After many Alpha releases, the VectorLinux development team proudly announces the first public beta release of the 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 includes KDE version 3.5.6 with Kmyfirewall, Amarok 1.4.5, Open Office version 2.1. It also features 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. VL 5.8 SOHO beta-1 also sports a new look and feel, from the boot menu to the desktop. Many other great features have been added.