The Foresight Linux team has recently announced the availability of the new Linux Foresight 1.3 version. Foresight Desktop Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution featuring free but also non-free software. It aims to include the latest software and to be as user friendly as possible, but also not to let down the more advanced users who expect a powerful and stable distribution. It is a GNOME based distribution and it has also tracked GNOME development closely.

Foresight Linux distribution intends to bring the latest available software, especially GNOME and many applications such as Banshee for music management, F-Spot for photo management, Pidgin and Ekiga for internet communication and OpenOffice.org for productivity and office applications. The Conary package manager featured by Foresight is different from others working with deb or rpm formats. It updates only the specific files in a package that need to be updated, instead of downloading the entire package as the latter would do. The Foresight 1.3 third release comes with GNOME 2.18 and also with some bug-fixes and improvements.

Highlights:

- improved search ability due to Beagle 0.2.17 tweaked for Foresight Linux
- upgrade of the Epiphany web browser to version 2.18.2
- easier Firstsight installation; the obsolete Firstboot mechanism has been replaced by an altered version of autoconfig - from Knoppix to configure X.Org
- Pidgin has been updated to version 2.0.1
- increased compatibility with more peripherals due to the update of the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to the 0.5.9 version
- latest Compiz 3D window manager, installed by default
- Conary package manager has been updated to the latest version, 1.2.16.

There are not many bug-fixes but those that have been made are quite important. The Gtk is now localized, meaning that dialogs such as printing... or file opening... are now available in the user's local language. The system provides now support for more digital cameras. The Foersight Linux team also said they're working hard on the development of the 2.0 version, which should be ready for release later this summer. They claim that Foresight 2.0 will feature a x86_64 build for the first time, in addition to a x86 build, as well as a smaller installation size, and a graphical user interface for Conary.