Bio-Linux has been released !

Bio-Linux is an ideal system for scientists handling and analysing biological data.

Bio-Linux 6.0 is a fully featured, powerful, configurable and easy to maintain bioinformatics workstation. Bio-Linux provides more than 500 bioinformatics programs on an Ubuntu Linux 10.04 base. There is a graphical menu for bioinformatics programs, as well as easy access to the Bio-Linux bioinformatics documentation system and sample data useful for testing programs. You can also install Bio-Linux packages to handle new generation sequence data types.

You can install Bio-Linux on your machine, either as the only operating system, or as part of a dual-boot setup which allows you to use your current system and Bio-Linux on the same hardware.

Bio-Linux also runs Live from the DVD or a USB stick. This runs in the memory of your machine and does not involve installing anything. This is a great, no-hassle way to try out Bio-Linux, demonstrate or teach with it, or to work with when you are on the move.

Bio-Linux is built on open source systems and software, and so is free to to install and use. See What's new on Bio-Linux 6.0. Also, check out the  2006 paper on Bio-Linux and open source systems for biologists.

Getting Bio-Linux is simple. Just download the image, burn it to a DVD or USB stick and boot the machine from that media.

Running Bio-Linux as a live system

You can run Bio-Linux by booting your computer from the memory stick. To do this, you need to set the machine to boot from a USB port.

On common computers, you can press the F12 key as the machine is starting up. This loads up a menu allowing you to choose a boot device for that session. When you want to run a Bio-Linux Live Session or install Bio-Linux from the memory stick, simply choose the option: boot from a USB device.

If you wish to set this as a permanent option, then you can press F2 instead of F12 as the machine is starting up. This will allow you to configure the BIOS of your computer to establish an order of devices to boot from. You can make the USB memory stick the first device on the list. After this, your machine will always look first into USB ports for USB devices and will boot from them if they are bootable.

Download Bio-Linux at Here.

SystemRescueCd 2.4.0 has been released !

SystemRescueCd 2.4.0 has been released, its an updated version of the specialist live CD containing a large collection of open-source utilities for disk partitioning and data rescue tasks. The new release comes with the brand-new GParted 0.10.0, the latest X.Org Server and Mozilla Firefox, while DHCP has been upgraded to the 4.x series.



SystemRescueCd is a Gentoo-based Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM or USB drive, designed for repairing a system and data after a crash. It also aims to provide an easy way to carry out administration tasks on a computer, such as creating and editing hard disk partitions. It contains many useful system utilities (GNU Parted, PartImage, FSTools) and some basic ones (editors, Midnight Commander, network tools). It aims to be very easy to use. 

The kernel of the system supports all of today's most important file systems, including ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, Reiser4FS, btrfs, XFS, JFS, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660, as well as network file systems, such as Samba and NFS.

Whats changed from old version:
Updated standard kernels to Linux 3.0.8 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to Linux 3.1.0 (altker32 + altker64); dropped Reiser4 patch from all kernels (no patch for Linux 3.x); updated X.Org Server to 1.10.4 (graphical server and drivers); updated Mozilla Firefox to 7.0.1; updated GParted to 0.10.0; patched Parted 2.4 with fixes from Fedora.

Download this new release at Here.

ZEN-mini 2010 has been released

ZEN-mini 2010 or ZEN, based on PCLinuxOS, is a minimal Linux livecd that is bootable and can be installed. It comes with a very basic GNOME desktop without additional applications. It is designed for advanced users or for users who wish to learn how to customize their system with the applications and support files they want to use.

Additional software can be installed through the Synaptic Software Manager (requires network connection). Add your own background, window decorations, web browser client, email client, music client and fully trick out your desktop the way you want it.

Now, ZEN-mini 2010 has been released. Built with GNOME 2.30, kernel 2.6.32.11 bfs, addlocale, and including fixed pulse audio.

You can download this mini PCLinuxOS at Here. ISO size only 343mb!

Chakra, KDE Mod LiveCD

Chakra is a free, user-friendly and extremely powerful liveCD and/or operating system based on the award winning K Desktop Environment and on the GNU/Linux distribution for connoisseurs: Arch Linux.

