14 DAY TRIAL // wattOS, a lightweight, energy-saving Linux distribution designed not only to bring your old computer back to life, but also to eat up as little power as possible, is now at version R8.
WattOS is a very light and fast operating system that was initially based on Ubuntu, but the developers have decided to switch to Debian. They didn't provide any reasons for doing so, but they wouldn't be the first ones to make this decision.
The wattOS releases seemed to follow the Ubuntu schedule and this includes the newly-launched R8 version. It arrives a few weeks after Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which is a little over six months after the previous Ubuntu 13.10 from October 2014. It's unclear what will happen with the schedule now that the project is Debian-based, but we will have to wait and see.
“After 5 years being an Ubuntu based distro, we have made the change to Debian. Specifically Debian Wheezy as the base, with some backports thrown in (for example a newer Kernel), and in a couple of small places a little Jessie where warranted. But for the most part, its Debian Wheezy as a base to build from.”
“The additional tweaks include the addition of the expected things to make it easy to use as a liveCD or install. So a reasonably complete desktop for all versions that includes things like support for multiple wireless chipsets, flash inclusion, printing support, and the ability to browse windows networks without a lot of command line magic needed,” reads the official announcement.
The wattOS distro features a number of different flavors such as MATE, LXDE, and the Microwatt edition, which is based on Openbox. The developers have said that the MATE and LXDE versions are available for both the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. Unfortunately, the Microwatt edition will only see a 32-bit release.
Many packages have been updated, even if we don't take into consideration the desktop environments and the switch to Debian. For example, Linux Kernel has been updated to version 3.13.10-1, the PCManFM file manager has been updated to version 1.1.2, Shotwell is now at version 0.12.3, the Iceweasel web browser has been updated to version 24.5.0, VLC 2.0.3 has been integrated by default, the Microwatt changed from PekWM to a customized Openbox, and the installer is now a lot simpler and easier to use.
A complete changelog can be found in the aforementioned announcement.
Download wattOS LXDE R8 Download wattOS MATE R8 Download wattOS Microwatt R8