Chakra - 2012-02-12 - Archimedes
The Chakra Development Team is proud to announce the first release of the KDE 4.8 series, codename Archimedes, Chakra GNU/Linux featuring Linux 3.2 and KDE 4.8.
After well over 100.000 downloads of Edn it is the goal to continue the further growth of Chakra into a mainstay distro. With this release KDE is updated to 4.8.0, kernel to Linux 3.2.2. A new theme, Ronak is introduced. Updated Qt, boost, subversion, phonon packages, libxcb stack to name a few of the newer base packages included. A switch to GRUB2 has been decided on, to be more compatible with any other Operating System.
Chakra is now offering a DVD and CD version. The CD version gets you to a minimal working KDE desktop, with only a text-editor, file-manager, web-browser and a simple media player installed, no further apps, no language packs. The DVD version includes all the language packs, most of standard KDE apps, libre-office 3.4.5, amarok, kde-telepathy, spideroak , printer support, minitube, k3b to name a few.
With this release we offer:
KDE 4.8.0
Linux 3.2.2 (2.6.35.14 optional)
Qt 4.8
DVD image, including all locales and a nice selections of apps
minimal CD image you can build your desktop on
tomoyo-tools 2.5 added to a default install, for more security options
wqy-microhei became the new default font for Chinese/Japanese/Korean
QtWebkit 2.2.1
updated initscripts with the option to test systemd
Boost 1.48, switch to GRUB2
You can install additional packages from our repositories.
For all our GTK fans we added some more popular GTK-apps as bundles. You can download them from our bundle page and run them with a simple double-click right away. More about it you can read here.
If you miss one package you need you can take a look at the Chakra Community Repo where our users add additonal PKGBUILDs you can simply compile from source tarballs or install with AppSet. Read the CCR User Guidelines to get started.
A good start is to read our Wiki or visit our Forums. If you are from Italy or speak Italian, we recommend our partner page chakra-project.it.
To create reliable installation media, please follow the instructions in the wiki. Chakra's ISO's do not support unetbootin, and for CD/DVD need a burn speed no higher then 4x.
Other features to mention:
Xorg 7.6 Stack with Mesa 7.11.2 and Xorg-Server 1.10.4
Updated Xorg Drivers
switch from heimdal to krb5 (including rebuilds of depending pkgs)
fixes for kvm and virtualbox
updated networkmanagement
Read the \"Build Notes\" for further information.
All the best
The Chakra GNU/Linux Developers Team
Build-Notes
Changes in core:
Many tools packages updated
Kernel updates for 3.2 series
Initscripts updates
grub2 updates
Boost 1.48
Changes in platform:
Hardware detection updated
Driver updates
Xorg-Server fixes
libxcb-stack updated
Changes in desktop:
KDE SC updated to 4.8.0
Calligra has replaced Koffice as the default KDE office-suite
Networkmanagement updated
Changes in Apps:
Addition of the new kde-telepathy packages
A gtk2 free libreoffice is available
System Requirements
a Intel Pentium II or higher processor or AMD64-ready CPU for 64bit
512MiB (1024MiB recommneded) of RAM for running the live system and 1024MiB of RAM for the installation
around 3 Gib of available hard disk space, 5 Gib for DVD install
a screen capable of 1024 x 600 or higher resolution
a reasonably fast internet connection, e.g. no modem (would be too slow)
Most noticeable changes & additions since Edn
Features
Kernel-3.2.2 with lzma2 support
aufs3-20120109 kernel integrated
KDE SC 4.8.0
Qt 4.8
Boost 1.48
GRUB2
NVidia-295 and NVidia legacy series
Known issues
html5 not working on all nvidia non-free, unless switching to a different phonon backend, all other gfx are correct in html5
Some ALPS touchpad's are not supported
When trying to install vlc in live-mode, it will not run, no such issue on installed system
Some Radeon/ATI cards do not support suspend/hibernate with non-free drivers
When choosing the second tab in the welcome-plasmoid, text will overflow. For aesthetics, the current lay-out is the nicest, reasonable size on start-up of live mode. Clicking on another tab, will clean the text overflow. The text in that one tab is too important for finally trying to stop misconceptions about Chakra.
We expect some more ... Tell us when you find them ...