| Ark Linux 2005.2 available for download |
Dec. 12, 2005
A new version of Ark Linux, v2005.2 -- touted as an "easy-to-use distribution designed for non-technical users" -- was released Monday. It's based on Linux kernel 2.6.14rc2 and boasts the new KDE 3.5 desktop, OpenOffice.org 2.0, overall improvements to system size and speed, and better automatic handling of inserted CDs and DVDs, the project said.
Ark Linux is a Swiss-based Linux distribution designed for desktop use -- easy to use even for people without prior Linux (or computing) experience, while still providing a powerful environment for power users and developers, the project said.
The previous version, Ark Linux v2005.1, was released last March.
According to the project hardware support in general has been improved. For example, unsupported PCI/wireless network cards can now automatically be configured to use a Windows XP driver through the Ndiswrapper emulation layer; and some USB printers can be configured fully automatically.
Other highlights of the new release, as listed by the project, include:- 3D Acceleration on ATI Radeon 9600- and 9800-based hardware is now supported. ("To our knowledge, Ark Linux 2005.2 is the first fully Open Source OS to support this hardware," Ark Linux said.)
- The installer can now handle i810 graphics chipsets and (through the addition of a legacy 640x480, 16 colors mode) graphics chipsets that aren't VESA 2.0 compliant.
- The Wine Windows emulator has been added to the default installation, allowing users to continue using many of their existing Windows applications.
- Ark Linux 2005.2 has been tested to work on low-end hardware such as a Pentium MMX 233 MHz with 128 MB RAM.
- The newest edition of the "bash" shell is included, v3.1.
Improvements have been made to the Ark Linux extra CD sets as well. Ark Server Software has been upgraded to include the latest state-of-the-art server software, such as Apache Httpd 2.2.0, PHP 5.1.1, Postfix 2.2.6, and the PostgreSQL 8.1 and MySQL 5.0.16 databases, as well as server applications for less common protocols such as video and audio streaming, and IRC, the project said.
For developers, the Ark Development Suite now includes support for more programming languages and libraries -- including the C, C++, Java, D, Perl, Python, Assembly, Perl, Python, BASIC, Objective C, C#, Objective CAML, Fortran and ADA languages, Ark Linux said. The development suite also contains a number of libraries beyond the "normal" development environment provided by most Linux distributions, including the Qt 4.x and FOX GUI toolkits, the project said.
Available by CD-ROM or download
Ark Linux 2005.2 (686 MB footprint) can be can be downloaded free of charge, here, or can be ordered on CD-ROM, here.
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