Neptune Plasma 5 Edition gets another updated snapshot

The Neptune OS team has announced availability of another updated snapshot for project's rolling operating system featuring Plasma 5 desktop environment. The Neptune Plasma 5 20170512 comes with several updated packages and other improvements to provide a more reliable and stable Plasma desktop experience.

Being a rolling distribution, existing users of Neptune OS can make use of system update utility to get all updated packages and improvements. While, the updated snapshot is meant for fresh installs. Since this snapshot comes with recent updated packages, the bandwidth and time can be saved while updating the system after installation.

Some of the key highlights in updated Neptune OS snapshot can be listed as:

• The Excalibur application menu has been updated and improved it to support scrolling through your favorites and showing more than 3 sysactions(?).
• KDE Frameworks 5.33 is the base for this new release which includes several fixes and improvements.
• KDE Applications has been updated to 17.04. This includes updates for applications like Dolphin, Konsole,  Ark, Kate and Kdenlive. 
• Okular - pdf reader and Gwenview - image viewer is also included from KDE Applications.
• The default login manager got changed from KDM to the newest version of SDDM including a Neptune like theming. 
• The mailclient Icedove got replaced by Thunderbird 45.8.
• Libc6 got an update to improve compatibility with newer software like VLC, mpv, X11, Mesa, E21 and more.

You can read the original announcement in Neptune OS blog.

Download Neptune Plasma 5 20170512 ISO 

Neptune OS 4.5.4 announced with Linux 3.18.48 LTS, Chromium 57, VLC 2.2.4 and more

Mr Leszek, team member of Neptune OS has announced release of Neptune OS 4.5.4, 4th maintenance release in Neptune OS 4.5 series. This Debian 7.0 - Wheezy based GNU/Linux distribution comes with recent stable release of Linux Kernel and other device drivers to support modern hardware components.

Neptune OS 4.5.4 release is getting presented as an early easter gift for the community and it brings Linux Kernel 3.18.48 LTS and other bug fixes to support recent innovations in hardware industry.

Dolphin File Manager in Neptune OS (CREDIT : Neptune OS)

Another highlight of Neptune OS 4.5.4 is update VLC media player 2.2.4 which provides better supports for new multimedia codecs like VP9 or FLAC. In order to deliver better reliability with VLC 2.2.4, the Phenon base for playing sound in Plasma Desktop has been updated to version 4.9.0.

Also, Neptune OS internet suite is updated with Chromium 57 and Icedove 45.6 to provide the best experience for surfing web and writing emails. Chromium 57 brings better support for HTML5 video play and Icedove 45.6 brings fix for several bugs which come into play while writing emails.

Other highlights in Neptune OS 4.5.4 release includes:

• Mesa Version 13.0.4 fixes several bugs and improves graphics hardware support. 
• The Radeon(ATI/AMD) driver got an update to Version 7.8.0 with better support for several amd graphicscards and some bugfixes.
• Fresh and new is the improvement for the flash filesystem f2fs. We now allow mounting those partitions directly on the desktop with udisks. Besides that we also updated the f2fs-tools to version 1.7.0 including several improvements for creating and checking the filesystem. 
• We also improved the Btrfs filesystem with btrfs-progs 4.9.1 and plenty of improvements for filesystemchecks and better handling of low memory situations.
• Neptune 4.5.4 now uses our new secure software repository by default. Additionally we include several security fixes in packages like eject.
• LibreOffice got an update to version 4.3.3, libmtp 1.1.12 now supports mounting of the Jolla C smartphone and Encode got a fix for FullHD resolution.
• VirtualBox 5.1.4 Guest Additions are available by default now on our ISO improving the support for newer VirtualBox versions. Besides that it also allows using the newer LTS Kernel 4.9.18 which is included in our repository without any problems.

For further details, see release announcement in Neptune OS website.

Download Neptune OS 4.5.4

64 BIT ISO ~ 2 GB

Neptune OS 4.5.1 is available now

Neptune OS team announced availability of Neptune OS 4.5.1, latest stable update of Debian stable based GNU/Linux distribution which features updated versions of Linux Kernel and other software packages.

Neptune OS 4.5.1 is an update to Neptune OS 4.5 released at the beginning of this year. This release is updated with all packages available till 3rd May 2016.

Following are some notable changes in this release of Neptune OS.

• Neptune OS can now boot from USB 3.0 ports. Earlier there was a bug which was preventing the same.
• KDE SC is updated to version 4.1.16
• Plasma 5 version is updated to Plasma 5.6.2
• KDE Frameworks 5.21

See original release announcement in Neptune OS blog.

Taking a Journey through Neptune 4.4

Latest issue of Distrowatch weekly includes a review of Neptune 4.4, written by Jesse Smith, as feature story. Neptune 4.4 is a Debian based GNU/Linux distribution featuring KDE 4 as default desktop environment. 

This review remarks that, despite of a simple straight forward look and feel, this distribution offers a solid, useful and easy to use desktop operating system.

The Neptune distribution is a Debian-based project which offers users a friendly, desktop-oriented experience. Neptune uses KDE 4 as the default desktop environment. The latest release of Neptune, version 4.4, includes mostly minor upgrades with an eye toward improving the graphics stack and desktop performance.

Neptune is available in just one edition for the 64-bit x86 architecture. The ISO file we download is 1.8GB in size. When we boot from Neptune's live media a menu appears and asks if we would like to explore Neptune's live desktop environment using English or German as our preferred language. Neptune then boots to the KDE desktop.

See complete review here