After much anticipation, the VectorLinux development team proudly announces the first public beta release of VectorLinux 5.8 SOHO. This beta release, built on the rock solid base of VL 5.8 standard, includes a custom 2.6.20 SMP Kernel, compiled with bootsplash, squashfs, lzma, and realtime patches. It supports reading and writing to NTFS-formatted media via fuse and ntfs-3g. The desktop environment is KDE version 3.5.6 with Kmyfirewall, Amarok 1.4.5, and Open Office version 2.1, as well as many other multimedia applications such as VLC 0.8.6a, Mplayer 1.0RC1 and graphics editors such as The Gimp version 2.2.13 and Xara Xtreme verion 0.7. Printing is supported by cups version 1.2.8, hpijs drivers for HP printers, and gutenprint drivers for many popular printers. There is a whole new look and feel, from the boot menu to the desktop. Many other great features have also been added to VL 5.8 SOHO.