Nitrux is a free and open-source Debian-based distribution with a focus on beauty, user efficiency, and portable universal app formats. It is more-or-less a desktop Linux distribution pre-configured with decent defaults and a bunch of cool custom applications. Nitrux is based on Debian unstable branch and uses the Calamares installer.
One of the really interesting things that kind of differentiates Nitrux from the hundreds of other Debian-based distributions out there is that Nitrux actually ships with AppImage and Flatpak by default. Many of the programs on the system out of the box are actually AppImages rather than native packages installed through the APT package manager.
Another thing that really separates Nitrux from the crowd is the fact that it have its own desktop environment called NX Desktop, which is essentially an enhanced KDE Plasma Desktop. In the developers’ own words is:
NX Desktop is our own set of applied customization to the Plasma 5 desktop.
Instead of building a custom desktop environment from scratch, Nitrux relies on KDE Plasma’s famed malleability along with some redesigned components to simplify the workflow.
In addition, Nitrux ships with a lot of applications out of the box that are not like standard KDE applications. Many of them are Maui-Kit applications. So it is a really different kind of desktop Linux distribution.
What’s New in Nitrux 1.5.1
Starting with the core component, Nitrux has upgraded its Linux kernel and the 5.13.7 non-LTS kernel is now the default in the distribution.
Among other parts, v1.5.1 has majorly added visual changes. For instance, it has updated KDE Plasma desktop version to 5.22.4, KDE Frameworks to version 5.84.0, and KDE Gear to version 21.04.3.
In addition to the above-mentioned, the distro comes with Firefox 90 and Calamares 3.2.40. The Calamares settings was updated to make use of the recently added QML modules.
The Nutrix devs added two virtual appliances for those interested in trying Nitrux in a virtual machine. The virtual appliances are created using VirtualBox 6.1.26. After adding the virtual appliances, users can configure their hardware settings to fit the host capabilities. The password for the virtual appliances and the default user is nitrux.
For more information about all changes in Nitrux 1.5.1, you can refer to the official announcement.
Lastly, if you want to give Nitrux 1.5.1 a try right now, ISO images are available to download from here. Keep in mind, that Nitrux 1.5.1 is a rather large download at 3.4 GB. I therefore highly recommend using the torrent method.
