The Ark Linux team has announced the release of Ark Linux 2005.2. Ark Linux is a Linux distribution designed especially for desktop use - easy to use even for people without prior Linux (or computing) experience, while still providing a powerful environment for power users and developers. Ark Linux is fully Open Source and Free Software - it can be freely downloaded, used and redistributed in both modified and unmodified form.
The highlights of this release include "

• An upgrade to the KDE 3.5 desktop. KDE 3.5 improves the usability and speed of the desktop, and includes many useful additions and bug fixes. The included "Konqueror" browser passes the Acid2 CSS test - ahead of Internet Explorer and Firefox.
• OpenOffice.org has been upgraded to version 2.0 - making many improvements to usability, stability and format support, and overall integration into the desktop. The Ark Linux version of OpenOffice.org is fully integrated with the KDE desktop, including accessing KDE's address book.
• 3D Acceleration on ATI Radeon 9600 and 9800 based hardware is now supported.
• Ark Linux 2005.2 is the first fully Open Source OS to support this hardware.
• Handling of auto running inserted CDs and DVDs has been improved.
• Hardware support has been improved - the installer can now handle i810 graphics chipsets and (through the addition of a legacy 640x480, 16 colors mode) graphics chipsets that aren't VESA 2.0 compliant.
  Unsupported PCI Network/Wireless network cards can now automatically be configured to use a Windows XP driver through the ndiswrapper emulation layer.
• The Wine Windows emulator has been added to the default installation, allowing users to continue using many of their existing Windows applications.
• he Krita image manipulation program has been added.
• For power users, an Expert Mode installer that allows custom partitioning has been added. For people who are happy to go with the defaults, "4 mouse clicks to install the system" installer remains.
• Improvements to the speed and size of the operating system have been made.
• Ark Linux 2005.2 has been tested to work on low-end hardware such as a Pentium MMX 233 MHz with 128 MB RAM.
• Power users will be happy with the inclusion of the "bash" shell in its new version 3.1.

There have been many improvements to the Ark Linux extra CD sets as well.
The release of Ark Linux 2005.2 also starts the development cycle of Ark Linux 2006.1 - improvements being planned for this version include upgrading the toolchain to gcc 4.1.x, creating a better configuration tool for wireless networking, improving the init system to make the system start up faster, more hardware detection/support improvements, and improving the build system to allow ports to other architectures, such as native 64 bit on x86_64.