14 DAY TRIAL // The Manjaro 0.8.11 Linux distribution based on Arch Linux, which is also 100% compatible with the repositories of the base system, has received its first updated pack and it looks like it's a big one.
The 0.8.11 branch of the Manjaro distro has been in the works for quite some time and it was released only a week and a half ago. You would think it would take the devs more than that to provide the first major upgrade, but they have moved very fast and they have a number of important upgrades ready for users.
The previous release in the series, 0.8.10, got 12 update packs until the new release arrived, so it's easy to assume that we'll get the same kind of treatment for this version as well. The support lasted for about six months, so we should see 0.9.0 released in about the same time frame. There is no precise schedule and it could arrive sooner or later than that.
Manjaro 0.8.11 gets new kernels and important updates
Manjaro is using Arch Linux as its base, which is actually a rolling release distro, but things are different for Manjaro. The developers are also making punctual launches and updates, which are often quite substantial.
"With this update we present to you a new package called Firefox-kde. Our friends from BlueSystems started a new page for this new Firefox version. Currently we support Manjaro, Netrunner and Kubuntu with binary packages. Soon or later other distributions might adopt this work by BlueSystems and KDE e.V.
"As we already working on our next version of Manjaro – 0.9.0 – we also pushed Calamares 0.17.4 out in the wild. It is now mostly feature completed and can be stable used as our graphical installer. We are still fixing some quirks before we release our first release candidate. You can always install our latest Manjaro Dev-Builds to test this new installer on your own systems," write the developers in the announcement.
Manjaro provides support for a number of kernels: 3.10.61, 3.12.34, 3.13.11.12 (maintained by Canonical), 3.14.25, Linux kernel 3.16.7.2, Linux kernel 3.16.5, and Linux kernel 3.17.4. It's very likely that the next update pack will also feature the newly released Linux kernel 3.18.
If you already have the system installed and you perform regular updates, then you don't really have to do anything extra. You can download Manjaro 0.8.11 right now from Softpedia and upgrade the distro with the regular updater tool.
