Black Lab Software, through Robert Dohnert, has had the great pleasure of informing us earlier about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 operating system based on Ubuntu.

Probably the most important change in this release is the new versioning scheme. Softpedia was informed by Mr. Dohnert a few weeks ago that upcoming releases of the Black Lab Linux distributions would drop the regular 6.x or 7.x version numbers in favor of a new scheme composed of the current year and month, which tends to become more popular among software distributors.

Powered by Ubuntu 14.04 LTS' Linux kernel 3.16.0-40, Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 comes with the GNOME 3.10.4 desktop environment, GCC 4.9.2, Mozilla Firefox 38.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 31.7 with the Lightning add-on, Abiword 3.0, Gnumeric 1.12, Steam for Linux, Shotwell, Pinta, as well as Ubuntu-compatible Linux kernel 3.13.0-53 packages.

"We have set it up with a unique layout which makes it ideal for traditional keyboard and mouse desktop users as well as users with touchscreen systems," says Robert Dohnert on behalf of the Black Lab Software. "This release is 64 bit only although we are considering a 32 bit release if the community requests it. This release is fully supported until the year 2020 as our other releases."

Linux kernel 4.0 can be easily installed via a script

In addition to the changes mentioned above, Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 contains all the Ubuntu security updates that were released until June 1, 2015. The good news, however, is that you can install the mainstream Linux kernel 4.0 packages via a script built by Black Lab Software for Ubuntu-based Linux distributions, including this edition of Black Lab Linux.

Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 is available for download right now from Softpedia, distributed as a single Live ISO image that contains software packages optimized only for 64-bit (x86_64) computers. Those of you who want to purchase USB keys with Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 can do so by visiting the distribution's website.