ALT Linux (School Server) For Linux

ALT Linux (School Server) is a special edition of the ALT Linux operating system tailored for server systems inside various educational institutions, such as schools and universities. It is forked from the Mandrake Linux distribution

The School Server edition of ALT Linux is available for download as two installable-only DVD ISO images that have approximately 1 GB in size each, optimized for computers supporting either of the 32-bit (i586) and 64-bit (x86_64) instruction set architectures.

This special ALT Linux flavor is part of a very special project, called ALT Linux School, which delivers distributions of Linux tailored for the educational environment. Among other similar editions, we can mention ALT Linux School Junior, ALT Linux School Master and ALT Linux School Teacher.

From the boot menu, which is translated in several languages, including English, Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Belarusian, Turkish and Ukranian, the user can start the installation with normal configuration or with safe settings, boot from the local disk drive, as well as to run a memory test.

To install this operating system on your computer, you must choose a language, accept the license agreement, select a timezone, partition the disk, copy the files to your PC (automatic), install the bootloader, configure network interfaces (optional), enter a password for the root (system administrator) account, and create users and passwords.

It’s quite strange for a server-oriented operating system to use a graphical desktop environment, that’s way after installation, users will be dropped to a shell prompt where they will be able to login with the username and password created during the installation process.

However, if you want to access a graphical interface, you should known that ALT Linux School Server comes pre-installed with a basic window manager, called FVWM, which can be fired up using the ‘startx’ command in the console environment.