Elementary team announced release of Elementary OS Freya, a Ubuntu LTS based GNU/Linux distribution featuring Pantheon Desktop Environment, which provide smooth and easy user experience.
“Freya’s design is much more purpose driven and focused,” said Daniel Foré, founder and lead designer of elementary. “We spent a lot of time taking advantage of new toolkit features like Header Bar, improved CSS support, and animations. There’s a much greater level of fluidity when you navigate or reveal a new part of the interface. Freya also shakes off some of the trends of the early 2010s like high gloss and embraces a more matte look while preserving and enhancing our use of light and shadow. ”
According to release announcement of Elementary OS Freya, following are major improvements in this release.
- A more discoverable, redesigned, and app-focused multitasking view
- New interactive and dismissible notifications, plus a notifications settings pane including a system-wide “Do Not Disturb” mode
- A refined look and feel that includes a refreshed system-wide stylesheet, refreshed icons, space-saving Header Bars, a dark stylesheet for apps, rounded corners on menus and dialogs, improved animations, many new and refined “symbolic” icons, intelligent transparency for the panel, and more.
- Better emoji support & drop-in replacements for Microsoft Core fonts for the web
- A new firewall tool and “privacy mode”
- Much improved Applications menu including support for “quicklist” actions, drag-and-drop from search, and support for quick math calculations
- An updated software stack including Linux 3.16, Gtk 3.14, and Vala 0.26
- UEFI support
- A new captive portal assistant to make connecting to public WiFi easier
- Redesigned Displays, User Accounts, Applications, and Date & Time settings
- Unified login and lock screens