The developers of Arch Linux, a light-weight rolling-release GNU/Linux distribution, have announced the release of new installation media.

Arch Linux 2010.05 is an updated snapshot of the project's core packages so this is the perfect time to give it a try if you have been thinking about it. If you are new to the distribution, you might also want to take a look through the Official Arch Linux Install Guide.

I personally have been using it for years and I highly recommend it to anyone who has some level of competence with GNU/Linux.

Notable changes in this snapshot:

Archiso (image builds):

• all iso files can now be burned onto CD's as well as written to media like usb sticks (isohybrid)
• more than half of the packages in core are now xz compressed
• next to the single architecture images we provide dual images which can be used as 32bit or 64bit medium
• use isolinux bootloader exclusively for booting the live media
• snapshot of current core, including kernel 2.6.33.4-1, pacman-3.3.3-5 and glibc-2.11.1-3
• updated memtest
• support for PXE booting
• provide wpa_supplicant
• support virtio

AIF (installation tool):

• ability to choose uuid/label/devicefile blockdevice representation; automatically applied in menu.lst, fstab, etc
• split off UI library into separate libui-sh project
• support virtio blockdevices
• allow user to specify additional custom arguments for mkfs and the like