With rolling releases, freshly cooked packages, its graphical tools and a small but strong and diverse community, it is the computing environment you may have been waiting for. Chakra and Arch's community-driven development is grounded in the concept of KISS, which has been proven to be superior for people who really want to learn something about Linux or dont want to deal with administrative overhead, or are just lazy nerds like ourselves.

The team of Chakra's goal is to provide a operating system for desktops that is easy to use, but still has all the functionality, clarity, power and speediness of a KISS operating system. In the long term, the team want to build an operating system based on Arch Linux that meets most requirements desktop users have today, like easy installation of software, graphical system administration, configuring power management on mobile devices or sharing an internet connection. To be better able to fulfill this goal, they strongly rely on users who report bugs, send in feature requests and ideas for improvements, and of course participate in development.

Although this might sound like a distro for Linux newbies, these are not its primary target audience, at least not for the moment. Chakra is made for techy people and competent GNU/Linux users with a passion for KDE, KISS and such stuff, who dont fear to get their hands dirty but want to set up a usable desktop system quickly and easily.

By the way, you can download this live CD at Here.

Turn your PC into Media Center with GeeXBox

GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Being a standalone LiveCD-based distribution, it's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM.


Despite his tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.

GeeXboX also comes with a complete tool-chain that allows developers adding easily extra packages and features but that might also be used to give birth to many dedicated embedded Linux systems.

The curent version of GeeXBox is 1.2-beta1 with major changes of adding widescreens and HDTV screens support and adding X11 video acceleration for most graphic cards (Intel, nVidia, ATI, S3, SiS, VIA ...).

The whole distributions is now modularized to best detect your hardware and load ony what is needed. Many drivers have been added and installation has been completely reworked for better usability.

This beta version that can be downloaded here, also has been optimized for various platforms like EeePCs, EasyGate and bring official support of MacIntels computers. It also introduce a new port to x86_64 architecture which brings a small performance boost regarding to the 32bit edition.

ComFusion 2.0, distro with Mac OS X User Interface

ComFusion is a pioneer in the distribution operating CompizFusion Mode DVDLive, ie without installing anything on your computer, operating at the same memory. ComFusion is an Ubuntu-based live DVD featuring out-of-the-box support for a variety of Compiz Fusion effects and a Mac OS X-like user interface.

The latest version, 2.0, was just announced. Built from Ubuntu 8.04, ComFusion 2.0 brings a choice of two desktop environments - GNOME 2.22.1 (default) and Xfce 4.4.2, both with complete support for Compiz effects and with a Mac OS X-style Wbar for quick access to popular applications.

Other features include enhanced support for wireless network cards, a variety of Compiz Fusion utilities and scripts for downloading restricted media codecs, inclusion of several Google Applications, Skype and other non-free software, a collection of games, office and development software, support for English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

In this new version, including a selection of programs, scripts and system settings, following the philosophy of ComFusion, trying to do more interesting and attractive, if anything, the Linux world, in the face of new users coming from other operating systems.

It try to make a distro that merges the best of other distributions without losing the essence of ComFusion, which is reflected in a new motto for this version 2.0:

"ComFusion. . . The Easy way of Linux..." "ComFusion... The Easy way of Linux ..."

However, designed to fit on an 8cm DVD / 1.4 Gb, 100% portable. Btw, you can download this new version of ComFusion at Here.



Notes:
The user of the Live-DVD by default is: comfusion and the default password: comfusion
You will need to switch desktop, for example Gnome to Xfce, or vice versa.

Toorox Live, another Gentoo based distro

Toorox is a Linux Live-DVD based on Gentoo that starts as a bootable media using KNOPPIX technology. While the system is booting, all necessary drivers will be included automatically.


Toorox is only using the memory and an existing swap partition at runtime, so your hard disks won't be touched by default. Currently, Toorox use the latest stable KDE 4.1.0.

Minimum equipment:
i686 CPU (Pentium II and faster) + 256MB RAM + DVD

Optimum equipment:
Multi-Core CPU + 1GB RAM + DVD

Some examples to use it:

• Backup data
• Secure internet browsing
• Look and feel for Linux rookies
• Hard disk installation

Owners of Radeon VGA-Cards should notice improvements, because the free radeonhd driver is now installed and has been added to the hardware-detection. The 3D-Desktop should run well now, too after installing the proprietary ATI driver.

