ROSA Fresh R8.1 released, latest maintenance release in R8 series

The ROSA Lab has announced release of ROSA Fresh R8.1, latest bug fix cum maintenance release in ROSA Fresh R8 series. Being a maintenance release, this version of ROSA comes with numerous bug fixes and updated packages such as Linux Kernel 4.9. This makes it more compatible with modern hardware components. ROSA Fresh R8.1 is mainly for people who are looking for a stable & long term supported platform.


Current release of ROSA Fresh in built on top ROSA 2014.1 and it will provided extended support for a period of two years. It comes in 4 different flavors which are GNOME 3, KDE 4, Plasma 5 and MATE.

For those who are not familiar with ROSA Fresh release, it is a Russian GNU/Linux distribution mainly targeting desktop users and it comes with essential software packages which will come use in day to day life such as ROSA Media Player, Adobe Flash, Steam ..etc. 

Some of the notable features & highlights in ROSA Fresh R8.1 can be summarized as:
  • Linux kernel 4.9.x LTS is included right out of the box, you can use our new ROSA Desktop Fresh R8.1 release on latest Intel Skylake chipsets;
  • Mesa now is 13.0.2 with OpenGL 4.5 for better working of free drivers on some modern games;
  • Rsyslog are disable by default for better booting performance and less trash in logs, we use only journalctl instead now;
  • NetworkManager and NTPD services are fixed;
  • Fixed bug in NetworkManager, when using pptp with incorrect MTU parameters;
  • Mozilla Firefox is now ESR version out of the box;
  • Latest CUPS drivers included;
  • Some bugfixes for better Epson scanners support in SANE;
  • Some security fixes for ~/.gvfs directory, backing-up home directories made smoothly;
  • New modems are supported, and you can now see traffic graph in modemmanager app;
  • ROSA desktop theme is fixed for better work with no effects;
  • Bugfixes when working with shared folders in VirtualBox;
  • OpenSSL version supports GOST cipher algorithms;
  • Hardware acceleration for some video editing software (MLT) is on by default.
You may also proceed to read the release announcement in ROSA Lab website.

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