VectorLinux Standard 5.8 BETA is out

The 5.8 beta version of VectorLinux Standard edition had been released earlier this month so we took some time to review it, and it worth!

The new Linux distro is based on Slackware 11.0 and runs a 2.6.17 kernel. The classic description of VectorLinux is valid for 5.8 as well: small and fast. There are several major improvements, to name some: full read/write NTFS support, new package format (LZMA instead of TGZ) which allowed developers to push more software on the setup CD, graphical enhancements and much more.

Most of the included software had been updated to their latest version and some are tuned for better performance and usability (Firefox for example, although SeaMonkey is a sweet alternative). The package format switch is not a problem if you want to continue using .TGZ packages, especially from LinuxPackages.Org in our case; their software repository features both versions of the packages.

You can download the CD ISO image here.

In the end we would like to thank the VectorLinux developers for their great product; looking forward to the final version!