14 DAY TRIAL // Cinnarch, a modern, elegant and powerful operating system based on Arch Linux, is now at version 2013.01.23.
Cinnarch 2013.01.23 is based on Linux kernel 3.7.3, one of the most recent stable kernels released, and it comes with Cinnamon 1.6.7 desktop environment and GNOME 3.6.2.
One of the problems with Cinnarch in the past was the long time that the installer spent downloading the packages, which in this case is almost 500MB.
The latest version improves on this aspect by reducing the downloading time with the help of parallel downloads, thanks to a pacman wrapper called powerpill. This new system downloads everything with a 12MB connection that it’s my case, in just 4-6 minutes.
“With this we avoid the “select mirror” step, because there’s no need, but at the end, in your final system, you will have selected by default the 5 fastest mirrors to your location in the case of the Arch Linux repositories,” stated the official announcement.
Another new feature implemented in Cinnarch 2013.01.23. In some cases, a package has broken dependencies upstream, in Arch Linux repositories. The developer has fixed this problem by creating a frozen repo, with just the packages the installer needs to do its job.
This way, when the regular download fails, the installer changes to this secure repo to let the user finish his installation. Then the users just have to update their system when the error is solved upstream, but at least, they will have an operational system.
Highlights of Cinnarch 2013.01.23:
• Some packages like whois, dnsutils and netcfg have been added; • Cinnamon-settings was patched to make the “change cursor” theme switch work correctly; • xorg-server has been updated to version 1.13.1; • The appearance of QT apps under Cinnarch has been repaired.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement. Download Cinnarch 2013.01.23 right now from Softpedia.