![breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer](https://ask.libreoffice.org/uploads/asklibo/original/3X/8/2/82c0e621eed8b0b35255c415a44bfe98187ef070.png)
I do like the cascading popups for the application categories. The default Application Menu choice is by far my favorite. Those tools got me using powerful tools in Linux more than 16 years ago which made it easier for me to understand how to manipulate the settings of those powerful tools in terminal when I had to tweak them further. The “Drake” tools are easy to use but the drawback has been that they are very “Wizard Like” which makes editing settings a bit cumbersome. The legacy Mandrake tools was a blast from my Linux past with which I enjoyed working so many years ago. Although, I would say that most distributions today have fast boot times, thanks to SystemD.
![breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GsJH.png)
ROSA does have surprisingly fast boot times. All the System Administrator tools are in the KDE System settings… which is fine, I was just hopping to see that old friend MCC that I used so many years back. Since this is a fork of Mandrake I was expecting some spin on the Mandrake Control Center but alas, there was no such thing. Perhaps there are old GSM modems that are still being in use in Eastern Europe or Russia. None the less, I thought it was pretty interesting to see this installed. I was almost inspired to try it out but I don’t have a land line to test it on. I haven’t used a modem in Linux for well over a decade. I didn’t go through all the applications but I found this gem a little interesting to see installed by default. I also didn’t want to switch to the “Breeze Dark” and just make it a generic KDE Plasma desktop, so I decided to change up the color scheme and make it more to my liking. I am not terribly fond of the default theme of ROSA. Either way, the menu that takes over the screen doesn’t work well for me at all, so the default, which I’m sure is too, “old-man-river” is absolutely perfect for me. If you are not happy with that style of menu, there is also the Application Launcher that breaks the applications down into sections or the Application Dashboard that I don’t care for at all because it takes over the entire screen, akin to Windows 8.1 or perhaps Gnome if my memory serves me correctly. The default menu itself is just the standard “Application Menu with cascading popup menus, the traditional style of which I prefer.
![breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer](https://kate-editor.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/kdevelop5-breeze-dark.png)
It should be noted that immediately after installation, you have KDE Plasma version 5.10.5 but after performing the many updates, you have an even more fresh KDE Plasma 5.14.4, effectively the latest version of Plasma 5 and after initial boot and settling, uses 439MiBytes of RAM. It’s a short read and nothing stuck out as being bothersome. The steps on the installer are pretty straight forward, Language selection first, then you have to agree with their terms.
![breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer breeze dark theme for libreoffice writer](https://ask.libreoffice.org/uploads/asklibo/optimized/3X/4/e/4e5adc27e4d1bc1d33b8cfd85e9b114b1827afed_2_1035x631.png)
It is also worth noting, if you do nothing and let the loader time out, it will just boot whatever is on your local drive. Thankfully, it has the option to install ROSA directly but still gives you the option to just kick the tires. There is something delightfully early 2000s about this bootloader screen. Now, I haven’t tried a lot of distributions and what constitutes as “terrible” from my perspective would be different than others. I can’t say that in the last several years I have come across a terrible installer in Linux. I will be objectively biased in this review but keep in mind that these are my opinions as a reasonably technical user. Although I don’t believe any Linux distribution is perfect, I currently believe openSUSE is perfect for me. This is my incredibly biased view of ROSA Linux from an openSUSE User’s perspective. As time went on, some of those tools became somewhat dated and some did get refreshed from time to time. Those features made Linux in 2002 / 2003 very approachable and made it easy to set things up and be operational. There were some features about Mandrake that were uniquely Mandrake. My first Linux distribution I put any time into was Mandrake Linux, initially in 2002 and it became my full time desktop by late 2003. It is also this weeks challenge for BigDaddyLinux Live Show. For their latest version ROSA Fresh R10, they offer Plasma 5, LXQt and curiously, Plasma 4. ROSA is a Russian company that is developing a multiple Linux-based solutions of which ROSA Desktop is its flagship product. ROSA Linux is an RPM based Linux distribution that was forked from Mandriva Linux.