Joern Lindau announced today the next release of Toorox, version 10.2009. This Gentoo-based Linux distribution features the KDE 4.3.2 desktop environment and many other updated packages, all running on top of the 22.6.31 Linux kernel and Xorg Server 1.6.5. The base install also comes with OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, Amarok 2.2, IceCat (Firefox) 3.5.3 and The VLC media player 1.0.2.

A special addition to the Linux kernel that Toorox uses is the Direct Rendering Manager, which is installed as a module and enabled by default. Its presence allows Intel, SIS and ATI Radeon video cards to display advanced window compositing effects without needing a proprietary driver. However, this may prove problematic to certain hardware configurations, and to avoid this the module can be disabled altogether by using the "nodrm" boot option. Other new kernel features include support for the EXT4 filesystem, which can be used for the root partition during installs, and the inclusion of Kernel Staging Drivers, supporting a larger set of hardware than the ones officially included in the kernel.

A few new features make life easier on laptops. The improved Systemconfig "LAN+WLAN" can now detect if your wireless card needs a firmware file to function, it will inform you about that requirement and you will be given the option to load the appropriate firmware from a file. Synaptics touch pads, which are pretty widespread, have a dedicated driver that is preconfigured to enable tapping. Also, netbooks with 10-inch displays have a dedicated boot option that optimizes the graphical options for the small screen size.

Package management has been improved with the inclusion of the Portato tool, which is a graphical user interface for the Portage system. Although this tool isn't very old – it's now at version 0.13 – it has proven itself to be very useful.

Download Toorox 10.2009 right now from Softpedia.