The alpha version of what will become ROSA Desktop 2012 has been made available for download. It comes about a week later than planned, but that is no big deal. The most important thing is that it is here. Let the bug hunting begin!
For those reading about ROSA Desktop for the first time, it is a desktop Linux distribution published by ROSA Laboratory, a Linux solutions provider based in Moscow, Russia. ROSA Desktop is actually the end-user version of ROSA Marathon Enterprise, the desktop edition for businesses.
The main difference between the two is in the kernel version, and versions of installed and available applications: ROSA Desktop 2012 will be using the latest and greatest versions of the Linux kernel and software, which means bleeding-edge software versions, while the enterprise edition uses software applications that are many revisions behind the latest-and-greatest. The idea behind the enterprise edition is greater stability, rather than bleeding-edge software.
For example, an updated installation of ROSA Marathon on my laptop is running kernel 3.0.38 and KDE 4.8.3, while this just-released alpha version of ROSA Desktop 2012 has Linux kernel 3.5.1 and KDE 4.9. But not all software versions in the alpha release belong in the latest-and-greatest category. Firefox 10 is the version of the popular Web browser installed, while Firefox 15 was recently released. But I expect that to be rectified by the time the final version is released.
Now that you know what t expect in ROSA Desktop 2012, here are some screen shots from a test installation of this alpha release.
The login screen.
With KDE 4.9 comes Dolphin with the beautiful ROSA icons.
The desktop.
A distinguishing feature of the ROSA desktop is SimpleWelcome, a fullscreen menu similar to Takeoff Launcher.
Popular applications installed. The version of SimpleWelcome in this alpha version does not yet have the tooltip feature that was recently implemented via the Release Pack 1 of the enterprise edition.
Shot of SimpleWelcome showing a snapshot of installed management tools.
TimeFrame tab of SimpleWelcome.
With an application open, clicking on SimpleWelcome will cause it to open behind the application’s window.
And it does not matter what application is open, SimpleWelcome will open behind it. Note that this does not happen in ROSA Marathon, only in this alpha release.
Playing a video file straight from a StackFolder with the help of KLook.
If you want to help test this alpha version, you may download an installation ISO image for your platform here. The release announcement is available here.
The Rosa Desktop 2012 will it be supported as LTS?
Likely, but that has not been officially announced. However, given that the enterprise edition is a 5-year LTS release, I don’t see any reason the end-user edition will not be LTS too.