Mint KDE Turns Green, ROSA R8 Out, Ubuntu 14.04.5
Russian ROSA Company recently announced the release of ROSA Fresh R8 with your choice of four desktops. The final point release for Ubuntu 14.04 was announced and Clement Lefebvre said upcoming Mint 18 KDE will no longer sport its distinctive blue icon in favor of the green. In other Mint news, ArsTechnica's Scott Gilbertson said Linux doesn't get any better than Mint 18. Jamie Watson reviewed the difference between point and rolling Linux releases and two users share their personal Linux stories.
Those still waiting for Mint 18 KDE edition will continue to wait a bit as no hints to its release date was given in today's Mint Monthly News. Mint founder and lead did say that he had some "bad news for the nostalgic." They've decided to no longer provide a distinctive blue Mint icon and images in keeping with KDE's default blue image. Beginning with version 18, the KDE version of Mint will get the same green images as the other Mint versions.
In other Mint news, Scott Gilbertson seemed to enjoy his excursion into Mint 18. He began by saying that "Mint has become what Ubuntu once was - a stable, new-user-friendly gateway to Linux." On Cinnamon and MATE, he said, 'Mint has elected to evolve overall rather than "revolutionize," making it a far more comfortable choice for newcomers who aren't likely to enjoy having the rug pulled out from under them every upgrade.' Of the new theme, Gilbertson said it's a "nice evolution with a nod to the current trends." After reviewing the latest changes, he said Mint 18 performed very well on his Dell XPS 13 even with effects and animations on. "Linux Mint 18 is a solid update and continues the slow but steady evolution of one of the most popular Linux desktops out there. Mint 18 remains my recommendation both for anyone who's new to Linux as well as seasoned Linux users," Gilbertson concluded.
The ROSA project announced the release Fresh R8 Wednesday featuring four desktop choices - KDE 4, GNOME 3, Plasma 5, and MATE. Some of the features of this release include improved Image Writer USB support, implementation of OpenGL 4.1, and Steam was patched to use ROSA packages instead of bundled when possible. Some of the updates include Linux 4.1.25, Mesa 11.2.2, PulseAudio 8.0, Chromium 51.0, Firefox 46.0.1, and LibreOffice 5.1.4. ROSA R8 will be supported until Fall 2018. Downloads are at the ROSA site.
Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS was announced today by Adam Conrad on the Ubuntu Announce mailing list saying, "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support." Hundreds of bugs were squashed besides the security patches for this release and users can opt-in to kernel upgrade to Linux 4.4. Downloads are at Ubuntu.com.
In other news:
* Making the switch to open source as a non-programmer
* Understanding the difference: Linux rolling releases versus point releases