14 DAY TRIAL // After deciding to switch base one more time and move to Ubuntu, again, Descent OS Linux developer Brian Manderville announced at the beginning of the year the first Alpha release of his upcoming Descent OS 5.0 GNU/Linux operating system.
It took the developer two years to bring us an Alpha build of its Ubuntu MATE-based Descent OS 5.0 distribution, and we haven't heard anything from him in the meantime. No Beta, not another Alpha build has been released since the February announcement of Descent OS 5.0 Alpha, which was based on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).
Last month, he dropped a quick message to the Reddit section of his distro that he was working hard on the final release of Descent OS 5.0, which a few days ago received its first Release Candidate (RC) build, so we can finally see what's going on with this very nice and interesting Ubuntu derivative.
"I come with good news that after months of work, conceptualizing, and redoing, I have released Descent OS 5.0 RC1 'Mulligan'. I have redone Descent OS completely, ditching the alpha released earlier this year entirely. It is no longer based off of Ubuntu, but off of Debian again, like the 4.x series," says Brian Manderville in the announcement.
Descent OS 5.0 to be based on Debian GNU/Linux
So yeah, there you have it, Descent OS 5.0 has been rebased on the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, once again, and the main reason behind the big decision was to offer support for proprietary AMD Radeon graphics drivers (fglrx), which aren't available in the latest version of Ubuntu Linux.
That's why we haven't heard anything from the Descent OS developer; he was rebuilding his upcoming OS on Debian, making it suitable for Linux gamers who own AMD GPUs. At the moment, Descent OS 5.0 is pretty stable and ready for daily use, according to Brian Manderville, and the final release might be closer than we think.
There will be a lot of new features introduced in Descent OS 5.0 "Mulligan" later this year, such as the ability to install various proprietary software applications more easily, like the Vivaldi web browser, Steam for Linux client, or Widevine media optimizer. If you want to test drive Descent OS 5.0, download the RC1 ISO right now.