14 DAY TRIAL // Puppy Linux creator Barry Kauler announced the release of Quirky Linux 8.6, which appears to be the last in the Quirky Xerus series, based on the Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.
Coming five and a half months after version 8.5, Quirky Linux 8.6 is here as an incremental update consisting of various updated components and bug fixes, and it's the last in the series as Barry Kauler plans to rebase the tiny GNU/Linux distribution on Canonical's latest long-term supported Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system.
"Quirky Linux 8.6 is the latest in the "Xerus" series, binary-compatible with x86_64 Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS, though built with woofQ and architecturally very different from Ubuntu," said Barry Kauler in the release announcement. "Version 8.6 is an incremental upgrade from 8.5, with package upgrades and architectural improvements."
What's new in Quirky Linux 8.6
Powered by Linux kernel 4.14.63 with the AUFS (Advanced Multi-Layered Unification Filesystem) patch, Quirky Linux 8.6 is built with the latest DEBs from Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (Xenial Xerus), which is also the last in the series, and brings some of the latest software updates, including the SeaMonkey 2.49.4 web browser, email client, chat client, and news client.
It also improves the EasyShare open-source and simple network file and printer sharing software with support for connecting to Android-powered smartphones, introduces a new Gxlat language translator, and adds a new layer of architectural improvements and bug fixes for a performance boost.
Quirky Linux 8.6 is now available to download if you want to deploy it on new computers, but existing users should be able to upgrade their installations right now to the latest and last release in the series. We're now looking forward to the next major Quirky Linux Bionic series, which should be hitting the streets later this year.
