PC-BSD 7.1 is a desktop operating system aimed at the normal user and is based on FreeBSD. It enables fast installation of software and getting a working desktop running fast.

Any talk of Linux brings with it talk of what it will take to get Linux on the desktop in big numbers. Much of the talk in this vein revolves around distribution X versus desktop Y, or something of that nature. The real issue, though, may not be a particular distribution or package model, but the mind-set of the creators.

Linpus Lite is a Linux distribution published by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a Linux software solutions provider based in Taiwan. Linpus Lite Desktop is, as the name suggests, the version designed for traditional desktop computing.

ALT Linux, published by ALT Linux Ltd., a software vendor based in Moscow, Russia, is a distribution that originated from what used to be Mandrake Linux, now Mandriva Desktop. The first review of an ALT Linux edition was of ALT Linux 5 ARK Desktop, followed by Simply Linux 5 review. This article is a review of ALT Linux 6 KDesktop, released on August 30 2011.

The open source desktop world got a boost this week with the release of GNOME 2.30 -- the latest incarnation of one of the leading open source desktop GUIs that's a part of nearly every major Linux distribution. With GNOME 2.30, the open source effort is adding new features that aim to make it easier to connect to online services, such as social networking giant Facebook.

CentOS, Community ENTerprise Operating System, is a Linux distribution derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Not many would consider it a desktop distribution, but it could be configured as one, though it requires a bit more tweaking than other well known desktop distributions to just work. The latest stable version, CentOS 6, was released on July 10, 2011.

OpenIndiana is a distribution of illumos, which is a community fork of OpenSolaris. And OpenSolaris itself was the open source version of Solaris, before it was discontinued by Oracle, after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Inc., in January 2010.

ROSA Desktop is a Linux distribution derived from Mandriva Desktop and developed by ROSA, a technology outfit based in Moscow, The Russian Federation. ROSA Desktop 2012 beta is the first pre-release edition of what will become ROSA Desktop 2012. It is supposed to be a Long Term Support (LTS) edition, with a 5-year support period.

Sabayon is a Linux distribution described by its developers as “… a bleeding edge operating system that is both stable and reliable.” It is based on Gentoo, a source-based distribution. The latest edition, Sabayon 7, was released just last week.