Black Lab Education Desktop 6 SR4 released

Today we are announcing the availability of Black Lab Education Desktop.  Black Lab Education Desktop is a distribution that is commercially supported and targeted at primary and secondary users.  Black Lab Education Desktop 6 is based on LTS technologies so it is supported until 2020.  Black Lab Education Desktop 6 utilizes the KDE desktop so users have a modern, full featured desktop at their disposal and Black Lab Education Desktop 6 can run all of your existing Linux based and Unix ported applications and can run commercially available applications and development tools from Red Hat, Oracle, Salesforce.com, RealVNC, Apple Web Objects among others.  Black Lab Education 6 is also certified to run many of your state accredited Linux based apps and includes Virtual Machine technology to help you in your migration from Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X environments.  Black Lab Education Desktop is the only commercially supported Mate and KDE based distribution on the market today.

Black Lab Education Desktop 6 is also built for the cloud and with many school systems relying on many cloud based applications it can run many of your cloud based applications like Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, Oracle Web Apps etc.  Black Lab Education Desktop 6 can be configured to run OpenStack and can be used with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

With this release Black Lab Education Desktop 6 also comes with:

KDE 4.14.2

Mate 1.8.2 (RHEL 6 Compatible desktop)

GCC 4.9.2

Firefox 38

Thunderbird 31.7

Skype 4.3

ScudCloud - Which is a Slack Client

Citrix Receiver

LibreOffice 4.3

Focus Writer

Gcompris

Calibre ebook management

Tux Type

Tux Paint

NitroShare

Ardesia Desktop Sketching

Timeshift restore facilities

Wiimote and Kinect support

Backup Utility

kernel 3.16.0-38 which has a ton of bug fixes and stabilized device drivers

Ubuntu LTS kernel 3.13.0-53 which is the default kernel included with Ubuntu 14.04

Black Lab Education Desktop Also includes all security updates until May 25, 2015.  We have also synchronized all package version to Debian Jessie 8.0.

Using modern technologies such as LDAP, SAMBA 4, Active Directory and NFS.  Black Lab Education Desktop 6 can be deployed in ANY environment with ease from Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX and other Linux based environments.

Black Lab Education Desktop 6 is backed by 24/7 support and Black Lab Software has shown unprecedented ability in being able to patch, deploy and cure many security risks and deficiencies before they become a problem for our users. Over 9 school systems have deployed Black Lab Education Desktop and Black Lab Software celebrates an unprecedented 99% client retention rate and 100% active customer satisfaction rating among education facilities.

Pricing and Availability

Black Lab Education Desktop 6 is available today, June 1, 2015.  While most companies charge per socket, we charge per machine.

Single license  $45.00 USD

2 licenses $85.00 USD

Unlimited District License $480.00 USD

We can also customize your distribution with any desktop environment and targeted towards ANY hardware platform you desire from x86_64, PPC, SPARC.

Custom Configuration License comes with 100 licenses $1,200.00 USD

You can order Black Lab Education Desktop 6 below:

Black Lab Education Desktop

1 license $45.00 USD 2 licenses $85.00 USD Unlimited District License $480.00 USD Custom Configuration (100 licenses) $1,200.00 USD

Install Media

KDE LiveUSB KDE Live SD Card Mate Live USB Mate LiveDVD Mate SD Card

Order Notes:

Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 SR4 released

Today we are announcing the availability of Black Lab Enterprise Desktop.  Black Lab Enterprise Desktop is a distribution that is commercially supported and targeted at small to medium sized desktops for businesses or home office users.  Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 is based on LTS technologies so it is supported until 2020.  Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 utilizes the KDE desktop so users have a modern, full featured desktop at their disposal and Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 can run all of your existing Linux based and Unix ported applications and can run commercially available applications and development tools from Red Hat, Oracle, Salesforce.com, RealVNC, Apple Web Objects among others and is the only commercially supported Mate and KDE based distribution on the market today.

Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 is also built for the cloud and can run many of your cloud based applications like Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, Oracle, Salesforce etc.  Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 can be configured to run OpenStack and can be used with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

With this release Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 also comes with:

KDE 4.14.2
Mate 1.8.2 (RHEL 6 compatible desktop)
GCC 4.9.2
Firefox 38
Thunderbird 31.7
Skype 4.3
ScudCloud - Which is a Slack Client
Citrix Receiver
LibreOffice 4.3
Focus Writer
Timeshift restore facilities
Backup Utility
Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 also supports a wide variety of NAS and other enterprise capable devices
kernel 3.16.0-38 which has a ton of bug fixes and stabilized device drivers
Ubuntu LTS kernel 3.13.0-53 which is the default kernel included with Ubuntu 14.04

Also includes all security updates until May 25, 2015.  We have also synchronized all package version to Debian Jessie 8.0.

Using modern technologies such as LDAP, SAMBA 4, Active Directory and NFS.  Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 can be deployed in ANY environment with ease from Windows, Mac OS X, UNIX and other Linux based environments.

Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 is backed by 24/7 support and Black Lab Software has shown unprecedented ability in being able to patch, deploy and cure many security risks and deficiencies before they become a problem for our users. Over 20 corporate customers have deployed Black Lab Enterprise Desktop and Black Lab Software celebrates an unprecedented 98% client retention rate and 100% active customer satisfaction rating.

Pricing and Availability

Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 is available today, June 1, 2015.  While most companies charge per socket, we charge per machine.  

