14 DAY TRIAL // After one and a half years of hard work, the Vine Linux developers are happy to announce that the next major release of the GNU/Linux operating system is now in development.
Yes, we're talking about Vine Linux 6.5, which has just received a first Beta development milestone for public beta testing, bringing some major new changes to most of the internal components. Worthy of note is a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 4.4 series, as well as an updated toolchain consisting of GCC 4.9.3, GNU Binutils 2.26, and Glibc 2.23.
From the release notes, which are currently available only for Japanese speaking users, it also looks like the first Beta release of Vine Linux 6.5 includes recent software versions, such as the Mozilla Firefox 47.0 web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird 45.0 email and news client, as well as the LibreOffice 5.1 office suite (only on the DVD edition).
Moreover, the OpenSSL libraries have been updated to version 1.0.1t to keep users secure at all times when communicating with other people on the Internet, the OpenJDK 1.7.0.91 packages have been added for out-of-the-box Java support, but it's available only on the DVD edition, and various other packages have been updated to their latest versions.
Final release is coming later in the year
The development cycle of Vine Linux 6.5 will continue with another Beta release, and the development team promises to unleash the final version sometime in the near future. However, they urge everyone interested in this GNU/Linux distribution to test the Beta milestones and report any bugs they might encounter.
"We look forward to testing reports from everyone. Please use the current version only for testing purposes, since there's the possibility of it to contain some serious issues. It should also be noted that Vine linux 6.5, after the official release, will be carried out as a target only 6.5," reads the announcement.
Vine Linux 6.5 Beta 1 is available for download right now via our website, distributed as CD and DVD-size installable ISO images supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit hardware architectures. When testing these Beta builds, please try to keep in mind that they do not represent the final product and are considered work in progress.