14 DAY TRIAL // Netrunner 14 RC1, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, featuring KDE as the default desktop environment and integrating many GNOME/GTK+ programs to make it Ubuntu-compatible, has been released and is now available for testing.
The Netrunner 14 RC1 distribution is based on Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, a distribution that was released on April 17, a little over a month ago. Linux distributions based on various Ubuntu flavors have been popping all over the place and now it's time for Netrunner to have a new version as well.
Kubuntu 14.04 is an LTS build and it will be supported for the next five years, which is the same at its base, Ubuntu. Some of the other Ubuntu flavors have two years less, so what the Kubuntu developers are doing is quite impressive.
Now, if you are a Kubuntu and KDE fan, you might notice that this is not the default look that you would expect. The Netrunner devs are trying something a little different with KDE, in an effort to provide a unique experience that can be easily identifiable.
The current Netrunner release has been dubbed Frontier and is using Linux kernel 3.13-24, which is also the same one used by Ubuntu. This particular branch of the kernel has already reached end of life, but Ubuntu developers have picked up the development and they will support it for at least a couple more years.
Netrunner 14 RC1 is also using KDE SC 4.13, which is the latest stable release of this desktop environment. Users will immediately notice that this is not a regular implementation of KDE and that you won't find something similar in any other operating system.
Other major packages that have been added to this distribution are Telepathy 0.8.1, Skype 4.2.0.11, Mozilla Firefox 29 (default Internet browser), Mozilla Thunderbird 24.5 (default email client), LibreOffice 4.2.3 (complete office suite), VLC 2.1.2 (default video player), and more.
A complete list of changes and improvements can be found in the official announcement. You can download Netrunner 14 RC1 right now from Softpedia. There are two versions of this distribution, one for 32-bit and the other for 64-bit. If you have an older computer, you might want to grab the 32-bit version of Netrunner, just in case.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.