ROSA Linux is a

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

distribution, developed by the Russian company 'AO NTC IT ROSA' (). It is available in three different editions: ROSA Desktop Fresh, ROSA Enterprise Desktop, and ROSA Enterprise Linux Server, with the latter two aiming at commercial users. Its

desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

editions come bundled with closed-source software such as

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is a discontinuedExcept in China, where it continues to be used, as well as Harman for enterprise users. computer program for viewing multimedia ...

, multimedia codecs, and

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

. ROSA Desktop Fresh 12.4, the latest desktop release as of 28 March 2023, is available with four different

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

s: KDE Plasma 5, GNOME,

LXQt LXQt is a free and open-source software, free and open source lightweight desktop environment. It was formed from the merger of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects. Like its GTK predecessor LXDE, LXQt does not ship or develop its own window manager ...

and

Xfce Xfce or XFCE (pronounced as four individual letters, ) is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Xfce aims to be fast and Lightweight software, lightweight whil ...

. It also contains open source software developed in-house by ROSA, such as ROSA Image Writer or ROSA Media Player. ROSA Linux has been certified by the Ministry of Defence of Russia. Although its main popularity is in the

Russian language Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

market, ROSA Desktop also received favorable reviews by several non-Russian online publications. German technology website Golem.de praised ROSA for its stability and hardware support, while LinuxInsider.com called ROSA "a real Powerhouse".

History

ROSA originated as a fork of now defunct French distribution

Mandriva Linux Mandriva Linux, a fusion of the French distribution Mandrake Linux and the Brazilian distribution Conectiva Linux, is a discontinued Linux distribution developed by Mandriva S.A. Each release lifetime was 18 months for base updates (Linux, syste ...

and has since then been developed independently. The ROSA company was founded in early 2010 and released the first version of its operating system in December 2010. It initially targeted enterprise users only, but in late 2012, ROSA started its end-user oriented distribution, ''Desktop Fresh''. Before its bankruptcy, Mandriva developed its last releases jointly with ROSA. Mandriva 2011 was also based on ROSA. Also MagOS Linux, is based on ROSA.

Version history

ROSA

ROSA Chrome

ROSA Mobile

Reception

LinuxBSDos.com reviewed ROSA Desktop Fresh R2 with GNOME. He wrote: LinuxBSDos.com also reviewed same version with KDE, and have the review about earlier version — Fresh and Marathon 2012. In October 2012, Dedoimedo wrote review about ROSA Marathon 2012: Dedoimedo also wrote review about ROSA Desktop Fresh R7. Jesse Smith reviewed ROSA Desktop Fresh 2012 R1 for DistroWatch Weekly: Smith also reviewed Fresh R9 version.ROSA Fresh R9
DistroWatch Weekly

References

External links

*
ROSA Linux Wiki

ROSA Linux Bugzilla

ROSA Linux Forum

ROSA Linux in DistroWatch
{{Russian operating systems 2010 software Linux distributions offering KDE desktop environment Mandriva Linux RPM-based Linux distributions x86-64 Linux distributions Linux distributions Russian-language Linux distributions