AHRL version 26alpha1 has been RELEASED - take 2

Hi Everybody,

I'm sending this again because it seems to have been garbled when it was sent out previously.

The long awaited release of version26alpha1 has occurred! The files can be found here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/files/v26/alpha1/

Note that this release is ENTIRELY different from all of the previous releases. In earlier releases, I took Xubuntu Linux and hand crafted / customized the software selection, menus, etc. I created an ISO file out of the result and that's what was downloaded by the user community. It worked well for a lot of years but it wasn't perfect. Despite its imperfections, it was well received by the user community. Thank you!

Shortcomings of the original approach:
1) Some folks wanted to see AHRL on different flavors of Linux, such as Linux Mint. There was no way to do this.
2) Some folks wanted email, Libre Office, etc. and that would have made the distributed ISO file much too large. Sure, one could install those things afterwards.
3) Many people asked for a version that worked on a Raspberry Pi. That was not possible with the original approach.
4) There was no upgrade path except for a complete re-installation of a newer version of AHRL.

I thought about this a lot and came up with an entirely new approach to the problem. I crafted an installation script which runs all of the software installations. The distribution includes this script and all of the source tarfiles that are needed. This has many advantages.

Advantages of the new approach:
a) The distributed file for AHRL is MUCH smaller (5GB vs. 150MB).
b) It has the potential to run on many more flavors of Linux. I've tested a few (see GETTING_STARTED).
c) It works with the Raspberry Pi OS on a couple of different flavors of Raspberry Pi (see GETTING_STARTED).
d) The entire user community can now share in the "magic" that I inadvertently kept to myself all of these years - just how did he do it??? :-)
e) Possibly, folks will build on this work and create something far better than what I could imagine.
f) One should be able to run and rerun the script and have it do the right thing. This makes getting updates very easy.

Please note that this release is ALPHA quality. I've tested it as best I could, but as we know, there could still be bugs. I recommend that you DO NOT try this on your "good" computer until more testing has been done. If you choose not to heed this warning, please BACKUP your files, especially your logs. I cannot promise that something bad won't happen, despite the amount of testing that has occurred. That's why is is released as ALPHA quality. I'm sorry to have to say this, but you've been warned. :-)

If you try a flavor of Linux which I didn't try, please report that experience in the Discussion forum. Bugs reports are always appreciated (see GETTING_STARTED).
If you asked me for your favorite program, and I forgot to include it, please send me a friendly reminder via email.

Have a lot of fun, and 73,

Andy
KB1OIQ ..