Re: [Comm-en] Some questions about Alt Linux from a beginner.

[Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.org>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 08:30:55PM +0000, Jason Long wrote:
> I never used Alt Linux and it is interesting for me because
> of security category. I have some questions and I'm thankful
> if anyone answer to my questions clearly.

Welcome ;-)

> 1- Can I use any .rpm files on Alt Linux? For example,
> Can I install CentOS or Red Hat programs on Alt Linux?

You can at least try and sometimes this will work but don't
count on it to work _every_ time.  The common problem is library
dependencies; we maintain some RH-compatible versions and
so called "provides" for some well-known 3rd party packages
but it's not a universal rule.

> 2- Which security mechanism using by Alt Linux?
> SELinux or AppArmor?

There's SELinux available; don't know how selinux-policy-alt
would suit your particular needs though.

What you didn't ask about here is http://en.altlinux.org/control
over security-sensitive objects like SUID/SGID binaries or
-- in some cases -- configuration.

tcb(5) might be of some interest, too.

> 3- Can Alt Linux offers all of the CentOS features as a web server?

Hard to tell for me as I never ran a CentOS web server...
you get more or less all of the common-use webservers and
some application stacks and webapps along with that, see also
http://packages.altlinux.org/en

> 4- Can it support Xen?

There are Xen packages in p9 repository, let's ask the Xen
maintainer, Dmitry, but I'd presume that he actually uses it
judging by maintenance style.

PS: just in case, there's a rather minimalistic ALT Server
starterkit: http://en.altlinux.org/starterkits and even a JeOS
for those preferring their systems to be built more or less from
the ground up; those of us willing to build custom images use
mkimage-profiles configuration management to do so (it's mostly
documented in Russian but there's not that much needed to
actually run it).

PPS: en.altlinux.org is pretty scarce, most of the documentation
for ALT sits on a Russian-speaking www.altlinux.org site as well
as within docs.altlinux.org; some of the articles could be
legible through e.g. google translate and some were translated
by hand after reasonable requests (it's hard to put a lot of
time and effort within a page someone didn't really need...).

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