Sunday, November 29, 2009

New "Elegant" Kiara 08: Did I go too far? Don't I always?






NOW AVAILABLE at The Kiara Download Page!



After accidentally uploading an ugly-ass version of Kiara 07 with a dreadful chrome/red velvet theme that was supposed to have been rejected, I decided that I was going to release a really great looking version no matter what it took. What it took was hours and hours of compulsive casting and recasting, maybe two dozen Cds being burned and discarded, a crapload of configuring, sacrificing some nonessential applications, and adding maybe a minute or more to the boot time. The next Kiara is going to be pared down, but here is what i worked so hard on. It looks great, if I may say so. If you like eye candy, suck on this.



The background images and icons are from the incomparable Vladstudio, Background images have been added to Konqueror, and it looks great. Konsole has been configured to run transparent by default. Desktop icons have been added, and arranged attractively, in alphabetical order.



Kiara 08 features the addition of the latest version of Mozilla's thunderbird email application (requires a normal user account) and a simple "memo" feature for fluxbox that works by opening the background image in the GIMP, so you can conveniently add text memos. I keep meaning to start writing the documentation, and as soon as Kiara is satisfactorily developed, I will. In the meantime, you can leave questions here, or email me at kiaragnulinux@gmail.com.



Kiara 08 will be the first Kiara to be released in two versions. This is the "elegant" version, beautiful and perfectly responsive, but with a loooooong boot time because of so many added customizations. On my machine it's... maybe six minutes? The scaled down "austere" version will be released shortly. It's the austere version that will be the precursor of future releases.

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