Stefan Lippers-Hollmann, one of the main developers from sidux, has announced the availability of sidux 2008-1. This distribution is based on Debian's unstable branch.

Although it took longer than planned, sidux 2008-1 was launched two days ago, available in two kde-lite editions for amd64 and i386 that are almost 435 MB in size, and a combined i386+amd64 flavor that's approximately 1,5 GB large, with KDE full.

This release is powered by the Linux kernel 2.6.24.4, a brand-new in-house build system and a lot of functionality improvements and bugfixes. The desktop environment used by sidux is KDE 3.5.9, the latest version from the 3.5 branch of KDE.

Here is a list with the most important changes in sidux 2008-1:

• amd64 (AMD64, Intel Core2, newer 64-bit capable AMD Sempron and Intel Pentium 4 CPUs (watch for the "lm" flag in /proc/cpuinfo or use infobash -v3) and i686 (Pentium pro/ Pentium II, AMD K7 Athlon or newer)).
• Debian sid, as of 2008-04-11.
• kernel 2.6.24.4 (smp, hard preemption).
• X.org 7.3.
• KDE 3.5.9 (en + de).
• new, SVG based, artwork.
• dissolution of the previous "sidux" menu into the corresponding XDG categories, allowing broader window manager support and XDG compliance.
• offline manual for en + de directly on the disc.
• many changes for the manual.
• iwlwifi3945/ iwlwifi4965 support.
• b43/ b43legacy support for Broadcom wlan cards.
• rt2x00 support for RaLink cards.
• support for RealTek RTL8180L and RTL8185 PCI/ cardbus wlan cards.
• support for RealTek RTL8187 USB wlan cards.
• support for ADMtek ADM8211 PCI/ cardbus wlan cards.
• support for IPWireless 3G UMTS PCMCIA cards.
• support for HSDPA Broadband Wireless Data (Globe Trotter) cards.
• e1000e support for Intel 82801I, 82566DM-2, 82562GT-2, 82562G-2 and 82562V-2 Gigabit Ethernet cards (ICH9).
• support for Logitech Quickcam Orbit, Logitech Quickcam Pro for Notebooks, Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000, Asus Eee PC webcams (linux-uvc).
• driver support for Ricoh R5U870 OEM webcams
• fw-detect to probe for hardware with non-free needs.
• memtest86+.
• overhauled partition and file system detection.
• /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ superseding the monolithic /etc/apt/sources.list.
• virtualbox-ose-guest 1.5.6 support.
• bitsetting/ xrandr settings for ATi and Intel cards.
• basic lvm2 detection and install support on exististing logical volumes.
• Ceni as primary tool for handling network devices.
• consistent switch to Debian's "su-to-root" instead of using custom su wrappers.
• new build system.
• fixed problems with grub-install.
• resolvconf support to handle DNS discovery.
• new interpretation of the graphics detection.

Download sidux 2008-1 right now from Softpedia.