ARB 6 release candidate available

Get it now, put it through its paces and tell us what you think!

Dear ARB user community,

the first release candidate for ARB 6 is now available for download:

download.arb-home.de/build/arb-6.0-rc1/

ARB 6 not only has many nifty new features, it is also much faster and
we are confident that even the release candidate is already much more
stable than any previous version of ARB!

Are we right? Is this really the best ever ARB?

Before we go and call it finished, we would like to hear what you have
to say. No testing in the lab, no matter how rigorous, can match
reality. It's time for ARB 6 to see the real world, and for that we need
your help.

Get it now, put it through its paces and tell us what you think!

INSTALLATION
At the link above, you will find several binary versions. We've got
packages for Ubuntu 10.04, 12.03 and 13.04 as well as for Centos 5 and
6. Debian users should pick the Ubuntu 10.04. SuSE and RedHat users
should pick one of the Centos versions. There is also a version for OSX,
but I hear there's an update for MacPorts in the works as well.

Once you've downloaded the right archive, simply unpack it into a
folder. If you've got an ARB 5 working on your system, all dependencies
should be met already, so all you need to do is enter the folder where
you put ARB and type "./bin/arb". If you're testing on a fresh system,
have a look at the txt files, they list all the packages you need to
have installed to run ARB.

NOTE: The on-disk format for the PT servers has changed. Trying to
launch ARB 5 PT server files with ARB 6 or vice versa will lead to an
error message. You can simply rebuild the PT server if this happens. If
you intend to keep ARB 5 and ARB 6 installed in parallel, however, you
should make sure to have distinct locations for the PT servers (by
default $ARBHOME/lib/pts).

NEW IN ARB 6
- much faster PT server (loads almost instantly now)
- scroll and zoom with mouse wheel
- import/export data from/to other ARB files without restarting ARB
- tree based clustering
- consensus tree construction
- right-hand brackets for unfolded groups in the main tree view
- full macro recording/replay support
- per user import/export filters and external tool configurations
- new or updated external tools:
- FastTree 2.1.7
- MUSCLE 3.8.31
- MaFFT 7.055
- PHYML 2013/07/08
- ProbCons 1.12
- RAxML 7.7.2
- and much more...

You can find a more complete list of changes here:
bugs.arb-home.de/export/12003/tags/arb-6.0-rc1/arb_CHANGES.txt

FINALLY
We hope you'll be as happy about the new ARB as we are. :)

Looking forward to what you've got to say!

Your ARB developer team :)

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