ROSA Linux is a Linux distribution and operating system, developed by the Russian company LLC NTC IT ROSA
It was recently revealed the release of the new corrective version of «ROSA Fresh 12.3», a community-developed and freely distributed distro built on the rosa2021.1 platform. The launch stands out for the fact that, in addition to images built earlier with KDE 5, GNOME, and LXQt, images were released with Xfce and a minimalist server image This being the first build of the server distribution based on the base of the ROSA Fresh package.
The server build includes only the minimum set of components necessary for convenient administrator work, and you can install the necessary packages from the repository, including, for example, FreeIPA and the Russian fork of nginx Angie with additional modules.
For those who are unaware of ROSA Fresh, they should know that this is a modern Russian Linux distribution, created by the community and legally available to everyone for free and whose source code of the system is published under the GPL license.
PINK originated as a fork of the now defunct Mandriva Linux distribution and has since been independently developed. The ROSA company was founded in early 2010 and released the first version of its operating system in December 2010. Initially, it targeted business users, but at the end of 2012 ROSA started its end-user oriented distribution, the DesktopFresh.
Main novelties of ROSA Fresh 12.3
In this new version of the distribution the base has been updated, together with the linux kernel which was updated to version 5.15.75 (The previously shipped 5.10 branch is still supported.)
Another important change is that the installer-recommended disk layout (exchange enabled), supports zswap mechanism, which uses the zstd algorithm for compression, allowing it to work efficiently on systems with a small amount of RAM.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that the format of the boot images has been changed: The flash drive with the ROSA Linux image is now mounted by default and its contents can be viewed in the file manager.
For each user environment, now there are two images available: standard (with support for UEFI and BIOS, but with an MBR partition table) and .uefi (also with support for UEFI and BIOS, but with a GPT partition table), which allows you to install the system on a wide range of computers .
Moreover, Work has been done to reduce the time of default wait on loader Boot, the system boots faster now.
Of the other changes that stand out from the new version:
- Added a console utility for automatic installation of NVIDIA kroko-cli video drivers (own development, source code) to images.
- It is also noted that now the console provides support for Russian-language help based on termhelper (own development).
- dnfdragora hides 32-bit packages in 64-bit images for user convenience.
- If the primary mirrors are not available to install packages, an automatic switch to the backup mirrors is provided.
- The rootcerts-russia package with certificates from the certification center of the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia has been added to the images (the package can be removed without interrupting system performance).
- Added graphical update indicator rosa-update-system to images (own development). Xfce uses the dnfdragora update flag.
- Additional drivers added to images to support Realtek Bluetooth and WiFi.
Finally, if you are interested in being able to know more about this new version, you can consult the details In the following link.
For those interested in being able to try or learn about the distribution, they should know that totally free compilations are offered, designed for the x86_64 platform in versions with KDE Plasma 5, LXQt, GNOME, Xfce and without GUI. Users who already have a previous version of ROSA Fresh R12.x installed will receive the update automatically.
At the time of writing, the system images have not yet been released, but will be ready in a matter of days and can be obtained from this link.