Is there life on the Russian OS market? Overview of popular Russian OS

Those who closely and do not really follow the news in the IT field over the past five years should have noticed some import-substituting moods in the country. This mood breathed life into the market of domestic OS development. I decided to figure out what the domestic OS market is today, and which, in my opinion, projects have a future.

Causal relationship

In the early 2010s, the authorities started talking about a policy of independence from everything overseas and in 2014 at the legislative level approved restrictions on the use of foreign software in government departments. On this wave of import substitution, various Russian operating systems have flooded the domestic software market.

Russian OSs appeared before this, and, in principle, there are a lot of them, but it makes no sense to consider all systems. Since the main customer and consumer of Russian operating systems are still state organizations, state-owned companies and businesses that have fallen under sanctions, it makes sense to dwell on the systems that are presented today in the Unified Register of Russian Software, which means that they can be installed by these same customers, respectively, have chances on development and long existence.

Most of these systems are essentially Linux distributions — free and open source software. This is an easy way to quickly and at a decent level ensure that very independence from foreign software (yes, independence!) - you take, modify the code and bring it into line with the requirements of the new legislation.

In this review, I settled on full-fledged operating systems that have a distribution kit for both workstations and server ones, which have the chance to become a worthy replacement for the usual Windows and which, importantly, have certified versions for working with commercial and state secrets.

I must say right away that the purpose of this material is orientation, the article does not imply a deep immersion in the technical capabilities of systems.

However, as for OC, the information on the site is poorly presented, it is indicated that it has an SDI, but the distribution cannot be downloaded .

At the time of writing, the link looks like this :

Comparison of Alt, Astra, RED OS and ROSA

So, let's dwell on these distributions.

Alto

The creator of this OS is Bazalt SPO . They focused on creating their Linux distribution without regard to import substitution and the creation of protected versions of the OS.

At the moment, Alt has the largest community of Russian OS, a rich history, and high-quality support, including community support. Alt distributions have their own repository, which is considered one of the four largest in the world. In addition, they have the most detailed and well-developed product documentation, a large number of manuals, many detailed use cases.

Alt operating systems included in the register of Russian programs:

• Alt Workstation
• Alt Server
• Alt Education
• Alt Linux 7 SPT - Alta distribution certified by the FSTEC of Russia, with built-in information security tools.
  Alt Linux 7 SPT is available in the following versions:
  
  • Alt Linux 7 SPT Workstation
  • Alt Linux 7 SPT Thin Client
  • Alt Linux 7 SPT Server
• OS Alt 8 SP - already certified according to the new FSTEC rules.
  It is presented in two versions:
  
  • OS ALT 8 JV “Workstation”
  • OS ALT 8 JV “Server”

I note that the Alt distribution, in comparison with ROSA and Astra Linux, has gone far from the base. That ROSA, that Astra Linux are mutated existing distributions, ASTRA is Debian, and ROSA is RHEL. And Alt originally had Mandrake, but the developer changed it so much that the base distribution can no longer be seen.
And even Wikipedia refers Alt to independent distributions (not everything is true that is written in Wikipedia, but still indicative).

ASTRA

The company NPO RusBITech JSC (Astra Linux Group of Companies ) carries out the licensed development, production and implementation of information and automated systems, decision support systems, general-purpose software, the development and creation of information protection means and telecommunication facilities, and the new generation of complex training systems.

The developer is a member of the Linux Foundation and The Document Foundation (it seems the only one in Russia). And since February 2019, it has the official mirror of the Russian repository of its OS on the international portal https://mirrors.kernel.org .

The Astra operating system was developed by NPO RusBITech JSC specifically for use in a protected version and currently has certification with the ability to process information with the stamp "top secret". There are certificates of the FSTEC, FSB and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Stuffing the Astra OS is Debian only with built-in security and graphical environment (and dozens of its own graphical and console utilities). Astra also has a general-purpose operating system Astra Linux Common Edition, it is a “civilian” analogue of the main product - the protected Astra Linux Special Edition - with a free repository (about 13,000 programs). The Astra Linux interface differs from the standard linux ones and is much closer to windows, and is also adapted for touch screens, including on mobile devices.

Today, Astra is one of the most popular distributions for import substitution, possibly due in large part to its 24/7 technical support, the availability of ready-made infrastructure and a wide ecosystem of compatible solutions.

Of the interesting things, the OS developer is one of the few seriously engaged in scientific research.

DEW

The company “NTC IT ROSA” is another one of the suppliers of secure systems, which went its own way and divided distributions for protecting trade secrets and state secrets - ROSA “KOBALT” and ROSA DX “NIKEL”, respectively. The first is certified by the FSTEC of Russia in the desktop and server versions. The second can be used for state secrets with a signature stamp no higher than “secret”, exists only in the desktop version, has a certificate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The NIKEL distribution kit is certified only up to the 1B level and at the same time it is designed for the workstation only. The Cobalt distribution is certified to the 1G level and cannot be used to work with documents constituting a state secret.

This manufacturer also has unprotected OS options:

• ROSA Fresh - a free and free system for home use
• ROSA Enterprise Desktop (RED) - for use in organizations
• ROSA Enterprise Linux Server (RELS) - for building server solutions

But until the fall of 2018, unprotected ROSA OSs were not included in the registry, which limited the possibility of their use when import substitution was required.

RED OS

The developer of RED OS is the company RED SOFT. In addition to the OS, it has two more products: RED DBMS and RED Document Management Platform. Frankly, this OS for me "pig in a poke" - on the site of the information given is not very much, FSTEC certificates received only just. He writes about 15 years of experience, but in fact the very first data about the project with RED OS dates back to 2017 - then RED SOFT made Goslinux for the FSSP of Russia.

I believe that this system, after some modifications, has become a product for subsequent implementations.

February 20 at the conference on import substitution announced a version of RED OS 7.2.

Protected OS

Almost all certified operating systems, except ROSA DX "NICKEL", can be used to protect confidential information (trade secrets, personal data). For state secrets, Alt 7 SPT and Alt 8 SP, Astra Linux and ROSA Nickel are suitable for protection to the level of “secret”, while Alt 8 SP and Astra Linux SE are suitable for processing data constituting a state secret to information marked “top secret” and building systems in class 1B.

Why is it good when one manufacturer has both unprotected and protected OS? In most companies, the infrastructure (network) is divided into two circuits. A protected OS is used in the internal circuit; uncertified systems are allowed in the external circuit. To facilitate the migration process, it is still better to use the OS of one family, and write less documentation, well, and generally less labor.

Composition of software for workstations

From the point of view of application software, there is no serious difference between distributions; they all use a similar set of application software.

Composition of software in server distributions

* - according to the documentation (but FreeIPA and Samba are also available)
For server OSs, there is a similarity of infrastructure services, but with slight differences.

Conclusion

By and large, all the distributions in question are approximately the same, but each has its own troubles - Astra seeks to make an interface similar to Windows so that users can better perceive it; Alt has good community support.

Not a single OS can provide 100% replacement for Windows, but not because they are, but because not all software has analogues for Linux, especially various government programs, such as Electronic Treasury, for example. But all the developers have already understood this and are trying to take this moment into account. So in the near future we will be filled with Russian software for Linux. Now, while these programs are not adapted to work on these OSs, it would be more appropriate to allocate them to terminal access servers during migration.