The latest version of Sonar GNOME can be downloaded from Softpedia

Aug 5, 2014 12:47 GMT  ·  By

Sonar GNOME 2014.1, a Linux distribution based on Manjaro and Arch Linux and developed specifically for people with various impairments, has been released and is now available for download.

The Sonar developers have been working on it for quite a while and it was originally developed with the OpenSuSE builder, but now they have moved towards Manjaro Linux and Arch Linux.

There are very few Linux distributions developed specifically for people with impairments, although most of the major open source OSes have various accessibility features.

“Sonar GNU/Linux is an accessible operating system focused on assistive technology. It is focused on being the most accessible operating system available using Free assistive technology. This has been a long time coming and it is finally here! A big thanks goes out to Kyle Brouhard for getting this release done. He has put a lot of work into this and it shows.”

“This is the first release of Sonar being based on Manjaro Linux, which is built off Arch Linux. The Manjaro team has been really great to work with and has helped greatly with the transition from Ubuntu to Manjaro,” reads the announcement.

The developers have explained that the desktop used for the new distro is GNOME 3, a screen reader for blind and low-vision people called Orca has been added, a magnification program to help magnify the screen for low-vision people has been implemented, an on-screen keyboard for people who have low motor skills and have difficulty using a keyboard has been added, and a font for people with dyslexia is now available as well.

The people from the Manjaro community have helped the developers from Sonar to better use Manjaro and to integrate GNOME 3.12.2 as well as it could be done. The makers of Sonar also went through all the trouble of implementing some of the latest packages and it shows from the quality of the build.

The distribution also tries to follow the rules set forth by the Free Software Foundation and implement only free software, but they would have a problem with the OS if proprietary applications and drivers were available in the official repositories.

More details about Sonar Gnome 2014.1 can be found on the Manjaro blog. You can download Sonar Gnome 2014.1 right now from Softpedia. If you are in doubt about the usefulness of this distro, you can always run it in a virtual environment, like VirtualBox for example.

Sonar GNOME (4 Images)

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