Ninth Platform

The Ninth Platform p9 (Vaccinium), a new stable branch of ALT repositories, created and developed within the framework of Sisyphus project by ALT Linux Team, is designed to develop, test, distribute, update and support complex solutions at all levels — from embedded devices to enterprise servers and data centers. The Ninth Platform is supported by Basealt SPO LLC.

What's new?

Support for new architectures

In addition to x86 architectures, ALT p9 supports 6 new hardware architectures.

Main architectures (parallel builds alongside i586 and x86_64)

• aarch64
• ppc64le

Additional architectures (separate "catch-up" builds)

• armh
• mipsel

Proprietary architectures

Separate builds, packages are not published; these are available to hardware owners through an official request to Basealt Ltd

• e2k, e2kv4 (4C, 8C/1C+)

Others

Since 2018, the unstable Sisyphus repository supports the rv64gc (riscv64) architecture. It will be added to p9 when relevant user systems appear.

Learn more about the systems tested on new architectures:

aarch64

Tested with:

• APM Mustang (X-Gene1)
• GIGABYTE H270-T71 (Cavium/Marvell ThunderX)
• Huawei TaiShan 2280 (Kunpeng 916)
• Huawei TaiShan 2280V2 (Kunpeng 920)

For single-board computers, file system archives (rootfs) are built for installation to an SD card according to the instruction. Raspberry Pi 3 (mainline kernel) and Nvidia Jetson Nano (tegra kernel) are officially supported. However, builds with mainline kernel can be used for other computers as well, so far only for those based on Allwinner SoC (it is required to write an appropriate loader).

ppc64le

Works on hardware with POWER8 and POWER9 processors. Tested on Yadro VESNIN Gen1 and IBM Power System S822L servers.

armh

For single-board computers, file system archives (rootfs) are built for installation onto an SD card according to the instruction. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 (mainline kernel) and ELVIS Salute EL24MP2 (mcom02 kernel) are officially supported. However, builds with mainline kernel can be used for other computers as well, so far only for those based on Allwinner SoC (it is required to install an appropriate bootloader).

mipsel

"Tavolga Terminal" 2VT1 devices are supported: see installation instructions.

Tested on other devices with BE-T1000 (formerly known as Baikal-T1) and Loongson 3A processors.

e2k and e2kv4

"Elbrus-804", "Elbrus-802" and "Elbrus-4.4" servers, as well as the "Elbrus 801-PC", "Elbrus 101-PC" and "Elbrus 401-PC" workstations, are supported. Also tested on a laptop and a tablet with "Elbrus-1C+" processor. .

A standard installation requires a DVD drive (usually connected via USB) and an ISO image written to appropriate media.

Changes in rpm and apt

The Ninth Platform has seen major changes in apt and rpm. In particular, rpm package manager has been significantly updated: it is now based on RPM 4.13.0.1.

Changes in apt:

• there is now support for rpmlib(FileDigests), which allows for installing third-party packages (Yandex Browser, Google Chrome and others) with no repackaging required
• apt-get autoremove command (deletes all automatically installed dependencies that are no longer needed) and the apt-mark utility (can be used to mark a package as installed automatically/manually) were added
• apt-get upgrade command is disabled as unsupported by default (can be enabled with the relevant option in apt.conf or with the command argument)
• https transport was added
• the APT::Cache-Limit default value was increased by 1.5 times
• the built-in interpreter was updated to Lua 5.3
• numerous fixes and improvements

Besides, the apt-get dedup command (deletes all forbidden duplicate packages) was added to the apt-scripts package.

Software Center

Discovery and installation of applications rather than packages (with screenshots, ratings, localized descriptions) — gnome-software and discover.

LibreOffice build policy

There are two types of the LibreOffice office suite available:

1. LibreOffice — "Fresh" version (for experimenters and advanced users)
2. LibreOffice-still — "Still" version (for corporate customers)

Single Samba package

The samba-dc Active Directory domain controller package and the regular samba package are built from the same source package. This means that a domain controller can be installed on any distribution with any environment.

