It's Juno. It's the codename of the newly released elementary OS 5.0 on Wednesday, 17 October 2018; a continuation of the 0.4 Loki since 2016. The 5.0 is now rebased on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (which has been released last April). It brings a lot of new features, while keeping it's user experience design with more stability and strangely it's easier to RAM now. This short article covers what's changed.
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Download Juno with direct links (and torrents) here.
1. New Folder Icons & Desktop Wallpaper
I really really love this new folder icon set! Yellowish, glowing, it looks matched the Pantheon desktop better than the previous one.
2. New Shortcuts Summary
Holding Super key now opens the Shortcut Keys Overlay. This gives us a proper introduction to use elementary OS (such as Super+H to minimize) in a proper way, matched the Human Interface Guidelines.
3. New Picture-in-Picture Feature, It's Cool!
Imagine you want to browse websites you love but in the same time seeing the progress of app under the browser window. For example, browsing Reddit and torrenting. Picture-in-Picture is a really new feature that can help you with it!
To enable: press Super+F > cursor turned into a + > drag and drop to capture the area > a small window appears copying in realtime what's happening on the captured area even if it's being covered by other window. You can resize or close the live window after hovering cursor onto it.
4. New Night Light
Do you have sleeplessness? Please beware as it may happens because of long duration being in front of computer screen (caused by the "blue light"). Fortunately, elementary OS developers are aware of this and they built Night Light feature to reduce blue light, to help us solve the sleeplessness.
5. Really Awesome App Store, for both Developer and User
There is only one App Store in this world which the developers can sell their applications and the users can pay-what-they-want (either immediately or later): it's elementary OS' AppCenter!
For developers, you can sell your software easier and have control on it (via Developer Dashboard which only requires a GitHub account). More control for you: elementary OS has its own CI called Houston. Developers may choose any price they like!
For users, it's the awesome 'Software Center' you found usually, plus, you got here elementary OS special enhancements: it's full of elementary OS-centric applications such as Transporter* (this on is really amazing), Agenda, Timetable, Torrential, Minder, Notejot, etc. All these apps are free/libre open source software (FLOSS), so you are free from worries, as the guidelines said. Not to mention more than 50,000 software packages are available from the base --Ubuntu 18.04 repository--, you can install them at no cost too.
See here? It's all paid apps from AppCenter which can be installed at no cost. We may donate money later. In clockwise order: Minder, Notejot, Torrential, Agenda, and Timetable.
Note: what I'm saying 'selling' here is selling free/libre software. For example, giving a copy of GPL-licensed software for money. See FSF's explanation why it's OK and really encouraged.
*) Transporter is only available for elementary OS Loki, and has not been available for Juno yet.
6. New Parental Control, Really A Big Feature!
elementary OS 5.0 is a real desktop operating system. It includes parental control, so parents can decide when the computer stopped automatically (so the kids can go study or sleep) and what internet sites prohibited to visit and what programs or games prohibited for them.
7. More and More
Furthermore, you got those beautiful interface & features in only a 1.5GB ISO image. You can download it gratis here. You can find elementary OS community on the social networks:
Do you like contributing? You can join the community & help the development, either financially (by donating) or technically (by designing, translating, or spreading the words). Ah yes, elementary OS has an Online Store too! Go ahead and also pass it on to your friends!
End Words
It's really bright. elementary OS 5.0 is the best release so far by mainly it's AppCenter uniqueness and richest of desktop features ever among the prior releases. The thing I love the most is the fact that elementary OS developers contribute greatly to our community which we didn't see anything like that before: they created a new software distribution platform similar to what we previously saw on Apple macOS, except it's for free/libre open source software, by allowing app developers to get paid directly by the users (with the so-called "pay-what-you-want" system). elementary OS is popular, as you may see on Distrowatch, so we can expect bright future for the health of its apps market (and hope more developers getting attracted to join).
The desktop is really usable, the shortcut keys are visible (by pressing Super key) and customizable, its enhanced with parental control as well as Night Light, the apps are plenty and still growing in numbers, plus it's compatible with Ubuntu 18.04 so you can install thousands of packages if you wish right now.
I can run it really smooth on an Intel 967 CPU with 4GB RAM (Intel Graphics). I hope it will be smoother on your systems. I wish this quick review of mine helps you a lot to get attracted to elementary OS and soon be a happy user.
Download it, run it, install it, share copies with your friends, and have happy life with it. Enjoy!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.