[manjaro-testing] Manjaro KDE 15.09 (Bellatrix) is online now

[Philip Müller]

Hi community,

I’m happy to announce Manjaro 15.09 (Bellatrix)!

Since June we are working on this release. First thing you will notice,
this release was not tagged 0.9.0 as we would have normal done. Well, we
had a discussion with all developers and decided to go for date tags
from now on.

Also new is: we ship with Calamares as an alternative graphical
installer. It is now stable enough to be used on productive systems. You
can still use Thus. Also our terminal installer got some small
improvements. So stay tuned for the fresh ISO image hit the net …

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

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 5.4.1 desktop in
combination with the latest KDE-Apps 15.08.1 and KDE-Framework 5.14. 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.

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. We also updated Calamares, our secondary
graphical installer we hope to use in our next stable release of Manjaro
after this one.

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, ten series of kernel are available directly from our
binary repositories, ranging from the mature & rock-solid 3.10 series to
the latest 4.3 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. It also includes friendly graphical interfaces for adjusting
system date/time settings and for customising notifications for
available kernel and language pack updates. We also created a kcm module
to integrate Manjaro Settings Manager seamlessly into System-Settings of
Plasma 5.

Our Qt package management tool, Octopi, is now at version 0.7.2 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/manjarolinux/files/release/15.09/kde