Just as at the start of every new month, Uri Herrera, the founder of Nitrux OS, has announced a new version of his systemd-free Debian-based Linux distribution. This time it comes to Nitrux 2.5.0, which as usual brings some new updates and changes, as well as some bug fixes, to give users, thanks to the well-customized NX desktop interface, the best possible KDE experience on Linux.
To make the distros accessible to more users, the Nitrux 2.5.0 installation by default includes Nvidia Proprietary 520.56.06 drivers. The Nvidia drivers included in this version only work in the Wayland session, and they are not open source, although Nvidia has released an open-source driver that only supports some high-end professional graphics cards, so the distribution team had no choice currently but to ship the Proprietary drivers.
In addition, this release also comes with Firefox version 106.0.3, the Linux Kernel version 6.0, the latest KDE Plasma version 5.26.2 (upon which the distribution's NX desktop environment is built), along with the KDE Frameworks version 5.99.0, and KDE Applications Gear version 22.08.2, to give users a smooth and up-to-date user experience.
Furthermore, Nitrux OS 2.5.0 also shipped with an updated AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan (amdvlk), an updated KDE Neon repository to coincide with their latest release, a new "Bismuth" plugin to transform the KDE Window Manager (KWin) to a tiling window manager, and the Distrobox tool to enable users to create containers using the Linux distribution of their choice.
The distribution team has also announced that the "linux-firmware" package has been deleted from the minimum ISO to make it a smaller file and to reduce the bandwidth used to create it, which means that only a few firmware files are available by default and that some hardware components may not be recognized in the minimal ISO. This small issue can be resolved by installing the "linux-firmware" package from the distro repository.
Last but not least, Nitrux 2.5.0 comes with the following bug fixes:
- Fixing an issue with the Plasma Look and Feel packages not applying the wallpaper due to an undocumented change in the way that Plasma 5.26 handles the setup of this feature.
- Fixing an issue with the filenames of screenshots of the distro's default wallpapers.
- Fixing an issue where a newer version of passwd prevents the correct creation of new users.
- Removing the Khronkite KWin tiling plugin.
- Fixing an issue where Latte Dock would crash immediately in the Live session.
- Fixing a wrong dependency in one of Nitrux OS meta-packages.