Single license  $75.00 USD
2 licenses $136.00
3 - 10 license pack $500.00 USD
11 - 20 license pack $950.00 USD
Unlimited Corporate License $4,500.00 USD

We can also customize your distribution with any desktop environment and targeted towards ANY hardware platform you desire from x86_64, PPC, SPARC.

Custom Configuration License comes with 100 licenses $1,200.00 USD

You can order Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 below

Black Lab Professional Desktop Subscriptions

1 seat 12 month Subscription $75.00 USD 2 Seat 12 month Subscription $99.99 USD 3 - 10 seat 12 month Subscription $500.00 USD 11 - 20 seat 12 month Subscription $950.00 USD Company Subscription - Unlimited Seats 12 month Subscription $4,500.00 USD Custom Configuration - 100 Seats 12 month Subscription $1,200.00 USD

Medium

KDE Live USB Flash Drive KDE Live SD Card KDE Live DVD KDE Live MicroSD

Order Notes:

You can also purchase Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6 on our select hardware systems.

Black Lab Business Desktops

Black Lab Software: 2015 Outlook

We have already outlined the road map for our software which is viewable from the Black Lab Linux project site.

Here we are outlining the outlook for Black Lab Software Inc. the commercial side including hardware and software.

2014 was a great year for us.  Our growth from 2013 stayed on the incline.

• Black Lab Professional Desktop and Black Lab Education Desktop had tremendous growth and adoption through 2014 and we expect that to continue through 2015.  We want to add at least 10 new clients and licensee's through 2015.
• Hardware sales through 2014 also rose.  We have discontinued 85% of our hardware and retained the systems that were the most popular which resulted in the retention of 1 consumer desktop and 2 business desktops.  We had over a 150% increase in hardware sales over 2013 and we plan to double that in 2015.  
• Some of the more popular practices was our ability to preload these systems with whatever software packages the client wanted whether engineering, graphics and animation.
• The inclusion of KDE as a secondary option to GNOME Shell for the Professional Desktop distribution was well received and we have had great reception and input from customers.

Plans through 2015

• Create our first ARM release for ARM based systems such as the Raspberry Pi
• Milestones include Black Lab Education Desktop 6 and Black Lab Professional Desktop 6 with release 7 coming Christmas 2015
• Retail Intel NUC systems with Black Lab Linux in summer of 2015
• Release Black Lab Image Creator for Ubuntu 15.04/15.10 with UEFI support.

So those are our plans for Black Lab Software Inc. for 2015

Kernel Enablement Kit 3.18.2 Released

Today we are pleased to announce the release of the Black Lab Kernel Enablement Kit 3.18.2.  With this release we include the following:

Kernel Kit script
Release Notes + readme


System compatibility
---------------------------------

Black Lab Linux 5.x/6.x
Black Lab Pro Desktop 6.x
Black Lab Education Desktop 5.x/6.x
Ubuntu 12.x/14.x
Linux Mint 17.x

You can download the kit from our Sourceforge Page

Kernel Enablement Kit 3.18.2

PLEASE VIEW THE ENCLOSED README FOR INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS

Whats new in this release:

Highlights include

DRM Graphics:
-------------

- Re-clocking improvements for AMD's Radeon driver.

- Radeon R600 UVD hardware-accelerated video decoding support for old ATI/AMD GPUs of the Radeon HD 3000 series.

- Radeon Userptr support.

- Numerous Intel graphics enhancements across the board.

- Nouveau DisplayPort audio, other re-clocking work, and various other enhancements for this open-source NVIDIA driver.

- Other DRM improvements.

Linux Hardware:
--------------

- Many new media drivers.

- New support for ARM SoCs on Linux.

- AMD Carrizo thermal monitoring.

- Razer Sabertooth support and other input device improvements.

- Wacom tablet enhancements.

- ACPI and power management improvements.

- PCI support on 64-bit ARM (ARM64/AArch64).

- Faster suspend and resume on large servers / many CPU cores.

File-Systems:
-------------

- Btrfs improvements with recovery and repair in RAID configurations being notable.

- F2FS additions like FITRIM support, atomic/volatile writes, and much more.

- Many minor XFS improvements.

- Cleaning and bug fixing happened for EXT4.

- The mailbox framework has finally been mainlined.

Etc:
----

- Xen PVSCSI support.

- Firmware core-dumps to user-space via sysfs for allowing better debugging of GPU/WiFi microcode issues and other complex firmware problems.

- USB improvements.

Kernel Enablement Kit 3.17 RELEASED

Today we are very pleased to bring you the latest stable kernel, 3.17 for users of Black Lab Linux 5.x and Black Lab Linux 6.x.  While Black Lab Linux ships with an LTS kernel by default we do provide our Kernel Enablement Kit for users that include the latest stable kernel as well as the header and source files.

Users of proprietary video card drivers and VirtualBox users will have to reinstall those drivers and applications.

So whats new with kernel 3.17?

• Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii” GPUs finally play nicely with the open-source AMD Linux driver.
• Microsoft Xbox One controller support.
• Improvements to the Sony SIXAXIS support
• Toshiba “Active Protection Sensor” Support, a driver to detect if Toshiba laptops are in a free-fall.
• Open-source NVIDIA driver improvements.
• DMA-BUF cross-device synchronization support
• Broadcom BCM7XXX-based board support
• ACPI 5.1 activity and other power management improvements.
• Audio support includes Wildcatpoint Audio DSP on Intel Broadwell Ultrabooks.

 You can download the Kernel Enablement Kit from Sourceforge available immediately.

Kernel Enablement Kit 3.17