Mini-interview with ROSA

Some time ago, I wrote an article "How Fresh is the Dew?" That article was about the first release of the Linux distribution named ROSA. In Russian, the word "rosa" means dew, so that was playing with words that time.

I am not sure if the developers of the distribution read my article or not, but the latest release of ROSA, announced on the 19th of December 2012, got the name ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012. You can read the official press release yourself. However, after reading it I decided to ask some clarification questions of Konstantin Kochereshkin, the PR-manager of ROSA Labs.

I think the answers could be interesting for you, that's why I have published them on my blog.

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DarkDuck: Is ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 a new version of ROSA Desktop?

Konstantin Kochereshkin: Yes, this is a new version of ROSA. This version has more rights to claim the ROSA name than all the previous ones taken together.

We only had one product ROSA Desktop 2011 in 2011.

Some reviewers called it Mandriva/ROSA Desktop 2011, because they were almost twins. The same team released them.

We made a decision in 2012 that ROSA should be developed separately from Mandriva, or in parallel, if you prefer to say.

We created our own build system ABF (Automatic Build Farm), moved our Mandriva/ROSA repositories there, and went into a free floating mode.

ROSA Desktop Marathon was the first result. As you might guess, we could not go far from the original Mandriva/Rosa in a few months, and many people noticed Mandriva's issues arising in ROSA.

We worked on the Fresh release much longer and managed to get rid of everything we did not like in Mandriva. Instead, we developed something we thought of as necessary and useful.


DD: Is ROSA Desktop.Fresh 2012 a sandbox for new technologies, like Fedora for Red Hat or Sid for Debian?

KK: Yes, this is a playground. After thorough testing throughout our community, we plan to create a commercial product for the corporate market. We have published our product line strategy separately.


DD: Will this version be good for home users, or they should stick to the existing ROSA Desktop?

KK: This is a version for experienced users who know what Linux is and are ready to work on polishing of the product. It is also for a home user, if there is an experienced user nearby.