14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the Parsix GNU/Linux operating system have announced on October 4, 2015, that the first TEST build of their upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 release is available for download and testing.
Dubbed Atticus, Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 aims to be one of the first Linux kernel-based operating systems that ship with the recently released GNOME 3.18 open-source desktop environment. The TEST1 build is powered by the long-term-supported Linux 4.1.8 kernel and includes numerous updated applications and core components.
Being a Debian-based distro, Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 has been synchronized with the upstream Debian GNU/Linux 8.2 (Jessie) software repositories as of September 21, 2015. It uses the X.Org Server 1.16.4 display server, the GNOME Shell 3.18.0 user interface, GRUB 2, as well as the Glibc 2.19 library.
"Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 (code name Atticus) ships with stable GNOME 3.18 desktop environment and an updated kernel. This version has been synchronized with Debian Jessie repositories as of September 21, 2015. Parsix Atticus ships with GNOME 3.18 and LibreOffice 4.3.3 productivity suite by default," reads the announcement.
Support for the latest Nvidia and AMD Catalyst drivers is available
Among the updated apps that have been included in Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 TEST1, we can mention GNU Iceweasel (Firefox) 41.0, Oracle VirtualBox 4.3.30, LibreOffice 4.3.3, Gparted 0.19.0, Empathy 3.12.10, Chromium 45.0, GIMP 2.8.14, Grisbi 1.0.0, Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.521, and VLC Media Player 2.2.1.
The distribution gives users instant access to the latest Nvidia (340.76) and ATI/AMD Catalyst (15.7) proprietary video drivers, and the kernel packages have been injected with BFS, TuxOnIce 3.3, and various other patches. Download Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 TEST1 Live DVD ISO images right now from Softpedia.
There are two ISO images available, one for each of the supported hardware architectures, 32-bit and 64-bit, and both of them have been compressed using the XZ and SquashFS compression algorithms. Please keep in mind though that this is a pre-release version, not suitable for production use. More details about this release can be found in the official release notes.