14 DAY TRIAL // Manjaro 0.8.9, a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch, has received its seventh pack in the series and the developers are working to launch the next stable version, 0.8.10.
The Manjaro developers have already released quite a few update packs for this version of the operating system and they managed to extend the life of the distribution considerably. This seventh update in the series is a special one and comes with a very important set of packages that allows its users to test the next KDE Framework that is still under development.
“Our last stable update was a little bumpy. We hope we get this one better. New would be the addition of KDE5s first beta. You can install it side by side to KDE4 or as a single desktop. Please use: pacman -S kf5 kf5-aids To enjoy Plasma-Next packages you have to add Archs kde-unstable repository to your pacman.conf file. Use any Arch-Mirror for that repository,” said the developers in the official announcement.
The final version of KDE Frameworks 5 is expected to arrive sometime in July, but it will be a while until the packages are added to the Manjaro repositories.
As usual, a number of important packages have received updates as well, such as GNOME, which has been updated to version 3.12.2, KDE, which has been upgraded to version 4.12.3, and Caligra.
Here are all the kernels that users have access to from Manjaro: 3.4.91 (longterm stable kernel), 3.8.13.23 (LTS maintained by Canonical), 3.10.40, (default in Manjaro), 3.11.10.10 (LTS maintained by Canonical), 3.12.20 (default in Manjaro 0.8.10), 3.13.11.1, and 3.14.4.
All the kernels available for this release have received various updates and users should have access to all of them through the repositories. The latter listed above is Linux kernel 3.14.4 and it’s the most advanced one available, with the exception of the 3.15 RCs that are being released by Linus Torvalds.
If you already have the operating system installed and you perform regular updates, you won’t have to do anything special in order to get this pack.
It's expected that more updates are on their way, but it's impossible to predict when they will arrive, because there is no precise schedule in place.
More details about this release can be found in the official announcement. You can download Manjaro 0.8.9 right now from Softpedia and just update the system.