both proprietary and free software.

No, Shigorin says everything correctly. Just in the format for the smallest of his presentation :-)

I would say that the greater the contribution to the promotion of Linux, the greater the moral right to take money for your own distribution. Basalt does not have such a contribution to the promotion of Linux and is not yet expected, but distributions are already being sold with might and main.

Do you think this contribution does not exist? In fact, maintainers write patches and send them upstream. And in the core as well. Developers provide their source code, and this is not yet a product. Sources need to be properly prepared, tested, patched, and then dependencies need to be sorted out. It is necessary to constantly maintain the integrity of the repository, prepare a recipe for building distribution images. In addition, Altovites also write code. In addition to the utilities needed to build and maintain the distribution, an alterator (system control center) with many modules is also being written. All code of utilities developed under the GPL, including profiles for building distributions and packages with branding. By the way, all FSTEC-certified repositories are openly available. Unlike Red Hat, Basalt does not prohibit creating its own distributions based on its repositories, including commercial ones. And all Alt's test utilities are also under the GPL. At Red Hat, the utilities that check the quality of the built packages are carefully hidden from the community.

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Alt has never been unprofitable. At the same time, investments have always been very bad. Alt was the first to make major investments.

Incorrect. Actually, all this news about the sale of viola to armada, Russian technologies, etc. it's not a good life. I remember the times when Smirnov paid salaries out of his own pocket, because the investor merged, and also the office in the basement on Shabolovka. And the company itself was represented by as many as 5 "LLC" with similar names: altlinux, altlinux-(technology, solution, something else), which could be sold to an investor on occasion. Although, it is clear that in this matter a legal entity is needed stupid in order to have where to collect money and spend it somewhere (buy iron or pay RFP).

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Version 2.40 was a complete failure. How I cursed and spat... And I'm not alone. Even the ardent fans of ALT "a, who got me hooked on it.

Just 2.4 was still nothing. Well, i.e. there was a normal 2.4 kernel and there was a more or less sane system out of the box. Here 3.0 was sadder, primarily due to the fact that the old Mandreik's installer was similar to hell and Israel, and the new one still couldn't be filed, plus the distribution kit itself came out, albeit on a 2-sided DVD, but only for desktops. the next release was purely server-based, and then very sad, since only one of the two main virtualization systems at that time (openvz and xen) worked there. But the 5th and further releases were already done more or less normally, including using one common stable repo for the entire family (p5, p6, p7, p8) instead of a separate one for each release.
I have experience with both debian and alt, and so, in alt, things from the series "build a package for a specific release" are made easier, simply because the tools for creating build chroots were made for people, and not foreign to predators. If we compare Debian on the desktop, then in general it is approximately equivalent for the unstable branch, i.e. you won’t get a non-working gnome3 as the only window manager (hello, fedora!), but if some packages in viola are outdated, then in debian versions are forcibly stopped. As a result, we have a 3.2 kernel in sid, approved for a stable release with version 4.0 upstream and the prospect that your touchpad will still work in six months, when the next release starts to be cut

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1. Support out of the box, various network adapters (all sorts of intel and realtek, etc.)

in the viola of those times there was support for both realtechs and intels, although I remember that there was a period when cards for e1000 and p8169 began to appear, support for which was dug into the core after the release and there was a lot of crap with them, because. clients usually launch a distribution from a DVD-blank and think that it will suddenly accept drivers from space itself.

3. The overall responsiveness of systems, with the same set of software and the general profile of use by users on all hosts, was then measured for Alta by 45% lower than for the same Mandriva!

here is unsure. on my hardware, the mandriva slowed down shamelessly (this was later). Although mandrake 10.3 worked quite well for itself, it didn’t stay with me for a long time, either due to the lack of either for building out of the box, or because of an insane package repository.

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Desktop license 4000 rubles? That is, the average office for 100 computers will pay almost half a million rubles for "free" Linux? Guys, I understand everything, but you do not overdo it?

1. 100 licenses is wholesale, which means you can negotiate a significant discount directly with Basalt.
2. Alt is completely free to provide starter kits. You don't need to buy them. There is also a Simple Linux distribution (not yet released for platform 8), a license to use which also does not need to be purchased.
3. Free is not the same as free. For freedom, in fact, you constantly have to sacrifice and pay for something. Alt respects the freedom of users, does not hide anything from them, anyone who wants to learn how to build packages is helped. And by joining the ALT Linux Team, you can take part in the development of the distribution.

