Nitrux is a KDE Plasma + Debian-based Linux distribution which features NX Desktop with Plasma desktop with its own flavor. For anyone not familiar with NX Desktop, it is a customization layer for the Plasma 5 desktop environment.
NX Desktop offers a different style, its own implementation of the system tray, notification center, and various plasmoids. It uses the Latte-dock at the bottom of the screen with a panel at the top of the screen and features a global menu.
Nitrux ships with a lot of applications out of the box that are not like standard KDE apps. Many of them are Maui-Kit applications. So it is a really different kind of desktop Linux distribution.
Now with Nitrux version 2.0 out, coming a month after Nitrux 1.8, it is time to have a fresh look and see how it matured.
What’s New in Nitrux 2.0
This release introduces the latest KDE Plasma Desktop 5.23.5, KDE Framework 5.90, and KDE Gear 21.12.
The most noticeable thing on the desktop side is that the devs have updated the window decoration settings to make all windows borderless. However, some windows do not support moving the window, for example, Telegram, if it’s not from the window decoration. In such cases, you need to use the default Plasma keyboard shortcut to drag a window. Another option is to right-click on the Latte Dock over the application icon, select More Actions and then Move.
Users can resize borderless windows from all corners hovering over each corner or using ALT+Right Mouse Click and moving the cursor.
Nitrux 2.0 ships with updated Latte Dock layouts. There’s a top panel and a dock, but now the application menu has been moved to the dock. On top of that, the application menu is not the Ditto menu but it’s Launchpad Plasma.
The top panel includes the window controls, title, global menu, and system tray.
Under the hood, the Linux kernel 5.16.3 (non-LTS) and Linux Kernel 5.15.17 (LTS) both are available to install from the NX repo. The 5.16.3 XanMod kernel is now the default in the distribution. It features custom settings and new features and is built to provide a responsive and smooth desktop experience, especially for new hardware. The XanMod kernel is a widely popular amongst Linux gaming, streaming, live productions and ultra-low latency enthusiasts.
Updated applications including Firefox 96, Pacstall 1.7.1, and LibreOffice 7.2.5. The Nano command-line text editor has been removed from the default list of CLI apps and replaced with the Micro Text Editor. It is also important to mention that the new Nitrux release comes with an added package that includes firmware for AMD GPUs that are not available in the kernel packages.
Apart from those mentioned above, some additional changes also deserve to be noted here. Nitrux 2.0 comes with removed Kdenlive, Inkscape, and GIMP from the default installation. Fortunately, these AppImages are still available in a separate package called nx-desktop-appimages-studio.
Last but not least, Nitrux 2.0 includes MESA 21.3.5 by default. However, MESA 22.0 is also available to install.
For detailed information about all changes, you can refer to the official announcement.
Download
If you want to give Nitrux 2.0 a try right now, the installation ISO image is available to download from here.
For new distribution users, the devs recommend performing a fresh installation using the latest available media. To upgrade from the previous version of Nitrux 1.8 to version 2.0, do the following:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --only-upgrade nitrux-repositories-config
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
cp -r /etc/skel/.config/latte/* ~/.config/latte
cp -r /etc/skel/.config/org.kde.maui/* ~/.config/org.kde.maui
cp -r /etc/skel/.config/Maui/* ~/.config/Maui
sudo reboot
Nitrux is a must-try distro for all KDE/Plasma skeptics or there. Smooth, beautiful, functional, and works out-of-the-box!
Nitrux was pretty buggy for me when I tried it last year. Hoping it has improved, love the UI and integration of app images.