Aside from the usual kernel and software updates or upgrades, there is very little difference between Chakra Archimedes-2012.04 and Chakra Archimedes-2012.02. So this review will not be as comprehensive as the one published in February, but for those new to Chakra, here are the major features of this distribution:

Chakra Edn 2011.12 is the third and final edition of the Chakra Edn line of Chakra, a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. The first two editions were Chakra Edn 2011.09 and Chakra Edn 2011.11.

Chakra 2011.11 is the second maintenance release of Chakra Linux, a KDE (desktop) distribution originally derived from Arch Linux. A detailed review of it will be published later tonight. While we await that publication, this article gives some customization tips. And there is much to customize because a new installation of Chakra 2011.11 is like bringing something home from IKEA.

The first release of the KDE 4.8 series of Chakra has been released , codename Archimedes, Chakra GNU/Linux featuring Linux 3.2 and KDE 4.8. With this release KDE is updated to 4.8.0, kernel to Linux 3.2.2. A new theme, Ronak is introduced. Updated Qt, boost, subversion, phonon packages, libxcb stack to name a few

Chakra is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It evolved from a hobby project to what is now, from my initial assessment, a very solid desktop distribution with features not yet available on established Linux distributions.

Chakra 2011.11 is the second maintenance release of Chakra Edn, a KDE distribution that was originally based on Arch Linux, but is now an independent distribution. This release is powered by KDE 4.7.3. In previous versions of KDE, there was a “Users and Groups” management application in Systems Settings, the KDE control center. However, in this version, it is missing (from Systems Settings).

You have to hand it to the Chakra project developers: they sure have ambition. Don’t expect a remastered Ubuntu here, Chakra takes the do-it-yourself distribution Arch, and tries to make the installation easy, providing you with the latest and greatest KDE in the process.

Unlike other Linux distributions that feature a graphical package manager, Chakra’s tend to have issues handling major updates, so a decision was made not to ship a graphical package in the April ISO image. Which meant that installing and updating applications (and the system) on a default installation of Chakra Archimedes 2012.04 could only be accomplished from the command line.

Chakra Edn 2011.11 is the second maintenance release of the relatively new desktop Linux distribution with some ties to Arch Linux.