14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the Debian-based SolydXK GNU/Linux distribution announced today the release and immediate availability for download of the SolydXK 9 operating system series.
Based on the recently launched Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system, SolydXK 9 has been in development for a few months now, and it entered Beta stages only a three weeks ago. It's a major release that adds numerous new features and lots of other performance improvements, bug fixes, and under-the-hood changes.
"In the past three weeks we have been testing, improving, developing and exercising parts of our vocabulary that our mothers didn’t even know we had but finally we are satisfied with the result. It is time to release the new SolydX and SolydK version 9," reads today's release announcement.
Highlights of SolydXK 9
Prominent new features of SolydXK 9 include a graphical user interface (GUI) for the in-house built Solydxk Systems utility to allow users to easily encrypt their disk partitions, as well as any external drive, choose mirrors for the repositories that are closer to them and faster, clean up their system, hold back packages, or localize it.
Users are being informed that the encryption thingy is still in Beta, so use it at your own risk. SolydXK 9 also comes with new light and dark themes for both the SolydX and SolydK editions, and integrates the solydx/k-info packages into the solydx/k-system-adjustments ones.
Lots of things have been removed from the SolydXK 9 release, starting with the backport repository, which users can still enable from the SolydXK System GUI, and continuing with SolydXK Conky, XKSudo, kcm-ufw, Device Driver Manager (DDM), and the Update Manager tool.
The SolydXK Software Manager tool was replaced with a similar application from Debian Stretch's repository, the LightDM login manager was replaced as well with lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings, and the User Manager and Sambashare tools were replaced with gnome-system-tools and gadmin-samba respectively.
There are also some bad news for Raspberry Pi fans, as support for the SolydX RPI edition has been dropped starting with the SolydXK 9 release because the team doesn't have the manpower to continue develop it and bring it to today's standards.
Therefore, SolydXK 9 is now available for download as SolydX (Xfce) and SolydK (KDE) editions, only for 64-bit systems. Existing SolydXK 8 users can now upgrade their installation by either reinstalling or using the built-in package manager, but not before making a backup of their most important files.