Nitrux 2.5 Released with Kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26
Nitrux 2.5 has been officially released and is the first systemd-free distribution to include both kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26.
Nitrux is a Linux distribution, based on Debian, that emphasizes the use of AppImages for end-user software. And, instead of employing systemd as its init system, Nitrux uses OpenRC.
To make things even more interesting, Nitrux adds a suite of convergent applications – called Maui Apps – as well as a curated collection of free and open source software.
More importantly, however, Nitrux 2.5 is now available and is the first non-systemd distribution to include both kernel 6.0 and KDE Plasma 5.26. To be specific, Nitrux uses the 6.0.6 XanMod kernel, KDE Plasma 5.26.2, KDE Frameworks 5.99.0, and KDE Gear 22.08.2.
As well, the developers decided to change their policy about including the Nvidia proprietary driver with the default installation.
According to the official release notes, "We’ve decided to change our policy about including this particular piece of proprietary software to make this distribution more accessible to users and to avoid creating a separate ISO file. The minimal ISO does not include the Nvidia Proprietary driver, as we want to keep the size of the ISO image small."
Other features in the new release include the Bismuth KWin plugin (to add a tiling feature to the window manager), updates for the AMD Vulkan driver, and the inclusion of Distrobox (for container creation).
Download an ISO for Nitrux 2.5 here.
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