Astra Linux Common Edition 1.10 Review

Astra Linux Common Edition (release "Eagle") is the "civilian" analogue of the main product of the RusBITech operating system line - the operating system in Astra Linux Special Edition (release "Smolensk"). If the distribution of a special-purpose operating system is limited, then a general-purpose distribution kit is available for download.

According to the description from the Astra Linux CE distribution page :

is a Linux-class operating system operating on a x86-64 hardware platform, which includes free software components and authoring solutions developed by the Astra Linux Common Edition operating system, enabling it to be expanded as a server platform or at users' workstations .

The article describes the personal experience of using Astra Linux CE as a "home" operating system.
Note: The author is not related to the company - developer.

Getting the distribution

The distribution image can be downloaded from the official download page .
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Installation

A comprehensive installation manual is found in the installation manual (pdf) . It describes all the options and installation options. In a more concise form, the manual in the html format is in the distribution (install-doc / index.html). In the simplest version, the installation in graphic mode represents the sequential pressing of the “Continue” button.

The operating system can be installed from a USB drive. On each installation screen, you can take a screenshot and save it to USB, from which the operating system is installed.

Measurements of the installation time did not perform, but according to subjective sensations, the installation goes pretty quickly.
Most actions performed are typical of the installation process for * nix systems. For those interested - under the spoiler step by step screenshots.

After installation, there is one unclear point: where is the password for the superuser? After reviewing the reference manual I found such a form, but in fact it did not appear during the installation process. Then I had to create a root account in recovery mode.

Loading the operating system and logging in

GRUB bootloader with branded background. During system startup, the server fly-dm and the graphic part of the fly-qdm shell start .
All applications that have the prefix fly- are developed by the authors of the distribution. Most of them have mnemonic abbreviations (for example, fly-fm - file manager, fly file manager).

Desktop

The left side of the taskbar contains the buttons for calling the Fly start menu-panel, the minimize / maximize button for all windows, the button for switching on the desktop selection mode, the button for displaying the window switch and a schematic representation of the desktops.



The taskbar set on the right depends on the currently running programs, but in general it contains the fly-admin-wicd network connection manager, the fly-update-notifier update check utility, the QasMixer volume control, the fly-xkbmap keyboard indicator / switch, the fly-admin clock -date When a USB drive is connected, an icon appears, by clicking on which you can mount the drive and open the contents in the fly-fm or Midnight Commander file manager.

reference system

By calling this or that program fly and pressing F1 you can get help on this program. Help is displayed in Qt Assistant. According to the tree structure, it is possible to go to any program. All programs are divided into sections.

Hotkeys

Almost all hotkeys perform actions similar (or similar) to those in MS Windows. For example, pressing the Win key opens the menu bar. Alt + tab displays a window switch. Win + D minimizes all windows, and pressing Win + D again expands the windows (but their order is already changing - they unfold from first to last according to their order in the taskbar), Win + E opens fly-fm file manager.
A full description of the hot keys is in the help system.

Terminal fly

The Fly terminal is a graphical shell for the bash 4.2.37 (1) command interpreter.



The terminal allows you to create sessions in new tabs, which are numbered as they open. Tabs can be renamed. In the drop-down menu in the taskbar, you can select a command from a predefined list (if you are too lazy to type in your hands). The contents of this menu can be customized by adding your own commands and overriding the order in which the commands are placed. For the terminal, you can choose one of the preset color schemes, or set your own.
Selecting the text, you can click the right mouse button and in the context menu that appears, select the desired action.

Office tools

Office tools are represented by the LibreOffice 4.2.4.2 package, the GoldenDict dictionary, the pp qpdfviewer pdf viewer, and the JuffEd text editor.

Fly-fm file manager

The file manager looks a lot like “Explorer” from the Microsoft world.



In fly-fm, directories can be opened both in separate windows and in new tabs. The “Favorites” location allows you to add links to directories, to do this, go to the desired directory, right-click on Favorites and select “Add current location to Favorites”. Only in practice, this opportunity sometimes turns out to be useless, since the path in the Favorites / sdk form is displayed in the address bar and tab, and if we add another “sdk” directory to the Favorites, their address will look the same.

With the help of fly-fm, you can directly connect FTP directories; to do this, enter the corresponding address in the address bar. The FTP directory will appear in the Network location.

To open a terminal in the current directory, you can select Tools-> Open Terminal, and the current directory will be the one that is current in fly-fm.

You can create a new file in any (available) directory by selecting the corresponding item from the context menu.
Note: in the previous OS version there was an annoying flaw in fly-fm - it was impossible to copy the file to the same directory - the manager suggested replacing it with himself. In the current version, the text of the file “Copy of file (1)” is added to the file name.

Multimedia

Multimedia tools are represented by the following programs:

• VLC Media Pleer
• QasMixer
• Audacity
• Clementine
• guvcview
• Video camera (fly-videocamera)
• Sound Recording (fly record)
• Burning discs (fly-cddvdburner)

For the webcam installed on the laptop, there were no drivers in Astra.

Graphics Tools

In the menu "Graphics" there are shortcuts for programs:

• Gimp
• Easypaint
• Inkscape
• Work with images (fly-image)
• Text recognition (fly-ocr)
• Scan (fly scan)
• Screenshot (fly-snapshot)
• Cameras (fly-photocamera)

Of this whole set, only GIMP and fly-snapshot used. I can’t say anything about GIMP, and fly-snapshot is so simple that in most cases it is suitable only for screen capture and subsequent image transfer to GIMP. If the area that needs to be cut in height occupies a significant part, then it becomes impossible to cut it with the “rectangular cut” tool and the “crop” tool (trimming) doesn’t drag the borders in this program. I hope over time, a screenshot will appear that can automatically make a screen on the geometry of the window.



Also among the standard programs for working with graphics, I personally lack the color picker. I had to install gpick from the Debian Wheezy repository.

Settings

A description of all the programs for setting up the system would take inadmissibly a lot of space, so I just give a screenshot of this section of the Fly panel menu that is called when you click on the red star in the bottom left of the screen.

Programs from the “Settings” section allow you to make most of the necessary changes to the system configuration exclusively in the windowed mode (within the limits limited by their functionality).

Development tools

The creation of fly-applications is governed by the Guidelines for the design of application software for the general-purpose operating system "Astra Linux Common Edition" (pdf) . This document lists all the development tools available in the system.

The main Astra Linux development framework is Qt 4.8.6 for version 1.9 and 4.8.6 / 5.3.0 for version 1.10. Having chosen the item “Development Tools” when installing aster 1.10, only the Qt 5.3.0 suite will be installed, for 4.8.6 you need to install the libqt4-dev package.

Below is the contents of the tab “Development” of the launch pad menu.

Conclusion

Would I recommend putting Astra Linux Common Edition as a simple user dekstop system? Rather not, than yes, unless you have no need / interest.

The whole feature and the actual reason for creating Astra Linux (in my opinion) lies in its specialized version. Initially, this distribution was not created for home users. You can look at the page with a list of compatible equipment and understand that the majority of users “from the side” who installed the system on their equipment will have compatibility problems (the PC had to install the proprietary Nvidia driver for the discrete card (since there were problems with the display in c)) laptop - driver for Wi-Fi).

But I am glad that the system is actively developing, the defects that were in previous versions are eliminated. I hope that in the next release the system will become even better.