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But if you consider the comment of Alta developer Mikhail Shigorin on opennet.ru, then this is not at all the case: opennet.ru/openforum/vsluhforumID3/106531.html#689
And who to believe is not clear.

Quoting this comment from there:

> That is, do you want to ban something jur. to persons then the terminology
> and the criteria should be some other.

"Yur." here is rather not the most direct approximation to "profitable activity." At the same time, the rural school is also a legal entity, but to convince it to go and pay for another one - well, to the bathhouse, it would be helpful here ...

There is one more moment. If I am an IT manager and I buy, say, according to 44-FZ, then even if I want to "support a domestic developer", a more than reasonable question may arise: on what basis is it possible to download or purchase in one copy with full installation rights for an unlimited number of computers, can I pay more than the cost of that copy (for example, the cost of two copies for two machines), without being charged with misappropriation of funds (which this immediately becomes)? At the same time, it is clear that licensing "on the heads" is the Stone Age and a huge headache for everyone (who deployed license managers also understands).

What is Michael saying here?


3. Gives an example of why Basalt is forced to take this step. Let's say the company has money and plans to install Alt on 100 computers. And the IT manager wants to support Alt and buy not one license, but 100, because he understands that if you don’t sow today (you don’t support a domestic manufacturer), then tomorrow you won’t reap (there will be no domestic manufacturer tomorrow at all). And if this IT manager had previously decided to buy 100 licenses instead of one box, then he could have been attracted for an untargeted expenditure of funds. Now, no one will attract him for the purchase of these 100 licenses. Here, as you can see, a plus.

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Maybe something will change after 150 million spent on PR.

Mikhail Shigorin says that this is nonsense about the allocation of 150 million for PR. But it is better to discuss it separately in the same topic.

In 2000, apt-rpm was still Mandrake's package manager, from which Alt forked.

Here I was mistaken. Mandrake has never used apt-rpm. Mandrake has always had urpmi. And apt-rpm was in Conectiva, which was made by the Brazilians.

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Under Elbrus, 500 Alta packages were collected. MCST has changed its mind, I think. I don't know anything about Baikal myself.

Here again I was mistaken. Mikhail Shigorin says work is underway. But I'll quote it in full:

this is news, actually, I’m still working on Elbrus on the sly (the machine is on the table, the other day I got a couple of packages even against the background of the release of starter kits), but with Baikal it’s like this: initially it was about ARMv8, there is a publicly available port for it Sisyphus, only there were delays with the pebble itself; then we also talked about MIPS, we have a backlog on it, but there is still a long way to the repository (further than on Elbrus). Partly due to the fact that at first its use was announced for industrial systems (which was supported by the nature of the interfaces on a pebble), then they suddenly screwed the GPU on the side and made a monoblock.

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At the expense of the performance of Mandriva. I can say that the Mandriva PowerPack (to be honest, I don’t remember either 2007 or 2008) was another brake. Let not for long, but used. The main brake was their System Control Center (SCC). On a laptop with Celeron 2 GHz and 512 MB of RAM, it braked godlessly.

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I also believe Mikhail, but I want to clarify: is he a developer, not a manager? So he doesn't handle money? Accordingly, we can consider his opinion competent on technical issues, but on financial matters it is better to listen to Alta's managers?

Yes, Mikhail is a developer, not a manager. The main managers are Novodvorsky and Smirnov. But Mikhail communicates with Smirnov and Novodvorsky, so his opinion is also competent.

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Alt is completely free to provide starterkits. You don't need to buy them.

With a funny phrase inside

The owner of the SET instance as a person lawfully owning a copy of a computer program

.
Who and how will determine the legitimacy is unclear. Except how to license a paid distribution kit:(This is a free beer:(By the way, about taking packages from rep, the starterkit license also says nothing. Good luck to everyone in free use...

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Here Bolgenization of Ubuntu is in full swing - only the lazy one has not washed down his version of Ubuki. Why nobody wants to cut their own version of Alt?

There is / was with 10-ok from Team. Almost all of them migrated to starterkits. And their authors most likely do not threaten Basalt's claims. There is a Comet whose author is trying to believe in the best. There was a "pirate" school variation of Komisarov, which the Altovites verbally poured fecal matter on. They sawed then the school version for free, it was then easy to understand. But here they come to the same thing and do not scold themselves. Marvelous.

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Unlike Red Hat, Basalt does not prohibit creating its own distributions based on its repositories, including commercial ones.