Support for relevant GOST algorithms

• The new version of OpenSSL 1.1 supports the domestic GOST R 34.11-2012 cryptographic algorithm using the openssl-gost-engine package. Learn more: ru:GOST in OpenSSL.
• There is also a new gostsum package, which calculates the checksum according to the GOST R 34.11-2012 algorithm:

  $ date | gost12sum
  dbdad0e2802c02d7f4cc03e27e24df2806d5d382b6a23a15ecb18f46cebcb2ae -
  

Subsystem and package versions

The Ninth Platform repositories will be updated during the support period. At the time of p9 official announcement they contain the following software versions, among the rest:

Software	Version
Linux kernel (std-def)	4.19.66
Linux kernel (un-def)	5.2.9
Linux kernel (ovz-el7)	3.10.0
systemd	242
GNU Libc	2.27
GCC	8.3.1
Python	3.7.3 and 2.7.16
Perl	5.28.1
PHP	7.2.19
Ruby	2.5.5
Java	1.8.0.212 (java-1.8.0-openjdk)
Mono	5.20.1.19
.NET Core	2.1.9
X.Org Server	1.20.4
Mesa	19.0.5
GNOME	3.32.2
KF5/Plasma/KDE SC	5.59.0/5.16.2/19.04.2
MATE	1.22.1
Xfce	4.14.0
Enlightenment	0.22.4
Cinnamon	4.2.1
Firefox	68.0.1, firefox-esr 68.0.2
LibreOffice	6.3.0.3 LibreOffice-still 6.2.6.2
Samba	4.10.3 (with samba-dc)
Bash	4.4.23
BIND	9.11.6
CUPS	2.2.11
DHCP	4.4.1
Apache httpd	2.4.39
nginx	1.14.2
MariaDB	10.4.7
PostgreSQL	11.5, 10.10 (regular and for 1C)
Postfix	2.11.11
Dovecot	2.3.5
SOGo	4.0.8
OpenSSL	1.1.1b
GTK+	2.24.32 and 3.24.9
Qt	4.8.7 and 5.12.4
Tomcat	9.0.13
Wildfly (JBoss)	10.1.0
Proxmox	5.4.6
Kubernetes	1.15.2
OpenNebula	5.8.4
Ansible	2.7.10
Puppet	6.7.2

Contents and versions of other packages are available on the packages.altlinux.org website.

Get started with the Ninth Platform repositories quickly

Starter kits

For those who prefer to independently choose the components of the system and its design, we present the opportunity to start working with the new platform using small installation images with different desktop environments. To implement this style of work with the repositories of the Ninth Platform, the starter kits for the x86_64, i586, aarch64, armh, mipsel architectures have been created and made available (Cinnamon, GNOME, IceWM, KDE5, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, WindowMaker, Xfce desktop environments, as well as a minimal installer (JeOS), a server installer and an image for use with OpenStack; the options in bold are available in builds for all supported architectures).

The following starter kits are available for owners of "Elbrus" computer systems: Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE, Xfce for e2k/e2kv4.

Compared to p8, the TDE and KDE4 options are excluded as they are no longer supported in the repository; the WindowMaker option is removed as a duplicate of GNUStep (since GNUStep is essentially based on it); the Enlightenment option is postponed in order to be tested more thoroughly.

The range of starter kits in p9 is expanded with the release of updates that are delivered in a planned quarterly mode (with proper testing). Experimental builds may be found here and in similar subdirectories for other architectures.

It is important to note that these p9 starter kits are not distributions; they do not contain any complete solutions or cohesive design, but only serve as a starting point.

See also: Starterkits

Official Docker images

The official image of the Ninth Platform (p9) is available at https://hub.docker.com/, it can be obtained via the following link: https://hub.docker.com/_/alt/. The official image is available for the following architectures: aarch64, i586, ppc64le and x86_64.

See also: Docker

LXC/LXD images

The official images of the Ninth Platform (p9) for LXC and LXD are available at https://images.linuxcontainers.org. The official images are available for the following architectures: aarch64, i586, ppc64le and x86_64.

See also: LXD

The Ninth Platform distribution solutions

Download images

The following beta versions of the distributions are available:

• ALT Workstation 9
• ALT Workstation K 9
• ALT Server 9
• ALT Server V 9 (virtualization server)
• ALT Education 9
• as well as the starter kits

When the main server is overloaded, please use the Yandex mirror.

Others

Under development:

• Simply Linux 9
• New certified products on the Ninth Platform

Upgrade to the Ninth Platform

Please read the upgrade instructions carefully before upgrading your current system to the Ninth Platform. In case of difficulties, please do not hurry; ask a question on the mailing list or at our forum.