It contains the brand-new Firefox 3.0 and Epiphany has now been added to Toorox. for web browsing, too. Wine was updated to Version 1.0.Kontact and Kmail are back now in Toorox-KDE4.

More info and download links about this distro can be reached at here.

SliTaz 1.0, The Smallest Desktop Distro On Earth

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a free operating system working completely in memory from removeable media such as a cdrom or USB key. It is light, speedy and fully installable on a hard drive.

SliTaz GNU/Linux is a mini distribution and live CD designed to run speedily on hardware with 128 MB of RAM. SliTaz uses BusyBox, a recent Linux kernel and GNU software. It boots with Syslinux and provides more than 200 Linux commands, the lighttpd web server, SQLite database, rescue tools, IRC client, SSH client and server powered by Dropbear, X window system, JWM (Joe's Window Manager), gFTP, Geany IDE, Mozilla Firefox, AlsaPlayer, GParted, a sound file editor and more. The SliTaz ISO image fits on a less than 30 MB media and takes just 80 MB of hard disk space.

SliTaz is distributed in the form of a LiveCD that you can easily burn to a cdrom and boot from. When the system is running you can eject the LiveCD and use your CD drive for other tasks.

The Live system provides a fully-featured, working graphical distro and lets you keep your data and personal settings on persistent media. The system can be extended with the Tazpkg package manager and security updates are provided for the cooking and stable versions.

Features:

• Root filesystem taking about 80 MB and ISO image less than 30 MB.
• Ready to use Web server powered by LightTPD with CGI and PHP support.
• Browse the Web with Mozilla Firefox or Retawq in text mode.
• Sound support provided by Alsa mixer, audio player and CD ripper/encoder.
• Chat, mail and FTP clients.
• SSH client and server powered by Dropbear.
• Database engine with SQLite.
• Generate a LiveUSB device.
• Tools to create, edit or burn CD or DVD images.
• Elegant desktop with JWM running on the top of Xvesa (X server).
• Home made graphical boxes to command line utilities.
• More than 440 packages easily installable from the mirror.
• Active and friendly community.

Btw, you can get SliTaz GNU/Linux by visiting here.

Zenwalk Live 5.2 Live CD is Available Now

Zenwalk 5.2 Live CD, based on Zenwalk current and a slightly modified version 6.2.3 of the Linux Live Scripts, Zenwalk Live is meant to be an almost perfect clone of Zenwalk standard, although it now uses a slightly modified kernel in order to unlock specific Live CD features such as, for example, the re-mastering of Zenwalk Live on a USB key with persistent changes.


As always, Zenwalk live features several specific Live CD GUI tools which you will find in Zenpanel (Zenwalk's system configuration panel)... Zen Installer will enable you to install Zenwalk standard on your machine while Live Clone, a WYSIWYG Live CD re-mastering utility, will enable you to generate your very own customized Live CD that will carry any of the changes you may have applied to your Live CD session, whether these changes were simply cosmetic, like a change of wall paper or panel widgets or whether they were more involved like the suppression or addition of different programs, users, etc..

Essential recovery & system tools such as LiloFix, Gparted & Testdisk have not been forgotten & are also available... just in case!

Evidently, Zenwalk Live 5.2 includes all the latest improvements from Zenwalk 5.2 recent release: the suspend and resume refined functions, the new support for blue-tooth input device, the refreshed artwork for the booting menu, boot splash & Xfce environment, as well as the nearly 500 changes to software packages, including Linux kernel 2.6.25.4, Xfce Desktop 4.4.2, Netpkg "new generation" version 4, Xorg version 7.3, Mplayer coupled with the latest dvdnav (DVD menus support), etc..

You can get Zenwalk 5.2 Live CD by downloading at at Here.

MilaX, the OpenSolaris Live CD

MilaX is a small-size live-CD distribution which runs completely off a CD or a USB storage device. It is based on OpenSolaris Nevada and includes its basic features. It originally started as an experiment to see how much OpenSolaris software could fit on a mini-CD, but it eventually became a full-fledged OpenSolaris distribution.


