On your FRE DVD
Elementary OS 0.41 64-bit
Bodhi Linux 4.4 32-bit
ROSA Linux R10 64-bit
Only the best distros every month
We have two lightweight distros on the opposite page, so we should balance things up with something a little heaver on this side of the magazine. When it comes to full-featured, integrated desktops, the choice generally comes down to either Gnome or KDE. We probably have more Gnome-based distros (especially now that Ubuntu uses Gnome) on our DVDs these days, so let’s even the score with a KDE desktop ( thisreally isawell-balancedDVD,tryit!–Ed).
ROSA Fresh is a Russian distro with a customised KDE desktop. As we’re going to be a bit critical of KDE here, we should state that we are happy KDE users, so KDE diehards don’t need to flame us. We feel that KDE is a good desktop in search of a decent configuration – the default is pretty awful.
KDE is configurable to the nth degree and ROSA has taken full advantage of that to produce a slick and attractive KDE experience that gives a far better default starting point than the original. But it’s still just a starting point. If you’re going to stick with the default configuration of KDE, you really are missing out. It also produces a version with an LXQt desktop, but this is its flagship KDE release. If you want to see what LXQt is like, you can always install it from the ROSA repositories.
ROSA is intended for the more experienced Linux user. That’s not to say you have to be a master of the command line or some sort of Linux Jedi, and it’s certainly not as entrenched in the deep end as Gentoo, but don’t expect excessive hand holding. This is a distro for Linux users who want to try something new, something with very recent versions of the latest software.
ROSA has a good pedigree, being a fork of Mandriva. Mandriva and Mandrake were the most popular home distros for enthusiasts of all levels before Ubuntu took over top slot. So you have a solid base, up-to-date software and well-crafted configurations, so what else could you ask for? Well, there’s some useful information on the wiki to help you get more out of it…
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