The Bio-Linux operating system is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), and the previous version was using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The developers only use LTS releases and that means that upgrades for this distro don't come along all that often.
This Linux distribution is aimed at scientists and it comes with more than 250 bioinformatics packages, 50 graphical applications and several hundred command line tools. And this is just skimming the surface of what the OS can do. Users have access to even more apps from the official repositories.
The fact that it uses Ubuntu LTS versions for the base is a good thing because it means its users won't have to worry about the support. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is supported until 2019, so people who are using Bio-Linux shouldn't have a problem.
"An updated Bio-Linux 8 version is now on the website in ISO and OVA versions. As usual, there is no need to download this version if you are an existing user. All updates to existing packages will be applied to your system through the update manager and new packages are all available via apt-get or Synaptic," reads the announcement.
The changelog also states that a problem that was preventing the desktop to not start on VirtualBox has been fixed, the QIIME and Bowtie-Bio tools have been upgraded, the pandaseq paired end assembler has been added, and the beginners tutorial specific to Bio-Linux 8 has been improved.
Check out the official announcement for a complete list of changes and updates. You can download Bio-Linux 8.0.5 right now from Softpedia and give it a spin. It has the Unity desktop and now it runs very well in virtual environments.
Reference @ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bioinformatics-Distro-Bio-Linux-8-0-5-Now-Available-for-Download-469867.shtml
