14 DAY TRIAL // Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 Public Beta, a Linux distribution built for an education environment and based on the Black Lab Professional Desktop series, has been released and is available for testing.
There are numerous Linux distributions that are oriented towards education, but you can never have too many in a domain such as this one. It's based on the Black Lab Professional Desktop, which is a very good and powerful solution. Interestingly enough, Black Lab Linux is actually based on Ubuntu, and the latest one uses the 14.04.1 base (Trusty Tahr).
Just like the base that is used for this distribution, the desktop environment used is GNOME 3, but with a few extensions to make it somewhat different from the stock version and to provide users with better functionality. One of the most interesting aspects of this operating system is the fact that it has a very long support period, which, in theory, it should end in 2022.
Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 is almost ready
Because the OS is based on Ubuntu 14.04.1, the Linux distro is quite stable and fast. It comes with a different set of applications, of course, but it's an interesting experience nonetheless. It's unclear how long this public Beta will last, but you can get it for now and give it a spin.
"Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 is a revolutionary new design of the Black Lab Linux desktop for education environments and is tailored for those environments. Based on the same technologies that make up our Black Lab Professional Desktop series we offer the same longevity and support that our enterprise customers have come to expect. Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 is supported by us until April 2022."
"The feature set for Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 is unique among other education based distributions. We offer features for K-12, Pre-K as well as college level environments meaning that no matter the level that you teach, you have the same featureset, power and customization options that enterprise customers and Linux enthusiasts have come to expect. So here is the package lineup for the Public Beta of the Black Lab Education," say the developers.
Besides the packages that you might expect to see in a distro such as this one, like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Wine (to run Windows apps in Linux), there are some that you don't encounter too often. For example, Ardesia Desktop Sketching is added by default and it lets teachers use the desktop as a whiteboard, Tux Education Suite is present as well, and even is Celestia included as the planetarium software.
More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download Black Lab Education Desktop 6.0.1 right now from Softpedia.