14 DAY TRIAL // elementary OS 6 early access builds are now available to let you try out what’s coming in this major update before the official launch finally happens.
The dev team announced the release earlier this week, along with a new website where the early access builds are hosted.
“Over the past week, we quietly launched builds.elementary.io. This new website hosts Early Access Builds of elementary OS as a way to ensure OEMs, developers, testers, supporters, and excited fans can get their hands on up-to-date pre-release builds. Now that elementary OS 6 is in an installable and bootable state, we’ve begun adding $25+ AppCenter for Everyone backers to the allowlist, and any $10/month and higher GitHub Sponsors get access automatically,” Cassidy James Blaede, co-founder and CXO, said.
Massive update
There’s a lot we’ll get in elementary OS 6, and one of the first things you’ll notice is the refreshed look and feel.
In addition to a dark mode for system components like the dock and the system dialogs, we’re also getting user-defined accent colors in apps plus refinements to the typography and the system stylesheet, with improved contrast and rounded bottom corners in a series of apps.
Then, the elementary OS team promises a massive update for the communications and organization apps that are bundled with the operating system. They’re all powered by the Evolution data server backend updates and include a major rewrite of Mail and a new Tasks app.
Multi-touch support is also coming to more apps, and elementary OS 6 will feature a new installer and initial setup experience.
“Installing should be much faster and more streamlined, only asking for the essentials to get the OS onto your device. This is also great for OEMs, as they can use the new installer itself to image devices, or—like with some experimental Pinebook Pro images we’ve been playing with—just flash an image without a user to run through initial setup on first boot,” Cassidy James Blaede notes.
More information on the changes coming in elementary OS 6 is available on the project’s GitHub page here.