The ISO image is powered by the Linux 4.9.11 kernel

Mar 1, 2017 22:12 GMT  ·  By

It's the first day of March, which means that Arch Linux users can get their hands on a brand-new install medium of the well-known GNU/Linux distribution with all the latest software updates and security patches.

Yes, you've guessed it! We're talking about Arch Linux 2017.03.01, which is the first ISO image of the Linux-based operating system to ship with support for 32-bit installations. The ISO was renamed from "dual-arch" to simply "dual," and we took it for a quick spin to see what the boot menu looks like (see the attached screenshot for details).

As you can see, there's only one option for installing the Arch Linux operating system on new PCs, for 64-bit (x86_64) platforms. If you have an older computer that does not have a 64-bit processor, don't even bother downloading the Arch Linux 2017.03.01 ISO image because it won't work. Instead, you should get last month's ISO and update the system after installation. On the bright side of things, the ISO is a lot smaller now, with only ~500 MB in size.

32-bit support will be offered to existing users until November 2017

As mentioned on the Arch Linux website, existing 32-bit (i686) users shouldn't worry too much about this change, as they will still receive software updates until November 2017, but after that, the i686 architecture will officially become unsupported. Therefore, we recommend that you plan ahead to migrate to a 64-bit Arch Linux installation.

As for today's Arch Linux 2017.03.01 release, the ISO image is still powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.9 series, namely 4.9.11, as Linux kernel 4.10.1 is currently in the Testing repo and it won't be promoted to the stable repository until it passes all the tests. Other than that, Arch Linux 2017.03.01 comes with all the latest packages that have been released on the official repos since February 1, 2017.

However, Arch Linux 2017.03.01 is here only for newcomers who want to install the GNU/Linux distribution on their personal computers, as well as those who planned on reinstalling their OS. If you're running a healthy Arch Linux installation, there's no need to download this new ISO image, just run the "sudo pacman -Syu" command from time to time to keep your PC up to date and secure.