Easy Peasy 1.6 beta 1 released

The Easy Peasy development team has released the first beta version of Easy Peasy version 1.6, scheduled for final release on 25th March. The netbook distribution is based on Ubuntu 10.04, aka Lucid Lynx, which is still under development; Easy Peasy 1.6 is nonetheless expected to be ready to ship around one month prior to Ubuntu 10.04.

Creating an image of the current development version requires either a USB stick or, that rarest of creatures, a 100 minute blank CD, as the ISO image (direct download) for Easy Peasy 1.6b1 weighs in at 830 MB – too large for a standard CD.

Easy Peasy 1.6 uses a customised version of the 2.6.32.8 kernel and dispenses with the HAL (hardware abstraction layer), which speeds up booting and resuming from suspend. Version 1.6 also includes the new Nouveau driver for NVIDIA's GeForce graphics chips, which support kernel-based mode setting. Although it is not installable under the beta 1 version, the final version 1.6 should also support NVIDIA's proprietary graphics driver.

The second and probably final beta version of Easy Peasy 1.6 is scheduled for 11th March, followed by the release candidate on 19th March with the final version appearing just under a week later.

(djwm)