14 DAY TRIAL // Today, September 19, 2016, Black Lab Software's CEO Robert J. Dohnert informs Softpedia about the release of the seventh maintenance update to the long-term supported Black Lab Linux 7 computer operating system series.
Shipping with all the security and software updates that have been released upstream in the Ubuntu Linux repositories as of September 16, 2016, Black Lab Linux 7.7 is here to offer users full support for multimedia codecs, Linux kernel 3.19.0-68, Chromium 51 web browser, as well as Mozilla Thunderbird 45.2 email and news client.
The distro also ships with various other popular open-source applications, among which we can mention the GIMP image editor, Audacious audio player, VLC Media Player video playback tool, Abiword word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet editor, and the ICE SSB (Site Specific Browsers) tool from Peppermint OS.
"Today the development team is pleased to announce Black Lab Linux 7.7, the latest release in our stable 7 series. 7.7 is best-suited for users who want to standardize on a Linux distro that’s powerful, easy to use, and offers LTS (Long Term Support)," reads the announcement.
Various Google services are now available as web apps
Another interesting feature introduced in the Black Lab Linux 7.7 release is the integration of various of Google's online services as web apps. Among these, we can notice the popular YouTube, Google Drive, Google Maps, and Google Calendar, as well as Google Contacts and Google Hangouts.
The development cycle of the Black Lab Linux 7.x operating system series will continue until February 2017 with two more maintenance updates, namely Black Lab Linux 7.8 and 7.9. After that, users will be able to upgrade to the Black Lab Linux 8.0 release, which is currently in heavy development with a second Beta build out the door.
However, Black Lab Linux 7 will go EOL (End-of-Life) on December 2018, and until then it will receive various update packs with the latest security patches. You can download the 64-bit (x86_64) Live ISO image of Black Lab Linux 7.7 right now via our website and enjoy the new features.