14 DAY TRIAL // Chakra Linux, a distribution especially built to take advantage of KDE Software Compilation and the Plasma desktop, is now at version 2012.10.
Chakra Linux 2012.10, dubbed “Claire,” follows the development of the KDE SC 4.9 series and is named in the memory of Claire Lotion.
The biggest change in Chakra Linux is switch to systemd as default, at least for this release. It took the developer six months to release this version, but the systemd implementation has finally happened. In order to make this work, udev has been merged with systemd, which has been updated to version 194.
This particular modification meant that a lot of packages depending on libudev had to be updated and rebuilt.
Also, consolekit had to be removed, handled now by polkit and logind. The developers said that this is the most important modification in Chakra's two and a half years of existence.
Highlights of Chakra Linux 2012.10:
• KDE SC has been updated to version 4.9.2; • Linux kernel was updated to version 3.5.6, but the 3.0.43 remains optional; • A lot of important applications, such as Cups, Dbus, Qt, and Calligra, were updated to more recent versions; • Kapudan, Chakra's desktop greeter and all around first setup tool, has been added; • Artwork theme called "Dharma" has been added; • Grub2-2.00, including graphical dharma theme, has been added; • Enhancements to Chakra tools like cbundle/cinstall, welcome-plasmoid, tribe and spun, have been implemented; • systemd, kmod, mkinitcpio, latest proprietary graphics drivers, including the all-new catalyst-legacy, have been updated.
The distribution is provided on a DVD image, with all locales included, along with nice selections of apps. Also, users can install a lot of additional applications from the repositories.
Developers have also stated that Chakra is no longer shipping a GUI for package management. Appset-qt was the GUI for pacman, but was not handling complex updates as it should, so it is dropped from this ISO.
Moreover, a decision was made to no longer provide an i686 image. If you want to test the distribution, keep in mind that Chakra's ISO's do not support unetbootin, and CD/DVD's need a burn speed no higher than 4x.
A complete list of new features and updates can be found in the official announcement.
Download Chakra Linux 2012.10 right now from Softpedia.
