14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the Debian-based Neptune GNU/Linux distribution announced the release of the Neptune 5.0 "Refresh" operating system, based on the stable Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" series.
Powered by the long-term supported Linux 4.14 kernel ported from Debian Stretch's Backports repository, Neptune 5.0 uses the latest KDE Plasma 5.12 desktop environment along with the KDE Applications 17.12 and KDE Frameworks 5.43.0 software suites. It also promises new ways to run the latest software versions.
"This version marks a new iteration within the Neptune universe. It switches its base to the current Debian Stable "Stretch" version and also changes slightly the way we will provide Updates for Neptune. We will no longer strive to bring in more recent versions of Plasma, Kernel or other software on our own," reads the release announcement.
The Neptune developers recommend users to use the Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage universal binary technologies if they want to run the latest apps on their distro, but for now Neptune 5.0 ships with the LibreOffice 6.0 office suite, Chromium 64 web browser, Thunderbird 52.6.0 email client, Amarok 2.9 music player, and VLC 2.2 media player.
Other apps include the GIMP 2.8.18 image editor and viewer, InkScape 0.9.2 graphics vector editor, Audacity 2.1.2 audio editor, Ardour 5.5 digital audio workstation, Kdenlive 17.12 video editor, Encode transcoding utility, YAVTD tool for downloading videos from multimedia websites, and recffmpeg screenshot tool.
Improved artwork, removed support for proprietary GPU drivers
Among other noteworthy improvements and changes implemented in the Neptune 5.0 "Refresh" release, we can mention a more unified Neptune Artwork theme for GTK2, GTK3, Qt4, and Qt5 apps, the latest Calamares 3.2 graphical installer, as well as tools for those who want to create their own Neptune/Debian-based live ISOs.
With Neptune 5, the devs also removed support for proprietary graphics card drivers, added the BackInTime tool for easy backups, and the grub-customizer tool if you want to customize the look and feel of your GRUB bootloader. Neptune 5.0 is available for download today, and it's supported until the end of life of Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch."
