Saturday, July 24, 2010

What? Already? Yep, it's Kiara 15!



Nickname: "Margaret"
Now available for download!
Apparently, two days after 3.6.7, Firefox released version 3.6.8, and so, in keeping with my "follow Firefox" policy, two days after releasing Kiara 14, I am releasing releasing Kiara 15.
The only changes are the new browser, and, hopefully, less ugly splash screens.

I've been waiting for someone to guess how the releases are named, but it's pretty clear I'd be waiting forever, so now I shall reveal it. Kiara releases are named after characters from the best TV show iof all time, "Twin Peaks". Margaret was the name of the character most commonly referred to as "The Log Lady".



Neatly underplayed by stage actress and David Lynch associate Catherine E. Coulson, the Log Lady was everybody's favorite. She was occasionally injected into the plot as a kind of crackbrained soothsayer. (For the uninitiated, the log she carried everywhere "contained many spirits" and often spoke to her.) Mostly, she was written into a scene whenever a bit of weird-ass local color was called for.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Revised version of Kiara 14



As an afterthought, I reorganized the setup tools for Kiara, so that I could finally write some documentation. It's been incredibly hard getting started, but organizing the tools should help a lot. All I did was number them, to get a handle on the order in which they might be used to set up Kiara with a normal user. It's going to make all the difference... I hope.

Kiara 14 "Big Ed" released


Kiara uses a legacy desktop environment (KDE 3.5.10) and a contemporary Operating System platform (Slax 3.1.2, with additional packages taken from Slackware 12.2.) It's my belief that one important thing that I can do to keep all this old software fresh for the user is to keep up with the very latest web browser software, and the most important web browser in the Linux world is still Mozilla Firefox. For that reason, it's my policy to release a new version of Kiara immediately when I become aware of a new Firefox release.

And I mean immediately. This time, I became aware of the release of Firefox 3.6.7 at around midnight Wendesday morning, and I was uploading Kiara 14 before 3 AM. It's almost 6 AM, and I'm doing the first test download now. The new web browser, some new (crude but amusing) splash screens, and a new default backfron from Vladstudio are the only changes.

NOTE: I've decided to make a few added revisions for this release. I've reorganized the Kiara Setup Tools. Actually, all I did was number them, but I think that's going to make it a lot easier for me to FINALLY write the documentation for the setup tools. So the REVISED version of Kiara 14 is uploading now. (Wed Jul 21 20:58:33 UTC 2010)
When the upload is successfully completed, I'll post an announcement.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Kiara 13 codenamed "Lucy"


To me, this release lopoks and feels a lot more polished than last week's hastily put-out "Leo". The artwork seems better coordinated. Other changes include: upgrading the Opera Browser from 10.10 to 10.60, Adding the Google Chrome browser for 5.0, cleaning out the Setup tools, and adding a "Back to menu" button for improved navigation. To make room, ZSH and Gimp-help have been removed.