[altlinux-announce-en] Distribution Release: ALT KWorkstation on Platform 10

[Maria Fokanova]

Good day!

The distribution ALT KWorkstation 10 with a desktop environment based on 
KDE Plasma available on platform 10 (p10 Aronia branch). The assembly is 
prepared for the x86_64 architecture. The operating system is included 
in the Unified Register of Russian Programs and Databases. The 
distribution appeals to a wide circle of users to work in the office and 
at home.

Download the release image (in the most accessible mirror):
http://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/altlinux/p10/images/kworkstation/
http://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/p10/images/kworkstation/
http://mirror.yandex.ru/altlinux/p10/images/kworkstation/

The release of the operating system ALT KWorkstation 10.0 became the 
final update of the entire line of ALT distribution kits to the 10th 
Aronia branch. In December 2021 the ALT distribution kits Server, 
Workstation, Education, Simply Linux, Server Virtualization were 
released. BaseALT Ltd. products respond to requests of Russian 
organizations that consists in the implementation of the transition to 
the infrastructure under the control of domestic operating systems. 
Workstations and servers based on Russian processors are widely 
applicable and in demand in areas such as the public sector, the field 
of education and healthcare, large business and security agencies.

An important feature is the ability to boot from the ALT KWorkstation 
disk in LiveCD mode. As other operating systems in the ALT OS family the 
distribution comes with the Alterator GUI for system configuration, 
which allows you to manage users and groups, view system logs, add 
printers, set up a network and more. The system successfully works in 
the Active Directory domain. Support for group policy applying is 
implemented with the Samba 4.14 server.

New features and familiar applications

The distribution kit contains current versions packages for the system 
environment based on the Linux 5.15 kernel, Glibc 2.32, the GCC 10.3 
compiler set, systemd 249.9. ALT KWorkstation 10 contains all the tools 
for performing office tasks - a web browser, an office suite of text 
editors and spreadsheets as well as players and editors for sound and 
video. The new 10th version of ALT KWorkstation supports the 12th 
generation of Intel Alder Lake processors and seamless system boot. It 
also became possible to take a screenshot during the installation of the 
system. Tablet computer users can appreciate the improved support for 
their devices.

The developers have added more drivers for OKI, Brother printers and 
Epson scanners. In the new 10th version, the Linphone program appeared - 
a cross-platform software client for IP telephony in the SIP standard 
with an open source code distributed under the GNU GPL license. The 
Linphone program is intended for making audio and video calls, as well 
as exchanging text messages via the Internet.

Support for Snap apps to desktop, cloud and IoT added, it allows users 
to securely install and run packages from the Snap Store, an app store 
for Linux (Canonical). Snap apps are easy to install, cross-platform and 
standalone. The Snapd daemon is able to work with an additional 
repository based on Canonical. The Flatpak utility includes the flathub 
repository by default. In this way, users will be able to work with Snap 
and Flatpak applications without the risk of messing up the main system.

Safe work

The developers have taken care of a safe system update. In the new mode 
the system will update the packages during reboot. 
Plasma5-discover-packagekit appeared instead of apt-indicator. To work 
on the Web the Chromium browser was assembled with support for the 
Chromium-gost 97 encryption algorithm and the Thunderbird 91 mail 
client. The network settings are managed by NetworkManager 1.32.
Electronic digital signature (EDS) tools - Rutoken, JaCarta and ISBC - 
are compatible with KWorkstation. Working process with EDS keys becomes 
possible right out of the box, including support for two-factor 
authentication along with tokens. Also Russian root encryption 
certificates appeared in the system.

New Application Versions

The office toolkit includes the LibreOffice 7 package for editing texts, 
spreadshits and presentations, the Okular 21.12 document viewer and the 
built-in QStarDict 1.3 dictionary. Many will appreciate the built-in 
utility for text recognition gImageReader 3.3. You can navigate with the 
Dolphin 21 file manager. The classic set of applications for working 
with video and sound files, complex graphics and animation now uses the 
default graphics editor Krita 5.0, replacing Gimp.
The distribution supports 3D and OpenCL hardware acceleration tools with 
branded NVIDIA video card drivers.

Error correction

The launch of the installer has been improved on systems with UEFI 
firmware; developers paid special attention to problematic UEFI 
specifications. In addition to notable improvements in processor 
support, kernel launch and cross-platform application support the ALT 
KWorkstation developers have fixed a number of shortcomings. For the X11 
graphics subsystem a hang was eliminated in cases where the hostname was 
changed.

So,

The new distribution is the three years of patient labour on a product 
worthy of use in organizations and at home.
Read more on the wiki (in russian):
https://www.altlinux.org/Альт_Рабочая_Станция_К_10

Users of ALT distributions on Platform 9 (p9) can update the system from 
the p10 branch of the Sisyphus repository. For new corporate users it is 
possible to obtain test versions and traditionally private users are 
offered to download the required version of the ALT OS for free from the 
BaseALT Ltd. website or from the new download site.

Cloud images:
http://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/ALTLinux/p10/images/cloud/

You can also view and download distributions of other products:
https://getalt.org/en/


-- 
Best regards,
Maria Fokanova
community manager