New Release: elementary OS Loki 0.4.1

A new HWE, AppCenter, bundled updates, and more!

Daniel Foré
elementary

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If you thought we’d dropped off the face of the planet, you probably missed it: we have moved away from Medium and started publishing on our faster, open source, and privacy-respecting blog at blog.elementary.io. We’ve kept this blog post unlisted here on Medium for posterity, but all recent and future posts as of November, 2019 are exclusively hosted there.

We’re proud to announce the release of a major update to elementary OS Loki: version 0.4.1. This release brings a new hardware enablement stack, all of the updates to Loki thus far, plus a brand new AppCenter. Let’s dive into the details.

Hardware Enablement

Thanks to the wonderful work of the folks at Canonical and Ubuntu, Loki 0.4.1 ships with a newer kernel and X server as part of the Ubuntu 16.04.2 core. This means Linux 4.8 and better support for 7th generation Intel (Kaby Lake) chipsets, among other hardware compatibility and performance improvements.

Updates to Loki

If you’ve been following along on Medium, you’ll remember the updates posts from December, January, February, March, and April. The 0.4.1 release contains all of those updates as well as the latest Granite for developers. If you haven’t already read those posts, be sure to check them out for more details. Notable updates include a significant upgrade to Epiphany, several fixes in Files, a redesigned metadata sidebar for Photos, new Bluetooth settings, a microphone indicator and bluetooth device controls in the sound indicator, a brightness slider in the power indicator, the ability to start an AppCenter search from the applications menu, Look & Feel updates, better support for CJK input methods, better translations, and more. if you’ve kept up to date, there’s nothing exclusive to 0.4.1, but it does mean fewer updates to download on new installs and a better experience out of the box. 0.4.1 isn’t just a minor bug fix release with a few bumped packages; this release includes a ton of new features that represent 8 months of solid development work.

AppCenter

This is the one many of you have been waiting for, and we’re extremely excited to push it out. This release comes with a brand new version of AppCenter with support for apps submitted to the AppCenter Dashboard. Welcome to elementary OS, third-party developers!

You may remember our posts about building the future of elementary OS and the Denver AppCenter Sprint, and this huge update is a direct result of that work. Right now, a number of beta testers’ apps are available for purchase and download from AppCenter, with more on the way. The basics stay the same with browsing and updates, but you’ll also notice big, beautiful app banners, a new pay-what-you-want download button for apps that have opted in, and of course more apps designed specifically for elementary OS.

Every paid app in AppCenter is available at a Pay-What-You-Want price.

We’re excited for developers to get their apps directly in the hands of users. If you’re an interested developer, be sure to head over to the AppCenter Dashboard to sign up for the public beta and check out our publishing documentation. We’re also looking forward to pushing out continued updates to AppCenter with new features and new ways to discover and share apps; this is just the beginning.

A new infobar appears in AppCenter when you must restart to complete updates.

There’s also been a few quality of life improvements to AppCenter. You’ll notice an Infobar appear when you need to restart to complete updates as well as the appearance of hardware drivers in the updates tab. Top that off with performance and stability improvements and a healthy dose of code cleaning.

Get it

The update to 0.4.1 is available to all existing Loki users in AppCenter; just pop it open and hit “Update All”. After installing these updates, you’ll want to restart to complete the update process.

It’s also available as a pay-what-you-want download for new installations from our homepage at elementary.io.

Our friends in the press looking for more screenshots can find them in our updated Press Kit.

Thank you!

This release and the continued development of elementary OS would not be possible without the support of our AppCenter Indiegogo backers, Patrons, and anyone who has purchased something from our store or a copy of elementary OS. You’re all awesome, and we look forward to continuing to deliver updates to Loki. We’d also like to give a shout out to Canonical and all of the Ubuntu developers for their work on Ubuntu 16.04.2 as well as the infrastructure that makes a large part of what we do possible ❤

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