ROSA Fresh R5, Year in Ubuntu, and Fedora to the Rescue

Still a bit slow on the news front but yesterday, like a Christmas present, ROSA Fresh R5 was released. Simon Phipps offers his Open Source confessions and Phoronix.com reviews the year in Ubuntu. Also, William Moreno Reyes offers a few thoughts on his recent Fedora 21 Workstation install.

The top story of the last day or so is the release of ROSA Fresh R5. ROSA is a Russian distribution based on Mandriva and features a highly customized KDE desktop dubbed ROSA Desktop. Yesterday the newest release was announced on the ROSA Labs Website saying, "The ROSA company is happy to finally present ROSA Desktop Fresh R5, the number 5 in the "R" lineup of the free ROSA distros with the KDE desktop as a main graphical environment." Some of the updates include KDE 4.14.3, Firefox 34, and Linux 3.14.25, but see the announcement for the full list and download links.

Simon Phipps, President Open Source Initiative, today confessed, "I still long for a fully open source solution, but one of my fundamental requirements is that I don't take on a new full-time hobby to keep it working." See, Phipps is enjoying his Chromebook even though the system contains way too much proprietary code. He said he doesn't have any trouble installing Linux and even adding applications or doing his work, but "at some point in the life of the system, a problem arises that at best causes an inconvenience (like the sleep mode failing) and at worst leaves the system impossible to boot." Phipps' point is that just about everything in life is compromise, why should your operating system be any different.

In other tidbits, Michael Larabel looks back at the year in Ubuntu through a review of Phoronix.com's top 10 stories. William Moreno Reyes blogged his recent adventures with Fedora 21 Workstation. And for those that like the Mac OSX look but only the look, here's Macbuntu strikes again.