May 4, 2011 15:50 GMT  ·  By

Alpine 2.2.0 has just been released. The latest update to the firewall and router distribution adds several new features and packages moving it beyond its traditional role.

With the addition of GNOME as well as the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Alpine Linux sports bare-bones but workable desktop. Alpine 2.2.0 also debuts support for 64-bit architectures.

"The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce immediate availability of version 2.2 of its Alpine Linux operating system," the announcement read.

Alpine 2.2.0 comes with a recent Linux kernel 2.6.38 with all of the usual Alpine patches. With the new release, support for x86_64 machines has been introduced as well.

This means that modern processors can now be taken full advantage off and also means that larger amounts of memory can be accessed more efficiently.

Security has been updated as well, with the introduction of 512 bit hashes for passwords, using the SHA512 algorithm, making them much harder to crack using a brute-force attack.

GNOME is now included in the standard packages in Alpine Linux 2.2.0. This is the first release, so support is preliminary, but curious users can install the 'gnome-base' package to get it.

Alpine 2.2.0 also brings an updated XFCE 4.8, the latest stable release of the lighter desktop environment. Mozilla Firefox is now included along with Gnash, providing open-source support for Flash content and giving users a complete browsing solution.

MySQL 5.5 is now included by default as well as OpenRC 0.8.2. Busybox 1.18.4 has been added which the developers say should make Alpine easier to learn for those coming from a more standard GNU/Linux distro.

Alpine Linux 2.2.0 is available for download here on Softpedia.