After a long delay due to developer-specific reasons, a new version of the Ubuntu-based distribution, Feren OS has finally been released. The new version is Feren OS 2022.03, and it's based on the long-term supported Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Kernel 5.13, and will receive security updates until April 2025.
This is the first major update for the distribution since October 2021 and it comes with the latest version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment version 5.24.3, which is a huge update for users of the distribution who have been on the KDE 5.22 version for more than 5 months.
As usual, the distro team has modified the KDE interface that is used by default in Feren OS to give it a more beautiful look, (and by the way, it is one of the few distros that offers a great and polished KDE experience), redesigning the global theme page in the system settings, where users can now apply Global Themes, Desktop Layouts, or both at once.
Moreover, Feren OS's tablet mode layout also got a big change with this release as it received a complete revamp of the panel layout with the addition of a left-aligned Show Desktop button, a new Overview button, and a new full-screen Applications Menu variation. Feren OS's default layout has also gotten a slight change, as a new button has been added next to the list of apps on the panel to enter the Overview, allowing you to switch between windows and workspaces faster than before.
Additionally, the Feren OS theme, Inspire, has got restyled title bar buttons to make it more consistent with the rest of the desktop interface components, the red close button has now been updated to make it respect the theme color scheme, and the GTK theme has been updated to match these changes.
On the other hand, Theme Colouriser is no longer available in the distro as the development team decided to stop its development. The KDE Plasma desktop has been providing the option to choose an accent color since version 5.23, which is the same task that Theme Colouriser was doing, so there is no longer any need for it to exist or to keep developing (Feren OS 2022.03 ships with a higher KDE version, 5.24).
Last but not least, KWrite is now being the text editor instead of Kate (just like KDE has), The Applications Menu and Feren OS Clock have been rebased to their latest upstream Plasma 5.24 base versions, and the Desktop Icons are now being organized in rows by default rather than columns.
Feren OS 2022.03 is not a major release, so existing users can upgrade to it by doing a system update, and they don't need to download a new ISO image and reinstall the distro. For new users, you can download Feren OS from the official distribution website by following the following link:
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