Generally speaking, Red Hat, understanding the problematic nature of its position, explains what can be taken from their turnips by transferring the appropriate rights to those and under what conditions. And on their code there are several independent distrov.
Basalt does not "forbid" it ignores the problem. And no one has the right to use the packages from the rep officially does not give. And of the independents, there is only a conditional Comet on bird rights.
P.S. Do not confuse the technical ability to take packets from the server with the permission to take them.

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What is Michael saying here?
1. That he doesn’t like this idea with payment for legal entities. She, by the way, was a big surprise for him.
2. Mikhail really doesn't like that all legal entities are equal in the wording of the license. Those. and a poor rural school and a large enterprise.

And you have to understand that he wrote all this a year ago, when they started poking him in that thread about sudden changes in the license for his own starterkit. Since then, his corporate solidarity has risen and his sense of right has also shifted. And he did not stop answering some questions, but he jokes with some. In general, the desire of the talking heads of Basalt to extinguish the problem by chattering and promising on the forums that they will never write in licenses .. It saddens more than paid distributions.

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There was a "pirate" school variation of Komisarov, which the Altovites verbally poured fecal matter on.

Probably because Komissarov and his comrades only took without giving anything in return? In addition, the distribution kit they created was out of the ordinary bad.

The catch is that no one has the right to take packages from the repository. No offer for you, nothing. Basalt owns most of the packages and trademarks with technical control over the server. Sometimes nicknames on the forums write that, of course, turnips are for everyone, but only on the forums and this is not a legal plane. It is not interesting for third-party people not from the Team to cut Bolgenos in such a context.

Wrong. The authorship does not belong to the company, but to specific people, albeit now employees of Basalt. It's not exactly the same. Basalt does not have exclusive rights to the entire repository, they cannot close it, since the consent of all Timovites is needed, but not all Timovites are Basalt employees.

Probably because Komissarov and his comrades only took without giving anything in return?

Here is a demonstrative phrase you have a phrase. On the one hand, from Skull, for example, you can hear that the repository is open to everyone. On the other hand, get into the stands as before and begin to line up who is worthy and who is not.

Why distributions exist at all. Because hundreds of thousands of developers have deliberately limited their rights within copyleft. Why Alt can be proud of thousands of packages in Sisyphus. Because the developers of their source code did not require something to give in return. But the representatives of Alt/Basalt are special of course.

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ever. The authorship does not belong to the company, but to specific people, albeit now employees of Basalt. It's not exactly the same. Basalt does not have exclusive rights to the entire repository,

So note that the packages belong to their owners and the rights to use them. It's not a new question. For many years, ALTs have laid out a rake for those who want to use packages. No denies the GPL that you. Just a carefully laid out rake and a public mantra - We are open. And also grandiloquent about the contribution against the background of what you took from free software.

I am evil, yes, but never a lawyer to Komissarov. Well, the current situation is hammering nails into the coffin of open source software in the Russian Federation.

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RedHat writes special clauses so that those who wish can take a derivative of the free one. At the same time, it bears losses from competitors. The Debian Social Contract simply grows out of a need to protect the ability to build derivatives of it.
And Basalt talks on the forums about the lack of a contribution. Uh-huh, you need to understand domestic open source software.

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And I don't understand why employees of a third-party company can't join Team?

Because it won't protect anyone. And to do business on emotions is not very good. You do not have a procedure after which a member of the Team will be able to take what is being discussed with full right. By the way, the Kommisarovsky fork was handled by a person from Team. And it didn't help much.

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I am not a representative of Basalt, just a Timovite.

Tell that to the thousands of people who wrote code that turned into alt packages. Their code is amazingly accessible to everyone, even to you.

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Maybe bring this topic up on forum.altLinux ☃.org?

Novodvorsky and Smirnov will not go anywhere and will catch up, as was the case when the license was changed.

And what changed from them. I had some hope for a solution. But it's still the same as it was when it first appeared :(

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The GPLv2 license under which the starterkit is distributed. Muddle water in an empty place.

Under the GPL, the starterkit build profile is distributed. Which cannot be used without some kind of alt distribution. And the finished starterkit is already under a different license, which can be read on the Basalt website. And there the GPL is mentioned but not limited to it. And I quoted one of the doubtful moments. How these conditions can be combined is a separate question. But they are not identical with the GPL, just similar. And Shigorin, talking about starterkits under the GPL, is somewhat misleading. I don't know how deliberate.

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Alt packages are also available to everyone for free!

