Ubuntu 14.04, AntiX Review, and Robolinux 7.4.2

Today's news hunt includes the news that Ubuntu 14.04 was released Friday. Also today is a review of AntiX, a lightweight SimplyMepis derivative, that I overlooked last week. In addition, Jesse Smith at Distrowatch.com reviews Robolinux 7.4.2, a distribution he describes as "Debian-based distribution which places strong emphases on user-friendliness and the idea that people should be able to easily migrate from Windows."

Ubuntu 14.04 was released Friday as well as all its derivatives. The official announcement said "14.04 LTS is a reliable, secure and intuitive release for enterprises, government and education." It's quite a way down in the announcement, passed all the shoulder patting, horn blowing, and such, when you find this release features optimizations for "desktops and laptops with multi-touch trackpads and touchscreens, as well as support for high pixel density (DPI) screens." Even further we find this release includes "Unity 8, the next-generation user interface currently running on Ubuntu phones and tablets, which will underpin a single experience across multiple devices." The release notes say this release features:

* Linux 3.13.9
* Open vSwitch 2.0.1 support
* major improvements to Xen and KVM
* Deadline I/O scheduler default
* general performance and latency improvements to all filesystems
* Python 3.4
* Improvements to AppArmor
* LibreOffice 4.2.3
* Xorg 15.0.1

Robolinux isn't a crimefighting Linux robot, but a Debian-based user desktop distribution featuring a OS X decorated GNOME 3 desktop. The developers, according to Jesse Smith, place "strong emphases on user-friendliness and the idea that people should be able to easily migrate from Windows to Robolinux." Smith continues to put Robolinux through his tests and finally concludes, "Robolinux is one of those distributions which regularly provides me with pleasant surprises and unfortunate disappointments."

AntiX MX-14 was released a couple of weeks ago and www.dedoimedo.com published a review last week. Dedoimedo, who rarely minces words, began by saying, " Upon first boot, you're presented with a desktop that has all the semi-gradiented beauty of a classic 2007 offering, with a rather controversial left-placed vertical panel, olden icons, and a slew of blue and grays that aren't that inviting. The analog clock is too small to read easily. Desktop icons text has a background color, for pity's sake." He went on to say the menu was ugly but functional and of the file manager he said, "And what's with a single-click. When was the single-click mantra ever used in non-KDE desktops? This is oh-so-weird on so many levels." He concluded by saying this distro wasn't even worth fixing up the desktop, that "there are many superior Xfce alternatives, based on Debian or otherwise."