Given the uncertainty with Mandriva you can't blame Rosa Labs for going their own way and creating their own spin.
Sure enough, it is very similar to what we saw in Mandriva 2011 but with a big difference. Mandriva 2011 was unrefined, broken and buggy. I suppose you could call that an accurate reflection of the company behind Mandriva itself.
What we have here instead is a refined, usable and almost near perfect product for Desktop users, carrying with it a nice long 5 years of support.
http://www.rosalab.com/blogs/rosa-marathon-2012-will-be-officially-pr
I downloaded the extended edition (both have the ability to run as a LiveCD), which has all the multimedia plugins and burnt that to a DVD. Trying it out as a LiveCD worked rather well, the desktop experience was smooth and faultless.
My views on the ROSA KDE interface remain the same, it is super excellent. Rosa Labs have carefully crafted a very user friendly experience. Everything about their interface is well placed for Desktop users.
I did however add the lock screen / power off widget to my taskbar.
It is simple, clean and effective. A joy to use!
Unlike Unity and Gnome Shell, which although can be used (even after tweaking) one can't help but to remain unsatisfied with the feeling of using something that is second best.
If you are like me, a simple desktop user then Rosa Linux 2012 is seriously worth consideration. It puts Ubuntu to shame, demonstrates the potential of KDE like no other distribution and makes Linux a worthy choice on the Desktop.
Nothing but praise so far...
Happy with the Live run I did install Rosa Linux 2012 and typically tried to perform a system update but encountered nothing but bad package signature errors.
My attempts to find some form of documentation concerning the problem took a while but eventually I found this,
http://forum.rosalab.ru/en/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1052
Enterprise class product?
Perhaps just a little glitch but for a so called enterprise class product reliability is an important factor.
I see a bright future for Rosa Linux, as long as they don't screw up and work on improving the communication with the non-russian community.
Overall, an impressive job by Rosa Labs.
