The developers have made some important changes to the desktop and now it looks modern and interesting

Oct 2, 2014 13:11 GMT  ·  By

The developers from Black Lab have made available a new version of their Professional Desktop series. The 6.x branch is now out and packs a ton of new features. It's designed more for stability than anything else and that can be easily observed from what packages have been included.

The Black Lab distros have been built to provide a stable and easy to use platform for both novice and expert users. The new 6.x branch doesn't stray from this directive. It remains in line with older versions in the same category and it should feel like a natural evolution.

Black Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 in particular is very conservative. Users will notice that some of the packages are older, but that was done intentionally. Like all commercial distros, Black Lab Professional Desktop has a duty towards the people who bought the OS and it must not alienate the user base.

Times are changing for Black Lab Professional Desktop

The developers of this distribution didn't use to offer an ISO image to test and employ right from the start. Because this is a commercial enterprise, they would sell the OS for a month or so, and only after that would the system become available to everyone. Now, you can download it and give it a go, but there are some restrictions in place.

"Today we are pleased to release the next revision of the Black Lab Professional Desktop series. Black Lab Professional Desktop 6 offers the stability and redundancy of the current LTS technologies, with the tools and functionality that enterprise desktop users would expect. With this release we bring many new features that bridge the Linux desktop environment with your existing desktop environments. We also include utilities for deploying web applications and current web technologies."

"We are offering a download of Black Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 for evaluation purposes. You can install it and run it and add apps and other utilities to it. It doesn't include utilities like PBIS Active Directory, WinUSB, Oracle desktop support and it only includes Forum support. For e-mail, remote and phone support you have to purchase a license from Black Lab Software Inc," is mentioned in the official announcement.

The developers have also explained that they have integrated GNOME 3.10 by default. It's an older version and it might seem like an odd choice, but it's been proven to be stable and to work great. Other packages that are provided by default include Mozilla Firefox 32, a Fogger web app utility with full Java and HTML5 support, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, PostgreSQL, Calibre, Dropbox, Scribus, InkScape, Blender, and even WinUSB Creator, an app that allows users to create Windows install USB sticks with Windows 7 and Windows 8 support.

You can download the Black Lab Professional Desktop 6 ISO from Softpedia. Only the 64-bit version is available.

Black Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 (7 Images)

Black Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 desktop
Black Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 launcherBlack Lab Professional Desktop 6.0 folders
+4more