The Pardus Team has just announced the first release of the 2008 Pardus branch. This version brings important features such as support for new languages, a better network manager, two kinds of Live CDs and lots of upgrades, like the 3.5.10 and the 4.1.1 editions of KDE, the latest 2.6.25 Linux kernel (2.6.25.16), Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 and more.

Here's a slightly deeper analysis of the most important elements and aspects present in Pardus 2008.1:

· an efficient and powerful network manager - this version features an improved network manager, which, although maintaining a great ease of use, brings new capabilities such as connection sharing, ad-hoc 802.1x support for wireless networks and numerous bugfixes and adjustments;
· two Live CD variants - this version comes with either KDE 3 or KDE 4, so it's really up to the user which one they want to use. However, the difference between them, other than the version of the desktop manager, is that the KDE 3 CD includes all the Pardus technologies up to now, while KDE 4 is regarded more like a preview of Pardus and KDE 4.1.1 integration. The KDE 4 Live CD comes with very popular applications such as Amarok, Kaffeine, K3b and more;
· language support - this feature also splits Pardus 2008.1 into two CDs, one with support only for English and Turkish, and one with support for all 11 languages supported by Pardus 2008.1, as the Sweedish language has recently been added to the list;

Besides the new additions, Pardus features many improved, bug-fixed or updated applications. Here are the most important:

· KDE 3.5.10 / 4.1.1
· Linux kernel 2.6.25.16
· Firefox 3.0.1
· OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.7
· and many more free tools, most of them in their latest version.

Get Pardus 2008.1 right now from Softpedia.