ROSA MOBILE, the new mobile OS from ROSA Fresh
Here on the blog we have shared news about the releases of the Russian Linux distribution, ROSE Fresh, which originated as a fork of the now-defunct Mandriva Linux distribution. The reason for mentioning this is that a few days ago the company STC IT ROSA (the company behind the development of Rosa Fresh) dI know the news of which is working on a mobile operating system called ROSE Mobile.
As many of you will currently know Russia and Ukraine and of which I will only limit myself to mentioning that this problem has led various nations and organizations to impose a series of sanctions on Russia, of which, for example, Microsoft "supposedly" would have blocked updates and support (which I did not do, since it was fined), another was Adobe blocking its products, among others.
The reason for addressing this point and having mentioned the development work of ROSA Mobile is to try to explain a little how this news has a degree of importance for Russia, since shortly after the start of the conflict with Ukraine, Russia saw the need to work on migration to solutions with Linux, this "arguing" for national security issues and above all to follow a topic to opt for "national" solutions something that has been happening in Korea and in China.
Until before the announcement of ROSA MOBILE, AstraLinux, was the only solution in the field of mobile systems which was approved for internal use in industry and by Russian government agencies. That is why the announcement of ROSA MOBILE has its degree of importance, since in a few words it becomes the other side of the coin, given that although both solutions are Linux, Astra Linux is a proprietary license, while ROSA Fresh is developed under an open source model under the GPL license.
The new operating system will be available in two versions: for government and corporate clients with higher security requirements, and private. The first devices delivered with the new operating system will be mobile computers manufactured by Rutek JSC.
Regarding the development of ROSA MOBILE, it is mentioned that the user interface is based on the open platform KDE Plasma Mobile, Developed using the mobile version of the Plasma 5 desktop, the KDE Frameworks 5 libraries, the ModemManager telephony stack, and the Telepathy communication framework.
Mobile apps are used from the Plasma Mobile Gear set and are based on the Qt library, the Mauikit component set, and the Kirigami framework, which makes it possible to create universal interfaces suitable for smartphones, tablets, and PCs.
Today, users don't just need an operating system, they need a comprehensive solution. We, as an infrastructure software developer, have focused on creating a single secure information space around the user, a high-quality ecosystem that will allow them to implement all their tasks. Our mobile solution is based on the idea of maximum integration of the company's mobile and core operating systems by using its own repository, ensuring its wide scalability, higher security and implementing an ecosystem approach,” he said. Oleg Karpitsky, General Director of STC IT ROSA.
The kwin_wayland composite server is used to display graphics in Plasma Mobile and PulseAudio is used for sound processing. Plasma Mobile includes applications such as KDE Connect, Okular document viewer, VVave music player, Koko and Pix image viewers. and all the well-known Plasma Mobile packages.
The ROSA Mobile montage stands out for the change in the design of Plasma Mobile and the delivery of the Telegram messenger. The system environment is built from its own ROSA 2021.1 repository and the builds do not use closed drivers or proprietary Android firmware components.
Far installation on Russian smartphone Ayya T1 is supported, but it is mentioned that it is being worked on so that it can run on a wide range of smartphones and tablets.
The first launch of ROSA Mobile is scheduled for the end of August 2023. The system is included in the register of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation (No. 16453).In addition, a variant will be formed for state and corporate clients with higher security requirements.
Finally, if you are interested in being able to know more about it, you can consult the details in the following link