The company BlueSystems, which provides funding for the development of KWin and Kubuntu, has released a new release of Netrunner Linux distribution 20.01, which is provided with the KDE desktop environment.
Netrunner is a distribution that presents two editions, which differ in their release mode, these are the Netrunner Rolling and Core distributions developed by the same company using the classic approach to building builds and the Debian Testing package foundation, without using the Arch / Kubuntu rolling updates model.
Since the distribution version of Netrunner Core (Debian) differs by a different approach to organizing the user interface and the development towards the perfect integration of the Wine and GTK programs in the KDE environment.
While Netrunner Rolling (Manjaro) as the name implies, follows a continuous release, which means it is constantly being updated to new packages, no need for major updates.
Netrunner has a lot of polished and quality pre-installed programs, indicating that developers really care about the overall user experience.
Another important piece of information about this Linux district is that It also distributes images for ARM devices, so it currently supports Pinebook and Odroid C1 / C1 +.
What's new in Netrunner 20.01?
This new version of the distribution marks 10 years of experience that it has had and that also comes with its twentieth release. In the announcement of the new version, the developers share the following:
This version marks the 2010th release of Netrunner Desktop for Debian / Ubuntu (not counting incremental updates), and its XNUMXth year since Netrunner started in XNUMX.
It is based on the current Debian Stable 10.3 ('buster'), including all updates since the previous release.
As the developers indicate, this new release of the distribution syncs with Debian 10.3 and the versions of the KDE desktop components are updated.
Besides that a new theme has been proposed "Indigo", which is based on the Kvantum theme engine using SVG.
New theme uses Breeze window decoration mode with darker colors, which allowed to increase the contrast and simplify the visual separation of active and inactive windows. The cursor is red, making it easy to determine if it is on the screen.
Moreover, upgrade of system components is mentioned, Of which mention is made of the LibreOffice office suite, the Firefox browser that was updated to its latest stable LTS version, as well as the Thunderbird email client, GIMP, Inkscape and Krita graphic editors, Kdenlive video editor, collection manager GMusicbrowser music player, Yarock music player, SMplayer video player, Skype and Pidgin communication applications, Kate text editor, Yakuake terminal.
Download and try Netrunner 20.01
In order to download this new version of the distribution You can go directly to the official website of the project where you can find the system image in its download section.
While for existing Netrunner 19.08 users it is mentioned that they can just update their system normally to get the same software versions provided in 20.01, except for the new theme settings.
Since 19.08 and 20.01 are based on Debian stable, updating them regularly does not require reinstalling Netrunner even if new release media appears.
While for those who want to try or install the Rollig release version. The link is this. Or the Debian based version. The link is this.
The size of the bootable ISO image is 2,4 GB. You can save the image with the help of Etcher on a USB.
On the other hand, if you are interested in downloading the ARM version of this distro, you can do it from this link.
A distribution so complete and well thought out that it is worth trying, as it is based on two of the great ones in Linux so that the user can enjoy their system.