After nearly three years of development, the ALT Linux Team and Basalt SPO have released the "Eleventh ALT Platform" (p11, codename "Salvia") — a new stable branch of the ALT repository, based on the Sisyphus free software repository. The platform is designed for the development, testing, distribution, updating, and support of complex solutions at all levels — from embedded devices to enterprise servers and data centers. The repository is available for x86_64, ARM64, and i586 architectures. Support for the e2k "Elbrus" architecture will be provided later, along with efforts to ensure support for RISC-V and Loongarch architectures.
To evaluate the capabilities of the new platform, 22 experimental ALT starter sets have been created, providing live builds with user environments based on Cinnamon, Deepin, GNOME, IceWM, KDE5, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, GNUstep, and Xfce. Products based on Platform 11, such as ALT Server 11, ALT Workstation 11, and ALT Education 11, are planned to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024. The starter builds are distributed under the GPL license, while the ALT series products are under a licensing agreement that allows free use only for individuals, with testing permitted for legal entities (commercial licenses or written licensing agreements are required for use).
Key Changes:
- Packages with Linux kernels 6.1.87, 6.6.28, 6.1.90-rt, and 3.10.0.1160.90.1.vz7.200.7 (openvz) have been proposed.
- System components have been updated: systemd 255.6, Glibc 2.38, OpenSSL 3.1.5, GnuTLS 3.8.4, Bash 5.2, NetworkManager 1.46.0.
- Developer packages have been updated: GCC 13.2.1, LLVM 18.1, Python 3.12.2, Perl 5.38.2, PHP 8.3.6, Ruby 3.1.4, Rust 1.77, Go 1.22, Java 21, Node.js 20.12.1.
- Desktop environment components have been updated: X.Org Server 21.1.13, Mesa 24.0.6, GTK 4.14.3, Qt 5.15.13, GNOME 46, KDE 5.115.0 (no plans to add KDE 6 packages), MATE 1.28.0, Xfce 4.18.0, Enlightenment 0.26.0, Cinnamon 6.0.4.
- User applications have been updated: Firefox 125.0.1, Chromium 124, LibreOffice 24.2, Telegram Desktop 5.0.0, Ardour 8.6, Audacity 3.4.2, FFmpeg 6.1.1.
- Server packages have been updated: Samba 4.20.0, BIND 9.18.26, CUPS 2.4.7, Kea DHCP 2.4.1, Apache httpd 2.4.59, nginx 1.24.1, MariaDB 10.11.7, PostgreSQL 16.3, Postfix 3.8.3, Dovecot 2.3.21, Tomcat 10.1.20, Ansible 2.16.6, Puppet 8.4.0, DPDK 23.11.0, BIRD 2.15.
- Updated tools for virtualization and container isolation: Docker 26.1.0, Podman 5.0.2, Proxmox (PVE) 8.1.10, Kubernetes 1.28.8, OpenNebula 6.6.1.1, libvirt 10.2.0, Open VSwitch 3.3.0, runc 1.1.12.
- Transition to multimedia has been implemented. server PipeWire 1.0.7. The JACK sound server has been removed from the repository in favor of pipewire-jack.
- All executables and libraries from the root directories /bin, /sbin, and /lib have been moved to the /usr section (the directories /bin, /sbin, and /lib* are formatted as symbolic links to the corresponding directories within /usr).
- The user identifier (UID) for nobody has been changed from 99 to 65534 (the overflowuid value).
- Packages with the '~' symbol in the version or release are allowed in the repository, which can be used to denote pre-release versions, for example, 1.2~rc2.
- The apt-get utility has been enhanced with support for visual output of packages grouped in multiple columns.
- For wireless connections, the ability to assign a separate permanent MAC address (stable-ssid mode) has been provided.
- Support for Multipath TCP has been added.
- The Kea DHCP server has replaced ISC DHCP.
- An ALT Diagnostic Tool with a graphical interface has been added for system diagnostics.
- The library libdomain 0.9.13 has been added to simplify interaction with various servers LDAP, including FreeIPA, Samba/AD, and OpenLDAP. Initial support for Samba, a test suite for Samba, tests for TLS, tests for adding and removing, modifying and renaming computers in OpenLDAP have been implemented in libdomain 0.9.13.
- The alterator-browser 0.1.3 has been introduced, a graphical interface for system configuration using D-Bus, supporting the display and launch of installed Alterator modules.
Source: opennet.ru
