[manjaro-dev] [testing] Manjaro KDE 15.09-rc2 is online now

[Philip Müller]

With this release we have focused our efforts, bringing more attention
to the common core requirements of Manjaro's broad user-base.

The Xfce edition remains our flagship offering and has received the
attention it deserves. Few can claim to offer such a polished,
integrated and leading-edge Xfce experience. We ship Xfce 4.12 with this
release of Manjaro. We mainly focused on polishing the user experience
on the desktop and window manager, and on updating some components to
take advantage of newly available technologies.

Our KDE edition continues to deliver this powerful, mature and
feature-rich desktop environment with a unique look-and-feel, and with
the perks of Manjaro's latest tools. We ship now Plasma 5.4 desktop in
combination with the latest KDE-Apps 15.08. It was a huge step to get it
all playing together smoothly and to give the user experience the same
feeling as our KDE4 editions of the past.

The Linux kernel used on the 15.09 installation media is the 4.1 (LTS)
series. This series of kernel has been selected for its blend of
stability, long-term viability, and modern features and hardware support.

Both our graphical installer Thus (default graphical installer) and the
CLI installer have been thoroughly tested to meet a huge variety of
system and encryption environments. Additionally we added Calamares as
an alternative graphical installer to try out.

Menda themes have been re-based on the excellent Vertex by horst3180,
with a great deal of Manjaro customisations and additions. Our Menda
look-and-feel has been extended to include Numix-based icons and a
Breeze-based cursor theme, both modified to best match Manjaro's
styling. This you can find in our Xfce edition. Within Plasma 5 we
updated our theme Maia, created by David Linares (mcder3). It includes a
slick icon theme and nicely put out green-based look and feel. Take a
look and get wowed!

Relative to the last installation media release, our tools have been
improved and polished.

The Manjaro Settings Manager now provides an easy-to-use graphical
interface for installing and removing the many series of kernels we
offer. Manjaro's selection of readily available kernels remains the most
extensive of all Linux distribution we know of. At the time of this
15.09 release, nine series of kernel are available directly from our
binary repositories, ranging from the mature & rock-solid 3.10 series to
the latest 4.2 release. Such a wide array of available kernel options
results in extensive hardware support, getting the most out of your
system for you, be it old or new. We also created a kcm module to
integrate Manjaro Settings Manager seamlessly into System-Settings of
Plasma 5.

Manjaro Settings Manager now also includes friendly graphical interfaces
for adjusting system date/time settings and for customising
notifications for available kernel and language pack updates.

Both our graphical package management tools have received important updates.

Our GTK package management tool, Pamac, has just seen its 2.4.1 release.
This release makes AUR truly optional now. We also enhanced our
configurable settings and fixed a lot of bugs.

Our Qt package management tool, Octopi, is now at version 0.7.1 bringing
many improvements and bug-fixes, and shipped using Qt5 for the main
interface. Alternate to the generic updates notifier, a notifier package
with KDE Frameworks 5 support is also available.

Steam is now provided with two launcher choices, one for using the
native system libraries and one for using the Steam compatibility
libraries, in an effort to offer the best compatibility and performance
for different Steam games.

Although the main installation media continue to utilise systemd,
Manjaro now optionally offers extensive support for the OpenRC init
system, giving you the power of choice for your init system, something
rarely readily offered in Linux distributions nowadays.

We hope you enjoy this release.

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http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarotest/files/15.09/kde/15.09-rc2/