It is also possible to use MilaX as a rescue CD. It can be installed on storage media with a small capacity, including bootable business cards, USB flash drives, memory cards, and Zip drives. By the way, MilaX is free to use, modify and distribute.

The current version of Milax requires at least 256MB RAM and a Pentium or Celeron to boot into a IceWM desktop. 128MB RAM is sufficient for booting into Command-Line mode.

Download Milax for HDD, live CD, USB Flashdisk or Server by visiting here.

Turn Your PC into Multimedia Production Studio with ArtisX

ArtistX 0.5 is Debian-based live DVD with a large collection of free audio, video and graphics software. It is a free live GNU/Linux DVD which turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux and contains nearly all available free audio, 2D and 3D graphics, and video software for the GNU/Linux computing platform.


ArtistX 0.5 is based on Debian Live software for creating live CDs and includes the 2.6.25 kernel, KDE 3.5, Compiz 0.7.7 and about 2,500 free multimedia software.

Main features:

• based on Debian Sid
• Kernel 2.6.25
• Compiz 0.7.7 from shame repository
• Debian multimedia packages
• KDE menu customization.

List of softwares included in DVD:

• 2D Graphic Software: Gimp, Inkscape, Nip2, Krita, Cinepaint, Synfig, Rawstudio, Skencil, Hugin.
• 3D Graphic softwares: Blender, Wings3D, Kpovmodeler + Povray 3.6, K3D.
• Video softwares: Cinelerra, Kino, Openmovieeditor, Kdenlive, Pitivi, Avidemux, Devede, and many others.
• Video and Music players: Mplayer, Helix Player, Videolan, Xine, Kaffeine, Kmplayer, LastFM and many others.
• Music software: PD and externals, Rosegarden, Ardour, TerminatorX, Cecilia/Csound, Gnusound, Mixxx and many others.

And, on the DVD you can find about 2500 multimedia softwares, practically everything made for the GNU/Linux platform.

Links for FTP, HTTP and torrents download can be found at Here.

Kiwi Linux 8.04 Has Been Released

Kiwi 8.04 is a 386 Desktop CD derivative based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. As you know, Kiwi Linux is a modified Ubuntu live CD for the i386 architecture. It includes Romanian and Hungarian localisations, multimedia codecs, encrypted DVD support, Flash and Java plugins for Firefox, PPPoE GUI for accessing local Internet services (Clicknet and RDS) and write support for NTFS partitions.

This new release installs packages necessary for playing restricted audio, video and Flash formats by default and supports the Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem.

The list of available languages is English, French, German, Hungarian and Romanian. The default package selection is altered somewhat to be more familiar to Windows users: Thunderbird is the default mail client and Audacious the music player.

Other additions to the CD are Compiz extra settings GUI, unrar and mstt corefonts, and a graphical tool for restoring GRUB boot menus lost after installing other Operating Systems (OS).
The Medibuntu repositories are enabled by default to allow installing w32codecs, Skype and Google Earth among others.

The kiwilinux.org archive where its few changes are kept and which is a GPG-signed mirror of our archive in Launchpad is enabled by default.

Feel free to visit Kiwi Linux FAQ for more information. Btw, you can download this new release of Kiwi at Here or Here if you prefer to use torrent.

CDLinux 0.6.1 Stable Release Is Available

The stable release of CDLinux 0.6.1 is out now. CDlinux is a compact Linux mini distribution. It ships with an up-to-date version of the Linux kernel, X.Org, Xfce window manager, and many popular applications. It has good internationalization and locale support and is highly user-configurable.

This release has a minor bug fix and some major feature enhancement. It ships with linux-2.6.24.5, xorg-7.3, xfce-4.4.2, firefox-2.0.0.14, pidgin-2.4.1, xine-1.1.12, and many other up-to-date popular applications. And all these are packed in a 57M ISO file.

This release fixed a quoting bug in rc.modules. It has newly added support for touchpad, lzma, pdf, and improved support for desktop icons and mactel. It honors dbus and hal, and can handle hotplug much better. This release also features greatly improved font support for various lang/locales.

You can get CDLinux by downloading at Here.

Zenwalk Live 5.0 Has Been Released

Finally, Zenwalk Live 5.0 is available now! The new Zenwalk Live features all the latest secure & stable versions of Zenwalk 5.0 standard packages based on the current repository.

