14 DAY TRIAL // One day after the release of Canonical's Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system series, Linux Lite creator Jerry Bezencon announced today the release of the beta version of Linux Lite 4.0.
Dubbed "Diamond," based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and powered by the Linux 4.15 kernel, the Linux Lite 4.0 operating system enters beta stages of development today to give us a first glimpse of the upcoming release, which was slated for worldwide release on June 1, 2018.
According to the developer, Linux Lite 4.0's biggest changes are both internal and visual as the operating system comes with a brand new icon and system theme, namely Papirus and Adapta, Timeshift app by default for system backups, and new, in-house built Lite applications.
"Faenza icons were dropped as it had not been maintained in some time (albeit there is a fork) and the same for the Arc theme, development seems to have stalled there. Most of our approach to theming in Series 4.x follows the popular Flat design focus. We also now use the Openzone mouse theme," said Jerry Bezencon.
Among the new Lite apps, we can mention the Lite Desktop, which manages application icons and other objects on the desktop, and Lite Sounds, a tool designed to help users manage system-wide sounds. Also, Linux Lite 4.0 ships with the MenuLibre tool to help you easily edit application menu entries and Shotwell for basic image management.
32-bit support is gone
Another major change in Linux Lite 4.0 is that 32-bit installations are no longer supported. The release would be available only for 64-bit computers, though the developer promises to offer support for existing Linux Lite 3.x installations until April 2021, when Canonical would end support for its Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series.
Among other noteworthy changes, we can mention that full disk encryption replaces home encryption in the installer, the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin was added to the system tray, there's a new boot splash that shows a password field for encrypted installations, compositing is enabled by default, XFCE Terminal replaces LXTerminal, and a swap file replaces SWAP partitions.
The GRUB bootloader and Help Manual were also revamped in this release, which ships with some of the latest software applications including the Mozilla Firefox 59.0.2 "Quantum" web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird 52.7.0 email and news client, LibreOffice 6.0.3.2 office suite, VLC 3.0.1 media player, and GIMP 2.10.0 image editor. You can download Linux Lite 4.0 Beta right now through our website if you want to take it for a test drive.
