14 DAY TRIAL // Ozon OS is the new Linux distribution based on Fedora 21 that features its own shell and a few GNOME extensions that really set it apart. The developers have just pushed the first Beta out the door and it's now ready for testing.
Ozon OS "Hydrogen" is making good progress, especially if we consider that the developers from Numix and Nitrux have been working on this operating system for more than a year. They have already changed the base from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21, and they have improved the desktop and the user experience significantly since the previous Alpha release.
The project has been started as a gaming OS and was riding the wave of Steam for Linux. At least this is what we gathered at the time of the initial release. We're not sure if the gaming goal is still being pursued, but we have noticed that it comes with Steam already present, which means they are still working on that aspect.
Ozon OS "Hydrogen" is a pleasure to use
The distribution uses a very interesting approach and is built to be very light and minimalist. There are not a lot of default packages, but users will find that most of what they want is already present, and to be fair, you will find a couple of interesting apps by default. For example, the Tomahawk music player or the Chromium default browser.
Users will notice that it's using the pure GNOME stack, but that is true only for some packages. The developers are not using just GNOME Shell but they compliment it with a set of extensions. They also have a GTK+ fork and a nice-looking dock called Atom. It's also worth noting that it uses Linux kernel 3.18.7, which is a rather new version.
Also, Ozon OS "Hydrogen" uses a customized theme built specifically for this desktop, along with the icons, which is a really nice touch. The only problem I could find is the single click to open files. Most of the other distros use double click to open something, like a file or a folder, but Ozon OS chose single click, just like KDE.
If you want to test the new Ozon OS "Hydrogen" Beta, you can download the ISO from Softpedia. Also, it goes without saying that this is a development release and you really shouldn't use it on production machines.
