14 DAY TRIAL // Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 Preview, a distribution that is better known after its previous name, OS/4 OpenLinux, has been released and is now available for testing.
Black Lab Linux is a distribution designed for general desktop and power users and comes with a lot of applications and features. Its developers are now moving to switch from the current 5.x version to 6.x and they've made an impressive number of changes and improvements.
This distribution has been available for quite a while and the devs had time to improve it quite a bit. At one point, around the time when Windows XP was getting ready to lose the support from Microsoft, the Black Lab makers even targeted the would-be users by promoting their system as an alternative.
“We have released the Preview of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6. The release of Black Lab Enterprise Linux 6 signals our 8 years of operation in the enterprise and education sectors. There were three things that we focused on with this release,” reads the official announcement.
The Black Lab Enterprise Linux devs have also underlined what their OS is trying to accomplish and that includes Compatibility, Security, and Management.
“We have worked to be as compatible with other Linux distributions as well as Microsoft Windows. Security and data security is paramount. We have built in DoD specification wipe, stronger folder and file encryption as well as setting system access times. We have built in utilities to help users manage VM's, to help them manage Windows systems and to ease the management of their Black Lab Enterprise Linux environments,” also note the devs.
According to the changelog, the default desktop environment is now a modified GNOME 3, the entire system is now based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, a new Linux kernel is now also available, LibreOffice 4.2 has been added, Evolution 3.10.4 has been implemented, Firefox 31 has been added by default, VNC support has been implemented, Remmina, Vinagre for RDP, and Remote support has been implemented, and numerous other packages have been updated.
Keep in mind that Black Lab Linux is a commercial enterprise and you can't just download and test a Live system. You can get a trial version by contacting the developers. Check the official announcement for more details, features, and changes about this release.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.