Now you need to decide which packages should be installed. In the distribution, each program ready for installation is presented in a form of a separate package (more details about the concept of packages and about the procedures of package installation or removal are in the section Program Installation and Uninstallation (Package Management) in chapter 3). A huge number of program packages is contained in ALT Linux 2.3 Compact , but you need not know all of them or the purpose of each program at installation time. In order for you to be able to install software needed to solve your common tasks, groups of packages are gathered in the following sections:

To see a short explanation about each group, you should place the mouse pointer at the group name. In order to be able to choose individual packages from a group, you should mark the «Individual package selection» option. Individual package choice is useful when you know the packages well, or when you want to have full control over what will be installed.

If individual package choice is selected, you will have access to a tree containing all packages, sorted by classes and groups. When viewing this tree, complete groups or individual packages may be chosen.

When you view a package in the tree, its description is shown to the right. When the selection is done, you should press the «Install» button to begin the installation process.

If a server package is chosen, individually or within a group, its installation needs to be confirmed. All the installed services will by default start when the system is loaded. Even if these services are considered safe and no security problems have been found in them at the moment when the distribution is released, such problems may be found in them later. So if you do not know what a certain service is used or installed for, it is better not to install it.

When a package is selected or unselected, automatic control of package dependencies takes place. The system notifies the user which packages depend on a package being deleted. It also installs those packages that are required by a package being installed and deletes those that are required only by a package being deleted.

There exists an option to use a list of packages saved on a floppy disk during a previous installation. To do this, you should select a floppy disk icon shown at the end of the package list.