14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few moments ago, Philip Müller had the pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella) computer operating system.
As expected from a Manjaro Linux release, the developers managed to add the latest GNU/Linux technologies, among which we can mention the recently released Linux kernel 4.4 RC4, Wine 1.8 RC3, Oracle VirtualBox 5.0.10, MATE 1.12.1 desktop environment, systemd 218, SMPlayer 15.11, and the OpenRC 0.19 init system.
Additionally, the Manjaro developers managed to get the Steam for Linux client to run natively on the distribution, again, as well as to finish the transition to the Deepin 2015 series, along with the regular upstream packages. The Manjaro Linux 15.12 repos were synchronized with the upstream software repositories of Arch Linux as of today, December 7, 2015.
"I’m happy to announce the first release candidate of Manjaro 15.12 (Capella)," said Philip Müller on behalf of the Manjaro Development Team. "It took us a while to prepare the install medias and to polish our graphical tools to get you the best Manjaro experience out there to come. [...] It is always good to check for updated packages, even we don’t notify you about them."
Calamares and Manjaro Tools highlights
In addition to all the bleeding-edge stuff mentioned above, the first Release Candidate of Manjaro Linux 15.12 (Capella) adds various improvements to the Calamares graphical installer. Among them are the rewrite of the preview for all installation options, better UEFI support, the ability to employ the user's password for the root account, and optional support for installing bootloaders.
Last but not least, Manjaro Linux 15.12 RC1 comes with optimizations and bugfixes for various Manjaro Tools, revamps the KCM (KDE Control Module) for the Manjaro Settings app, adds multiple enhancements to the Octopi and Pamac graphical package managers, and addresses an LVM issue in the Thus installer. Download Manjaro Linux 15.12 RC1 Xfce and Manjaro Linux 15.12 RC1 KDE right now from Softpedia.
As usual, please try to keep in mind that these are pre-release versions, which means that they contain unfinished features, and bugs might be present. Therefore, we do not recommend installing them in production environments where stability is of the essence. At the moment, Manjaro Linux 15.12 supports the Linux 4.4 RC4, 4.3.0, 4.2.6, 4.1.13 LTS, 3.19.8.10, 3.18.24 LTS, 3.16.7.20, 3.14.57 LTS, 3.13.11.30, 3.12.51 LTS, and 3.10.93 LTS kernel packages.