I spoke a little higher about the difference between the technical ability to download and use and the official permission to do so. And this difference in "all for nothing" will not fit: (The freedom of the code, for example, is determined by the formal publication of a license. Without this, they will not even take it to the alt repository :) But for some reason I am invited to take my word for it. Here if for example to take new distribution kits of Basalt. As an individual, I can download and use them. And as a commercial - it is proposed to buy. Feel the difference. But from a technical point of view - no difference. The server is one for all and for free :(

There are no restrictions for access to Altovsky repositories. I do not understand you!

Just show me any permission for this on Alta/Basalt site? When such permissions are easily written on behalf of forum nicknames and never officially? What should I be thinking about in particular Basalt?

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Tell that to the thousands of people who wrote code that turned into alt packages. Their code is amazingly accessible to everyone, even to you.

Alt packages are also available to everyone for free! There are no restrictions for access to Altovsky repositories. I do not understand you!

To clarify. These 1000 didn't just post the code, they gave the legal right to use and make derivatives of it. Including Alta. Without asking there will be some gain from it. Alt just uploaded it to the server and formally forgot to pass the baton of rights. And maybe even from some strange principles :(
Is it clear now?

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Hello to all!
I want to insert a little from myself nigotivchika about viola.
A few years ago, a blind Tomsk enthusiast decided to stir up something with Alto, but something didn’t seem to work out for them and, as a result, he sat down on Ubuntu.
I am surprised that this distribution kit is already quite a few years old, and that at least one blind person would install it without dancing with bbubn.
ubuntu, although not an ideal distribution kit, but I install it without outside help.
Yes, unity is not very convenient, and sometimes it just infuriates.
domestic developers apparently live on the moon or somewhere else, they do not watch TV, they have never seen a person with physical disabilities, etc.
debian, if it had a normally voiced installer like in ubuntu, then I would probably only use it.
I especially resent taking money for a po that doesn't belong to you.
if they want to earn money, let them take a pen and paper and write their core from scratch.

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If you are talking about Misha Pozhidaev, then R&D on the development of deepsolver did not "grow together" there - some fatal things about SAT solvers surfaced already strongly in the process. Well, he is not blind, but "only" sees very badly - I know him and his relatives, and I have also been to Tomsk.
In general, "cut the sturgeon."

--
Michael Shigorin

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It's still unclear. Here is the question about the need for nvidia drivers on Virtualbox, Mikhail said that anyway, the system is cleaned during installation, and they don’t have to do anything. And now I have an Nvidia dump on AMD, and a Veza driver. Moreover, Alterator does not want to put the AMD driver into the crossbar. Synthetics of permanent Avos).

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There is at least one reason not to abandon Red products. On my working machine there was a "green" vidyakha and as long as there were two monitors, everything was in order. But when I connected the third one, it turned out that the system did not want to turn it on as active, neither through the nvidia panel, nor through the xorg. Googling has shown that the problem is widespread and many have tortured their own and other people's brains trying to solve it.
The problem disappeared as soon as I stuck the "red" vidyahu.

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No matter how the guys associated with Alt tried to justify themselves, but for me, as for a simple layman, the fact remains: you took a free thing, hung it with ruffles and went to trade. And all the same, you went to schools first of all, and not for an idea, but for money, since in 2004, when distribution kits, and even ready-made PCs with Alt installed, got into many schools "voluntarily-compulsorily", none of the school directors and in a nightmare could not imagine paying money for a "black cat in a poke". If you are such geniuses and patriots, sell your software to firms (not related to the state), individuals and see how much you make. And the millions allocated to you should be better directed to the training of computer science teachers and school system administrators (if any) - it will be much more useful, because I can imagine what a mess will begin in schools with the start of the next academic year. And I would like to note to the respected "antoha-linux" that out of the 18 thousand indicated members of the forum, I'm sure more than half are registered only in order to solve any existing problem related to the use of your software, which you agree for 70 million PC users in Russia is a harmful sect. Starter kits are produced that can be used by organizations without restrictions. Anyone can build a distribution kit and distribute it freely. A teacher from Moscow collects the Comet distribution kit, implemented it in three schools. Whoever wants to, take it and implement it on the ground yourself, no one will take a penny. And we will help.

If they bulldoze into budget institutions- and it is possible and necessary, and in every possible way to ridicule it, and, if possible, stop it. Although, given the decision of the State Duma, I think it's too late, resellers have already become excited and are beginning to bombard schools and kindergartens with "super-profitable" offers.

Any educational institution can sign a contract and get it for free.

Let's look at the price list "Gandalf" for example - what is the "domestic" software for?

A teacher from Moscow collects the distribution kit Comet...

