After a couple of years of silence, a new version of NimbleX, a light-weight, Slackware-based Linux distribution is now available. Still in testing, the NimbleX 2010 Beta has been released to all eager users. You can take it for a spin to see how it handles or to see what’s changed. The long wait may have been worth it, as NimbleX 2010 comes with a lot of changes and updates, completely overhauling the previous version.

“After a long wait a new NimbleX version is finally out. First of all keep in mind this is a Beta so many things will still have to be polished but nevertheless it has to be eventually released because your feedback is what will make it better,” NimbleX creator and developer Bogdan Radulescu wrote in the official announcement.

“Many things have changed hopefully for the better in the long run. First of all, after about 5 years, the idea of keeping it limited to less than 200MB was dropped. There is a lot more in the distro right now so in the end it should make the user experience better,” he added.

The biggest change is the switch to the KDE4 desktop environment. KDE4 had been released at the time NimbleX 2008 was launched, but it was deemed too buggy and incomplete to be included in the release.

It is also the first NimbleX release to go beyond the 200 MB self-imposed limit for the ISO. It comes with a modern Linux kernel and all packages are up-to-date. The final version will also come with an alternative desktop environment if KDE4 is too taxing on your machine.

Highlights of NimbleX 2010 Beta:

· Linux kernel 2.6.33 with squashfs and aufs2 - better hardware support and power management;
· XServer 1.7.5 - the latest stable release;
· KDE4 replaces KDE3 as the default desktop;
· OpenOffice replaces KOffice;
· Gimp, VirtualBox, Mozilla Firefox, Transmission and other applications;
· More libraries included by default.

NimbleX 2010 Beta is available for download here on Softpedia. Remember that this is a beta release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.