In this release, the development team also present Zen Installer which will enable you to install a standard Zenwalk system onto your computer's hard drive. You will, of course, find Zen Installer along with all other native Zenwalk system configuration tools under Menu -> System -> Zenpanel (Root password is: ZenLive).

Now, if you first use Live Clone to remaster your own LiveCD & then execute Zen Installer from that remastered LiveCD, it is interesting to note that in that case, you will install your own customized version of Zenwalk rather than the Standard version. This is very helpful if you need to deploy a highly personalized Zenwalk System on the computer park of a school, a cybercafé, an office or an organization.

(Notes: From a Zenwalk Live cession, yous simply have to personalize your desktop graphic environment as well as suppress and/or add some new programs, and then click a couple times in Live Clone, in order to create a LiveCD that will be a perfect clone of your modified cession.)

As previous release, Zenwalk Live 5.0 offers extended multilingual, Multimedia & Wifi support. Simply execute Wicd network manager from Menu -> Network, in order to configure eventual passwords & connect yourself to any available wavelan.

You can download this new release of Zenwalk Live at Here or Here.

PUD Linux 0.4.8.5 Has Been Released

PUD GNU/Linux is a mini LiveCD based on Ubuntu Linux, which takes up small size, with (both Simplified/Traditional) Chinese enhancements.

This release is a development version of PUD but contains lots of experiments and new features so that we would like to make it a beta release, including installer, new package selection, enhanced livecd build kit, kernel patches, optimizations to speed up boot time, and better laptop/mobile device support.

PUD Linux has minimalist desktop that pre-configured and selected applications. With "Plate" User Interface, an elegant way to use your desktop. There is more than one way to boot on PUD Linux as it has feature LiveUSB, Boot to Ramdisk. With "Opt-Get" Plugin System, its easy to do one-click install system to add more applications

More features:

• Patched Kernel and Optimized: squashfs+lzma, aufs, and more..
• Various Backup Methods: backup/restore your data just like permanent installation
• "Build-LiveCD" ToolKit: customize your own live cd easily and automatically

More info can be reached at PUD Linux's site. Btw, you can download this new release of PUD Linux at Here for LiveCD and Here for LiveUSB and Here for Build Kit.

DragonFly BSD 1.12 Has Been Released

DragonFly is an operating system and environment originally based on FreeBSD. DragonFly branched from FreeBSD in 2003 in order to develop a radically different approach to concurrency, SMP, and most other kernel subsystems.

Now, DragonFly 1.12 release is available. This release is primarily a maintenance update. A lot of work has been done all over the kernel and userland. There are no new big-ticket items though we have pushed the MP lock further into the kernel. The 2.0 release is scheduled for mid-year.

DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating system as BSD and Linux and is based on the same UNIX ideals and APIs. DragonFly gives the BSD base an opportunity to grow in an entirely different direction from the one taken in the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD series.

From 2003 to early 2007 the DragonFly project focused on rewriting most of the major kernel subsystems in order to support the second phase of the project. This involved a great deal of work in nearly every subsystem, particularly the filsystem APIs and kernel core. During all of this the development team said they have managed to keep the system up-to-date with regards to the third party applications and base system utilities that are needed to make any system usable in production. They have also adopted the PkgSrc system for management of all non-base-system third-party applications in order to pool its resources with other BSD projects using the system.

You can download this release of DragonFly at Here.

Final Release of GoblinX 2.6 Standard Edition is Out

The final release of GoblinX 2.6 Standard edition, a Slackware-based live CD for the desktop has announced. As the development team said, GoblinX Standard is the original edition which was first released in October 2004. It includes five windows managers: KDE, Fluxbox, Xfce, Enlightenment and WindowMaker.

The main upgrades since release candidate 1: Added SLAX firewall; added more options to Isolinux menu; rebuilt GtkDialog interfaces to prevent resize action; corrected several errors and bugs; corrected Kill button in media manager interfaces; upgraded some libraries and packages, including xorg-server; corrected some sudo issues; removed X.Org default resolution; removed some libraries; added more services to boot; added more auto-start options; corrected Ivman issues.

More info can be found at Goblinx's site and the ISO of this release can be download at here.

