ROSA Desktop 2012 Getting Closer

The ROSA team has announced the release of ROSA 2012 Beta saying only two more steps until final. This release represents lots of work behind the scenes as well as several key improvements to ROSA. Now is the time to test and report bugs.

The release announcement, posted by Konstantin Kochereshkin, states, "The work on ROSA Desktop 2012 is coming to an end. Developers have "frozen" the main repository, performed mass rebuild of system packages to ensure their compatibility (using our own development and build system - ABF) and fixed several compatibility issues found earlier."

New features in ROSA Desktop 2012 Beta:

* EFI/UEFI support which was included in Alpha2 as an experimental option is now integrated in the main system.
* Added "Install in basic mode" boot menu item to allow launching ROSA Desktop 2012 installer on almost any hardware.
* Added components necessary to enable hibernating.
* Added services to improve compatibility of ROSA Desktop 2012 with Windows 8.
* Improved work of services responsible for hardware detection.
* Implemented automated update of Grub2 menu when installing/removing kernels.
* New version of 2Safe cloud storage desktop client with redesigned user interface and lots of bug fixes.

Some other improvements include "reduced system boot time," application language now corresponds to system language settings, and several annoying userspace bugs were fixed. Also included in the announcement is a video demonstrating "the next generation of ROSA brand-name applications. It familiarizes users with such features of our programs as: moving and grouping of icons (in SimpleWelcome 2.0) and support for Facebook and VK social networking services (in TimeFrame 2.0)."

Download ROSA from the ROSA Lab mirror. Check the errata for known issues and some workarounds. Report bugs here and visit ROSA forums here.