I see many many people waiting for the next version of the amazing elementary OS. Elementary is indeed a “super-super-cool” distro (if you don’t believe me check the video below 🙂 ). The latest version of elementary OS is 0.2 and has a codename of Luna. The next version’s going to be 0.3 Freya (they used to call it Isis but decided to change it).
So elementary OS is cool but what is cool about it? Why does it have a version name of 0.x? Is it unstable?
I tell you, this distro just simply looks amazing! I haven’t seen a person in this planet who thought otherwise. As one of the most upvoted comment said in an article about elementary at OMG! Ubuntu!:
FINALLY! A linux distro that cares about looks!
But again, why is it so cool?
It’s indeed very beautiful, they care about the details and I just feel great when using it. I’m happy to show it to others because it really looks awesome. It’s very simple (that’s why they named it elementary) you won’t see any unnecessary things / settings. Some consider this as a bad thing because they can’t customize it as much as for example Cinnamon (or XFCE or KDE, etc.) desktop. However that might be one of the things why it looks so polished.
But not only the looks what makes elementary OS so popular these days. It’s own Pantheon desktop environment is not only usable and nice looking but it’s also super fast. Many people are wondering what distro to use on an older PC and actually elementary OS is a very good choice.
Why does it have a version name of 0.x? Is it unstable?
Luna (the current stable version of elementary OS) is very stable despite the version name of 0.2. It was also very stable when it was in beta state compared to other distros beta releases. That’s probably the main reason why people are unpatiently waiting for the release of Freya (v0.3) beta 1. Don’t worry, it’s just around the corner.
What’s new in elementary OS 0.3 Freya?
The developers of elementary OS are very impressed with the new edition so far. Daniel Foré said:
Freya is so freaking good and getting so much better that it makes Luna look like garbage.
…
I think it’s just as much better than Luna as Luna was better than Jupiter.
The latter tells a lot. Luna was a huge improvement over Jupiter. But let’s see some of the new features without being exhaustive.
- New version of applications (Midori, Geary, Audience, Photos, Snap, Noise).
- HiDPI support.
- New lockscreen.
- Enhanced theme and design tweaks. Introduction of headerbars.
- Wingpanel (top panel) dynamically changes the opacity based on the wallpaper.
- There’s a new online accounts plug and a new security and privacy plug (with integrated Firewall) in Switchboard.
- Users can now add new Startup applications in Switchboard.
- Maya (calendar) allows syncing with online accounts, for example Google Calendar.
- Introduction of search feature in Files (aka Pantheon Files).
- Photos app was forked from Shotwell (Yorba stopped developing it).
- New notifications. See it in action here.
When is the final version released?
Only God knows. It’s still months away. Developers will probably suggest not to use the beta on a live environment because it can cause problems and it has many known bugs, but from the experiences in Luna I think the beta will be very stable (but of course not bug-free at all). I think I’ll give it a try when the first beta is released. 🙂
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