Final Beta of Dreamlinux 3.0 has Released

Dream Linux has released the final Beta of version 3.0. Dream Linux is a Brazilian distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux with featuring a live CD with a graphical hard disk installation option.

It boots directly into an Xfce or GNOME desktops which provide access to a good collection of desktop applications and a central control panel for system configuration.

The changes in this release are including some applications such as Gthumb (replacing GQview), Pidgin instant messenger, Ndiswrapper module, WineQ + Wine Doors installer. It has done some fixes and improvements for booting from any CDROM unit, Improving Dreamlinux Control Panel, Dreamlinux Installer and Easy Install application.


Now, Theme-Switcher on Gnome changes theme without the need to restart X, Setup-Network Manager for stop, start, restart, stop network on booting, start network on booting. Network now setup to automatically start during boot.

In addition that include on this release are: Cupsys also starting up on boot, New wizard for emerald-themes, New wallpapers, New icons, New Avant Window Manager themes (check AWN Manager on DCP), New GDM themes, now featuring countdown and other minor overal improvements.

You can download this release's ISO at Here or Here by Torrent.

Slax 6.0 has been Released

Slax, a modern, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design, has been released its version 6.0.

What’s new on this release? First, Slax is officially released in two forms, ISO and TAR. As you surely know, the iso format (labeled as “Slax for CD”) is to be burnt to a CD (preferably a miniCD medium). But nowadays, CDs are pretty obsolete, so the TAR format (labeled as “Slax for USB”) is for all the other people who need to run Slax directly from USB media or from a disk. Simply unzip (extract) the tar archive directly to your device (to it’s root directory, it will create ‘boot’ and ’slax’ subdirectories). That’s almost all; you only need to make it bootable. For that purpose, navigate to the ‘boot’ directory and find bootinst.sh (if you are in Linux) or bootinst.bat (if you are in Windows). Run it. Linux users will need to use root account for that. The script will setup the device to be bootable.

If you are using “Slax for USB”, you will notice that all the changes you made are PERMANENT. Yes, even if you’re running Slax from a VFAT filesystem (thanks to posixovl). But a native Linux filesystem is always prefered, of course. In that case, you won’t be able to use bootinst.sh/bat, you’ll have to try liloinst.sh

Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.

The modular approach gives you the ability to include any other software in Slax easily. If you're missing your favourite text editor, networking tool or game, simply download a module with the software and copy it to Slax, no need to install, no need to configure.

You can download this new release at Here or Here.

NimbleX 2008 Beta has been released

NimbleX; a Slackware-based mini live CD which is able to boot from a mini CD, USB storage device or from another computer on the Local Area Network; has released the 2008 Beta version. Several things still need to be polished but overall it's an important step towards what's going to be NimbleX 2008. The most significant changes are from the technology point of view, that in the future should provide a significant increase in usability and stability.

Highlights since NimbleX 2007 are:

• Experimental Safe Installer
• Better LZM compression
• 2008 Beta is split in 5 pices
• 9 Desktop environments
• and many other things.

The Experimental Safe Installer is a very important addition for the users that was created to allow people with XP, and in the future with other distros, to make a "one key hit" safe deployment to HDD. The approach with the experimental safe installer is to avoid altering any partitions, this way minimizing the risk of damaging data and minimizing the user input to only one Enter necessary to get NimbleX on the HDD.
Using the new LZM compression I managed to squeeze a lot more stuff in NimbleX.

This beta is 16MB overweight and in the final we'll have to loose some weight to keep in the 200MB shape. NimbleX 2008 Beta is split in 5 to allow users that customize it a greater flexibility. Those that don't need a graphical environment can easily make it 50MB big.

9 Desktop environments have been added in the Beta: KDE, E17, E16, XFCE, IceWM, EDE, Fluxbox, OpenBox and TWM.

Other significant additions are: Gimp, XINE, Firefox, XMMS, GParted, ClamAV, support for RPM and DEB packages and many many other stuff. The beta has many multimedia libs added by default, but they and other stuff will probably be removed in final to slim it down to 200MB.

The KOffice package now contains all the applications but it's usability it's still the usability that KOffice always offered.
To remaster the NimbleX CD, all you have to do now is execute the remaster script from a terminal.

Download this beta release at here.