Hello everybody, ALT Linux starts public beta-testing of ALT Linux School. This is a set of distributions that includes: ALT Linux 5.0.0 Lite (XFCE) ALT Linux 5.0.0 Junior (GNOME) ALT Linux 5.0.0 Master (KDE4) There are many differences compared to the Free Software Suite that was released and sent to Russian schools in 2008. One distribution is now based on GNOME desktop environment. We have added packages to all distributions for additional educational process automation (iTALC to monitor and control computer class activity, iTest to make testing pupils easier, FreeNX to access remote systems with graphical terminals, recordMyDesktop to record videos of your desktop). Several IDEs have been added, including Anjuta, Geany and Code::Blocks. VirtualBox, a system virtualization engine, and Avidemux, a video processing tool, are also in ALT Linux School, as well as many other pieces of software. Some technical details about ALT Linux School: Linux kernel 2.6.30 OpenOffice.org 3.1.0.6 XFCE 4.6.1 (in Lite) GNOME 2.26 (in Junior) KDE 4.3.0 (in Master) GIMP 2.6.7 Scribus 1.3.5.1 Inkscape 0.47 More information can be found at ALT Linux Wiki: http://en.altlinux.org/ALT_Linux_5_School The distributions can be downloaded from our beta-versions FTP location: ftp://beta.altlinux.ru/school/2009 Please note that this is just a beta-version and it is not intended to be used by inexperienced users. Those who have courage are highly welcome, however. Happy testing! -- Alexey Rusakov Technical Manager/International Relations Manager ALT Linux