ALT Linux

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ALT Linux is a set of GNU/Linux distributions based upon its development project, ALT Linux Sisyphus. There are single-disk desktop versions (Junior and Compact) and "huge" universal product suiting both server, desktop and development uses (Master).

ALT Linux Team arose from IPLabs Linux Team, a Moscow firm subdivision, in 2001. The latter cooperated with Linux-Mandrake and SuSE teams to improve localization (specifically Cyrillic) but at some point enough differences in its "Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition" became in fact distribution-specific and thus the decision was made to create ALT Linux project.

Since 2001, the project has attracted many contributors -- as of 2006, ALT Linux Team consists of more than 160 members from 6 countries.

Unstable branch, Sisyphus, is a repository (or metadistribution) tailored for being a convenient base for production subsets (practiced since ca. 2002 by 3rd party vendors like ApplianceWare). Master 2.4 has already included sandman -- a technology to facilitate creating specialized installers.

The project is sometimes considered Mandrake-rooted, which has mostly historical significance for now; it can be approximately described as having some nice features of Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Conectiva, PLD, Owl, and adding a fair share of original improvements.

The strong points for the distribution are: