The Nitrux team has announced the release of Nitrux 5.0, a major shift in the distribution’s identity. With this version, the distro abandons the KDE Plasma desktop entirely and transitions to Hyprland, a dynamic Wayland compositor renowned for its fluid tiling experience, configurability, and visually pleasing aesthetics.
The new desktop environment comes finely tuned for Wayland out of the box. Hyprland is complemented by Waybar, the Crystal Dock, and Sway Notification Center, forming a cohesive and lightweight workspace. Essential utilities like Wofi, Wlogout, and Clipvault enhance usability, while nwg-look and nwg-displays make Wayland configuration more approachable.
With OpenRC 0.63 as its init system, the release also replaces legacy SysV scripts with native OpenRC implementations, continuing Nitrux’s long-term effort to refine boot performance and simplify service management.
Nitrux 5.0 also ships with an extensive set of updates:
- Linux Liquorix kernel 6.17 (CachyOS-patched kernel available for NVIDIA systems)
- PipeWire 1.4.8 and WirePlumber 0.5.11 for modern audio/video handling
- Flatpak 1.16.1 for sandboxed app deployment
- Qt 6.8.2 and KDE Frameworks 6.13 for updated Qt-based apps
- Podman 5.6.1 and Docker 26.1.5 for containerized workloads
- fwupd 2.0.16, CoreCtrl 1.5.1, and updated Intel/AMD microcode
- AppArmor 4.1.0, with enhanced PAM rules for brute-force protection and password security
Beyond Hyprland, this major update adds a series of new tools to align with its user-centric, rootless philosophy:
- NX AppHub CLI and Daemon – a lightweight system for building and managing Nitrux applications.
- Ananicy-cpp – a rewritten performance manager in C++ that optimizes process priorities.
- Gamescope, Grimshot, and Hyprscreend – tools enhancing gaming, screenshots, and display responsiveness.
- NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel Module – open-source NVIDIA drivers supporting Turing and newer GPUs.
Moreover, according to devs, to streamline its architecture, the release removes numerous legacy and unused components, including KDE Plasma, SDDM, Waydroid, Kvantum Manager, Fcitx, and virtualization-focused drivers such as Hyper-V and QXL.
For those eager to try out the new release, Nitrux 5.0 is offered in two ISO variants:
- CachyOS-patched kernel (NVOpen) – optimized for NVIDIA hardware
- Liquorix kernel (Mesa) – recommended for AMD and Intel systems
For more information, refer to the official announcement.
