14 DAY TRIAL // Dieter Plaetinck announced yesterday on the distribution's forums the immediate availability of Arch Linux 2009.08. Released 6 months after the previous version, this latest edition includes kernel 2.6.30.4-1, udev 141-5 and an upgrade to the distribution's package manager, packman 3.3.0-2.
Arch Linux 2009.08 features a new installer, AIF, which supports installation automation and customization, better disk and date/time handling, usability improvements and other enhancements.
Though the Arch Linux website or the download page hasn't been updated yet, the official 2009.08 images are already uploaded to most of the mirrors. Besides making USB boot images available, the team has created alternate CD images that use the isolinux bootloader, a workaround for CD-ROM drives that are unable to boot disks that use GRUB.
"These images are the first fruits of our new arch-releng build environment on the sevenL server. They are built from a current snapshot of core, which includes kernel 2.6.30.4-1, udev 141-5 and pacman 3.3.0-2." [...] "As you can see, just like with 2009.02 there have been some huge changes. We should be more settled now and hopefully it will be more straightforward to build snapshots in the future." - Dieter Plaetinck said in an announcement on the Arch Linux Forums.
Arch Linux 2009.08 features these updates:
· Usage of new AIF installer; · Better disk editor with support for dm_crypt and lvm setups; · Support for automated installations using config files (deprecates quickinst); · A framework to build your own installation procedures; · Better date/time setting with ntp support; · Refactored grub installation routines; · Usability improvements; · Aufs instead of unionfs; · Enhanced boot device detection on image start; · Ftp images are renamed to netinstall to avoid confusion; · Over 48 bugs and feature requests fixed.
About Arch Linux:
Arch Linux is a general purpose Linux distribution that can be molded to do just about anything. Arch Linux distribution is fast, flexible, lightweight and most of the parts under the hood are quite simple to understand and tweak, which can make it a good distro to "learn the ropes" on.
As usual, you can get Arch Linux 2009.08 right now from Softpedia.