Are you a deputy by any chance? Does your country end with Moscow? In order to start working with Linux tomorrow, both children and teachers had to be taught 20 years ago, so I argued and continue to assert: at this stage, Linux is a sect. This can even be seen on the pages of your forum, where high-flown answers with links to Linux tutorials often pop up thickly.
Can you tell me by chance how many computer science teachers with knowledge of Linux have been (actually) trained in the country? How many sysadmins?

What do you propose? Continue to use Windows and send billions of rubles annually abroad?

Envy is a bad quality!!! I'll remind you for a second that both Linux and Windows began to develop at about the same time, and the latter won in a fair competition, primarily due to user friendliness. I installed my first XP and even then I heard from my friends from "RINH" that our native Linux is about to start. 17 years have passed. the result can be compared by the number of users.
Create your own system from scratch, win the competition without administrative pressure and cheap "Urapatriotism", and I will agitate with both hands for all my friends. I understand that Linux users will think with their heads, and not just point their fingers like in Windows, because they really have to learn programming and, accordingly, English and algebra in parallel, in order to use their PC more or less tolerably: install, for example, drivers on Wi-Fi - "whistle", or stupidly upgrade from version 8.1 to 8.2 Alta and dance with a tambourine for three days and try to understand why Failed. And about the various budget "Contingent", FIS Unified State Examination, FIS FRDO, "DELO", etc., about installing an EDS on the "habr" whole instructions of what size the tambourine should be and what dances to perform.

Who are you blaming this for? Isn't the government to blame for this?

I argued and continue to assert: at this stage, Linux is a sect.

In your mythological picture of the world? Yes, please continue to live in it.

This can even be seen on the pages of your forum, where high-flown answers with links to Linux tutorials often pop up thickly.

Who was to prepare them? Alt Linux on your own money? You are mistaken that domestic distributive builders are raking in money with a shovel. This is especially true for the period before the start of import substitution (2016), when they barely held on.

Envy is a bad quality!!!

Am I jealous? No, I feel sorry for the state. Money that could be spent on education is used to buy licenses for proprietary software.

I will remind you for a second that both Linux and Windows started to develop at about the same time, and the latter won in a fair competition, primarily due to user friendliness.

No, not at the same time. Why's that? Microsoft has been increasing and increasing its presence in the market since the 80s, until it became a monopoly in the mid-90s. Linux actually started as an OS for ordinary users only in 98 with the release of Mandrake. The market has been monopolized for several years.
In Russia, Linux initially had no chance, since windows was pirated by everyone. There was no fair competition. Computer firms offered only windows, for free. Application software and drivers were written only for Windows.

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I understand that people closely associated with Linux have a slightly different perception and way of thinking. This is the only way to explain your desire to once again inspire me that I live in the mythological world of a multi-million Windows army, and only a community of barely 20 thousand users (according to your most optimistic calculations) lives in the real real world. It certainly never looks like a sect.

What's wrong with giving good advice to learn Linux not by hitting the bumps, but by studying a textbook that will give you the basics?

Often and densely a person asks a question in order to solve a momentary tactical task, to which he may not return in the future. Roughly exaggerating, I do not need to know how electricity is generated in order to screw the outlet.
I didn’t say anywhere that domestic distribution builders are raking in money with a shovel, I’m saying that you rather undeservedly want to stick to these endless streams, before that for a long time and unsuccessfully, but now things will get better! I expect paid training courses for "specialists" in domestic distributions", naturally from "domestic distribution builders". As I already wrote, resellers are at a low start!
And you are not offended for the state. And for the fact that billions of flows (which you repeatedly repeat according to Freud) go past you. The money taken from Microsoft will not go to schools and kindergartens, but will be used to purchase your (not specifically Altovsky) software. There will be a replacement of awl with soap, only in this case it will be extremely painful, and, like 90% of the reforms carried out in education, it will also be harmful.
For the state, you should be offended for not having enough brains, or being buried somewhere in our bureaucracy, to create your own. And what would you suggest now if Linus Torvalds also decided to make his kernel proprietary?
You yourself write: ordinary users our OS is free. That is, people do not want to install your software for free, for free, for free, preferring a Windows license, or some less legal methods, but Windows!!! This is something Karl should talk about !!! This is a forced Ukrainization (Linuxization), only in a talk show about Ukraine it is bad and evil, but for Russian system education good??? Does anyone have any dissonance?

TP-Link 725n, of course, did not work, since the recommendations of the participants in the Alt forum, including those in the "master titles", go buy another one - this is not some kind of Windows for you, which itself determines everything and automatically launches. altlinux.org/Platform 8
altlinux.org/Ninth_platform