14 DAY TRIAL // Manjaro 0.8.10, a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch, has just received a new flavor called the Netbook Edition.
Manjaro has become one of the most used distributions and gained a lot of followers. The developers have released a new major Manjaro version, 0.8.10, and now a new flavor for Netbooks is available for download.
“I’m happy to announce the 0.8.10 release of the Manjaro Netbook Edition. i686 and x86_64 ISO’s are available. i686 is recommended for most netbooks. The Netbook Edition uses a lightened and customised Xfce environment. Screen real estate is optimised with the use of a single vertical panel that includes DockBarX (via a plug-in) and through a modified version of Xfwm4 (Xfce’s window manager), based on xfwm4-titleless-dev, further patched for default-maximized support.”
“It also features an Intel Atom-optimised kernel (available post-installation, i686 only). As with most Manjaro editions, the Netbook edition supports playback of most media formats out-of-the-box, additionally the i686 version includes a particular version of the Flash plugin that provides jolt-free full-screen playback (usually 360p max) on some Intel GMA (950/3150/etc.) graphics hardware,” reads the official announcement.
Manjaro also has quite a few flavors out, like Xfce, KDE edition, Openbox, and the Net edition, but there are also a few others from the community that haven't landed just yet. A Netbook flavor was sorely missed, because Netbooks are actually a very hot item right now and many users have them at home.
The Manjaro 0.8.10 Netbook Edition devs have made quite a few changes in their distro, besides making the hardware specifications it needs to run on lighter. For example, a new theme called Menda is now used by default, the LightDM greeter (which is based on GTK2) has been integrated by default, a number of miscellaneous tweaks and bug fixes have been implemented, and the new installation media brings all the universal Manjaro infrastructure updates.
Users will also find that all the applications run only in full-screen, with very few exceptions, and that they might need to install other packages than the ones provided by default, like a new Internet browser instead of Midori or LibreOffice, which has been removed from the default installation.
More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download Manjaro 0.8.10 Netbook Edition right now from Softpedia, but you can also upgrade your system with the regular updater tool.