Announcing the release of Avouch Linux 0.2.0

Today, we announce our next operating system release. A lot has happened since our first release, and you will see the results in Avouch 0.2.0. If you are impatient, go to releases page now. For details, read on.

In this release, edit your documents with LibreOffice 7.2.3.1 and GNOME Office (AbiWord 3.0.4, GIMP 2.10.24, Gnumeric 1.12.50), share your files using DropBox ‬97.4.467,‭ surf the Internet with Firefox 94.0 and Chromium 95.0.4638.69,‭ send emails via Thunderbird 78.6.0, enjoy your music collection with Audacious 4.0.2, watch your favorite videos with VLC 3.0.16and mpv 0.33.1, play games powered by Mesa 21.2.5 and WINE 6.14. You can also setup the Avouch LAMP Server (Linux 5.15.2, Apache 2.4.51, MariaDB 10.6.4, PHP 8.0.14). Perl 5.32.1, Python 2.7.18, and Python 3.9.7 are also available. As always, the new major release has some new features.

At the time we are delivering four Avouch distributions ISOs. We have Gnome version 41.0 and Xfce4 version 4.16.0. Similarly, Plasma version 5.23.5 and LXQT version 0.16.0 are available  . The Avouch edition continues to focus on delivering the secure, reliable and latest in open source desktop tools.

Setup instruction can be found here.

GNOME 41.0 features - the latest release of this popular desktop environment, GNOME 41.  It includes a number of significant improvements and new features, as well as a large collection of smaller enhancements. The most notable changes this in release include an improved Software app, new multitasking settings, and enhanced power management features. With these changes, GNOME is smarter, more flexible, and offers a richer and more engaging experience than ever before. More details are available here.

Xfce4 4.16 features - the latest release of this light weight desktop environment. Xfce4 4.1 features fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly. From the last release of Xfce 4.14, the team started dropping support for the older version GTK2 to make way for GTK3. Xfce 4.16 also removing older codes catering to GTK2 making it faster. The Xfce desktop icon set is completely changed in Xfce 4.16 to overhaul the vial aspect of the Xfce desktop environment. The settings dialog is changed to Client-Side Decoration (CSD). There has been a debate and argument related to CSD in Xfce. Some user complains about it because CSD is fundamentally changing the essence of Xfce and becoming more “GNOME”. Xfce 4.16 finally introduces fractional scaling for your high-resolution displays with the support of XRandR (resize and rotate). The display dialog has the 1x, 2x, 1.5x, and custom scaling options available. More details are available here.

Plasma 5.23.5 features - 25th Anniversary Edition brings new looks, features and enhancements to the classic free desktop. Plasma 5.23.5 This time around, Plasma renews its looks and, not only do you get a new wallpaper, but also a gust of fresh air from an updated theme: Breeze - Blue Ocean. The new Breeze theme makes KDE apps and tools not only more attractive, but also easier to use both on the desktop and your phone and tablet. Of course, looks are not the only you can expect from Plasma 25AE: extra speed, increased reliability and new features have also found their way into the app launcher, the software manager, the Wayland implementation, and most other Plasma tools and utilities. More details are available here.

LXQt 0.16.0 features - the latest release of this lightweight Qt Desktop Environment. LXQt 0.16.0 includes many bug fixes and some new functionalities for components. Translation through Weblate is up and running again Options are added for switching to newly opened tab and opening tabs of last window.

File sorting is made more natural by treating dot as separator (like what GTK does — other aspects of file sorting aren’t changed because Qt does them best). Several options are added to LXQt file dialog. All options are remembered. Status Notifier supports customizable auto-hiding. Task buttons can move windows to the next screen. Main menu items have right-click menus for some actions. The sizes and alignments of some plugins are fixed at startup. An option is added for putting ungrouped task buttons of the same application next to each other. More details are available at here.