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I am starting a small business (in Western Europe) and investigating the Unix-like options available for desktop OS. The criteria are the following:

  1. scalable (from 2 laptops right now to "unlimited" if the business is successful
  2. secure
  3. adapted to business use (stable, proven use in enterprise, adapted to PC fleet management, not an exotic distro)
  4. free version upgradable to enterprise with technical support
  5. User-friendly for people coming from Windows

Astra Linux (astralinux.ru) seems to tick all the boxes since it is Debian based, deployed or intended to be deployed in many businesses and large official administrations in Russia, and is by design oriented towards security.

a. do you think that would be a wise choice considering the current geopolitical situation?

b. if not, what inconvenience could we face in the future?

c. is Astra Linux totally open source and auditable, or is there a risk of hidden spyware installed for the benefit of Russian government?

Apologies in advance for any "naive" question. I am a Linux newbie.

Thanks and regards

P.S.: @nate - I saw on one of your posts that you are a Astra Linux user. Will appreciate your feedback if you see this post.

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    What does "adapted to business use" mean?
    – terdon ♦
    Commented Mar 9, 2022 at 12:59
  • Hi terdon, thanks for you quick comment. By "adapted to business" I meant to disqualify all the distro which would not fit in this description. I am not sure how to precisely define it. An OS which is commonly used in the enterprise world and deployed on staff computers would fit this category I guess. Stability would be another aspect of it. A super customizable and cutting edge distro like Arch for example would disqualify. Hope it clarifies.
    – samyh
    Commented Mar 9, 2022 at 13:20
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    You're welcome, but please edit your question and explain what you mean by "adapted to business use".
    – terdon ♦
    Commented Mar 9, 2022 at 14:39
  • OK, the question is now updated.
    – samyh
    Commented Mar 9, 2022 at 16:15
  • Right now (March 2022) any western european organisation considering deploying software from Russia (or more specifically, the .ru domain) should think about this very carefully. I don't believe you can look at this from an exclusively technical perspective, but if you want to do so, think about support and ongoing maintenance.
    – Chris Davies
    Commented Mar 9, 2022 at 16:22

1 Answer 1

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Welcome to Linux. First of, unless you are really looking for compliance, I don't believe anybody must upgrade to enterprise level Linux. You can also choose to hire one or more good techs that look after your systems.

In the "debian" family, I guess Ubuntu is the most friendly to newcomers and widely supported. Offers Long Term Support releases. You can get paid support without switching to an enterprise distribution. Often software developers offer debian packages prebuild, in case you need those applications to be cutting edge, instead of waiting for the next LTS release.

Even Debian itself can be a good choice. Don't be intimidated by the website that doesn't look as fancy as the rest. The distribution is rock solid and "just works". The installer lets you choose the desktop environment you want, instead of needing to install a spin-off like Kubuntu, xubuntu etc. They are not backed by a single company, but there are plenty of consultants.

In the "Red hat" family there is fedora. The release schedule is shorter and no LTS. But, you can switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux later on and feel familiar with the tools. There is also CentOS*.

Then there is the "SUSE" family. Similar like above, there is OpenSUSE with short term releases and SUSE Linux enterprise.

Security really depends on best practices and your needs. All of the above have a good reputation of patching vulnerabilities as they come out. With all of them you can choose to enable disk encryption, different types of user authentication management or security frameworks like selinux and apparmor.

*) As pointed out in the comments, the rolling release schedule for CentOS might not be suitable for some businesses.

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    CentOS Stream is available but it's an upstream, rolling release that isn't suitable for a business. The CentOS that would have been suitable for this is no longer available.
    – Nasir Riley
    Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 2:54
  • Thanks a lot Tim for your time and the detailed answer. The insight on the unnecessary enterprise upgrade is very valuable as it widens the spectrum of possibilities. Debian seems a good choice for us then (because stability, robustness and available consultant expertise). We will install it, along with our minimum necessary programs, and will think about the security issue later: But "security" is probably a fad of ours.
    – samyh
    Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 8:33
  • Thank you Nasir, noted. I heard about the CentOS termination by RH. The server OS is another matter we’ll have to think about.
    – samyh
    Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 13:26
  • Thanks for the suggestion @NasirRiley. I did catch something around that topic, but I'm not so much into that Linux family. So I just made a small mention. I've updated the answer.
    – Tim
    Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 13:27
  • As for CentOS - what about Oracle Linux? It is also a RHEL clone, but doesn't seem to adopt the rolling-release model of CentOS Stream.
    – AdminBee
    Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 13:24

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