You can now test Alpha builds of Feren OS on an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Base

Today, I’m proud to announce the release of the first public Alpha of Feren OS on an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Base.

Before you get reading this article, nevermind testing these builds, let me make a disclaimer clear:

You CANNOT update from these builds to the finished product once it’s released. This is because these builds are ‘pre-Neonisation’ builds, also known as builds made before KDE neon User Edition repositories are pre-added into the OS. Furthermore, once the ‘Neonisation’ occurs in future builds any installations of Alpha builds are likely to completely break later down the line. Because of this, please do not use this as a daily driver unless you’re prepared to install Feren OS again in the future.

Changes to look out for

You may or may not notice a plethora of changes in this Alpha build compared to the existing 18.04-based offering, besides all of the applications now being at their 20.04 versions. Just in case you don’t, here’s some stuff to look out for:

Software Sources

Software Sources gained a minor revamp, with the following changes:

• No more Linux Mint (Feren OS in 20.04 onwards no longer makes use of the Linux Mint repositories — you won’t find it at all out of the box in this build onwards)
• theme-redesign and unstable repository components for the Feren OS Repositories are now toggle-able in Software Sources
• ‘Maintenance’ is no longer in Software Sources — it’ll be moved to Feren Maintenance in the upcoming repurposing of Feren Maintenance

Theme Redesign

The Feren OS Theme Redesign also makes its official WIP debut in 20.04-based Feren OS, completely replacing the default Feren OS theme.

This theme adds full colouring support for GTK3 applications, a much improved dark theme colour palette, a new more consistent GTK2 theme, a new darker light theme colour palette, and more. It is designed for 18.04, though, so you might encounter a few bugs with 18.10-to-20.04-specific additions to GTK3.

Temporary Background Set

A temporary background set has also been added in 20.04 development builds as an extra gift for Feren OS testers who test the Feren OS on 20.04 development builds before the final result of all of this development effort is released. It will be replaced with the standard next snapshot background set when the first 20.04-based Feren OS Snapshot arrives.

Feren Maintenance Tool

Soon.

Major Known Issues

This would not be Alpha-quality software if it didn’t have a plethora of issues and bugs, currently. ‘Feren OS on Ubuntu 20.04' Alpha has loads of issues, currently, that need to be ironed out before it can be released. They can all be found at https://github.com/feren-OS/Testing-Builds-Bug-Reporting/issues, however here are the main issues to be wary of:

• The 20.04 Live Session file integrity check fails, so you might as well skip it
• Most Mint-sourced applications DO NOT WORK — they’ll either freeze up, softlock or crash instantly
• Store doesn’t work, so for now use Synaptic for package management
• Update Manager also has its fair share of freeze up scenarios making it unreliable to use currently
• Welcome Screen out-right does not work yet (exception when trying to load itself up) and remains as a background process doing nothing
• Languages instantly crashes on launch
• If you get Store to work, trying to enter the Flatpak category will crash it
• The boot screen, and some elements of the system, mistake Feren OS as being the Ubuntu 18.04 version currently (likely just something I forgot to change in the package ‘feren-info-kde’ since the Feren OS package set is copied from the 18.04-based Feren OS package set)
• There is no boot screen yet — a fork of BGRT is planned to make its debut later on in development as the default Feren OS boot screen — for now enjoy ubuntu-text
• Some packages can’t be installed just yet (such as telegram-desktop)
• ‘Snapsitional’ dummy packages are currently intact (that is very likely to change in Beta builds, however)

If you find any other issues in these development builds, don’t forget to follow the instructions set out by the temporary default wallpaper in these development builds.

Getting ‘Feren OS on Ubuntu 20.04' Alpha

With all that said and done, remember that this is Feren OS in a state too early to be justifiably reviewed — it’s just to show off progress with making Feren OS work on the 20.04 base while everything slowly comes together for the first 20.04-based Feren OS snapshot.

That being said, you can download ‘Feren OS on Ubuntu 20.04’ Alpha here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/feren-os-development-builds/files/Feren%20OS%20on%2020.04%20Alpha%201.iso/download

Have fun with it and have fun testing.