Announced three weeks ago, the Scientific Linux 5.4 operating system brought improved support for Atheros wireless chipsets, the iwlwifi 5150 ucode firmware, updated iwlwifi 4945, 3945, and 5000 ucode, the Lua programming language and lots of updated packages & numerous bug fixes. Last night (November 24th), Urs Beyerle announced the immediate availability of the Live CD and Live DVD editions of this Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4-based distribution created by scientists for scientists. The Live CD/DVD is available for the i386 and x86_64 architectures and it allows users to run Scientific Linux directly from the CD/DVD media.

Highlights of Scientific Linux 5.4 Live CD/DVD:

· Linux kernel 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5;
· X.Org 7.1;
· KDE 3.5.4 available only on the Live DVD;
· GNOME 2.16.0 as the default desktop environment;
· Can be installed on a local hard drive;
· The Live CD can be installed on a USB stick;
· The Live CD can be easily mounted over NFS (Network File System protocol) as a diskless client;
· Ability to save changes made in the live environment, on an external device;
· Mozilla Firefox 3.0.15 web browser;
· Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 e-mail client;
· OpenOffice.org office suite 2.3.0;
· The GIMP 2.2.13 image editor;
· Evolution 2.12.3 available only on the Live DVD;
· openAFS client 1.4.11;
· ALSA sound driver 1.0.17;
· 3D desktop effects powered by Compiz and AIGLX.

The following applications were added in the Live CD/DVD Edition compared with the main Scientific Linux 5.4 version:

· NTFS-3G;
· ntfsprogs;
· GParted;
· reiserfs-utils;
· progsreiserfs;
· ms-sys;
· TestDisk;
· dd_rescue;
· ddrescue;
· PartImage;
· IPerf;
· xdialog;
· xfe and rxvt-unicode on the Mini Live CD only.

About Scientific Linux

Scientific Linux is a distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and put together by many labs and universities around the world. It aims to create a common install base for experiments, reducing unnecessary effort. Labs can easily add modifications and create their own distributions without disturbing the base Scientific Linux release.

Download Scientific Linux 5.4 Live CD/DVD right now from Softpedia.