The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) developers announced today a new release of their XO Software, a Fedora-based Linux distribution designed for the XO laptop. The new version is based on the popular Sugar graphical interface, Fedora 9 operating system, and includes some core software customizations for wireless drivers, Open Firmware, power management, and the NAND flash filesystem. Among the new features in XO Software 8.2.0, we can notice some usability and GUI (graphical user interface) improvements, backup and restore functions, new and updated languages, automatic updates and longer battery life. With this release, the developers also included a complete user manual, which is also available here.

As we mentioned, XO Software 8.2.0 brings a few interesting features and some bug fixes. Let's take a detailed look at the most important ones:

· The Home view and Journal were updated with some new options. For example, you will be able to find and organize stuff;
· In order to easily collaborate with other XO laptops and switch between running applications, an enhanced Frame was added;
· Added a Control Panel that will help you setup the network, power and language preferences;
· Added a Software Update utility that will automatically find and update the system with the latest versions of the installed applications;
· School Server integration, so you can easily backup and then restore the files;
· Added new language translations;
· Updated language translations;
· Added a very useful user manual;
· Google calendar bug was fixed.

If you want to try this Fedora-based operating system on your XO laptop, then you can download the image right now from Softpedia. However, remember that it is still in development and some things may not work as expected! Also, don't forget to check out the installation instructions.