Basalt SPO company has introduced the latest version of the Linux distribution tailored for educational institutions, known as Alt Education 11.0, which is based on the 11 ALT platform (P11). This distribution is designed for use in preschools, schools, universities, and other educational establishments. It is available for free for individuals under a license agreement, while commercial and government organizations can test it before requiring licenses for operational use. Alt Education 11.0 is compatible with X86_64 and Aarch64 platforms.
The new version of Alt Education facilitates the creation and integration of activities for students, teachers, and staff. Users can select the necessary programs during installation or download them later through a meta-package. This distribution offers centralized management of classrooms, simultaneous installation for multiple workstations, guest session support, compatibility with educational web services and local software, and interaction with interactive boards. Users have the choice of selecting either the XFCE or KDE Plasma graphical environment during setup.
Key updates in Alt Education 11.0 include:
- Updated packages such as XFCE 4.20.1, KDE Plasma 6.3, Linux 6.12, Perl 5.38.4, Python 3.12.7/2.7.18, PHP 8.3.19, GCC 13.2.1, Libreoffice 24.8.5.2, Chromium 136.0.7103.113, Wine 9.0.14, GIMP 3.0.2, WXMAXIMA 24.05.0, Scribus 1.7.0, Inkscape 1.4, Blender 4.3.0, Moodle 4.5, Lazarus 4.0, Qgis 3.42, and Python idle 3.12.
- Discontinuation of 32-bit architectures image formation.
- Default proposal of KDE Plasma 6 desktop on Wayland instead of the previous option. XFCE remains available as an alternative.
- Inclusion of Altcenter application for system information viewing, component setup, installation, and removal. Settings can now be adjusted through the Altcenter during installation.