by 
The development team behind the Neptune Linux distribution released today Neptune 7.5 as the second major update to the Neptune 7.x series of this Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution built around the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Dubbed “Ada”, Neptune 7.5 is based on the software repositories of the Debian GNU/Linux 11.4 “Bullseye” release, but it comes with a newer kernel, namely Linux 5.18.2, from the Debian Backports (Testing) repositories.
Neptune 7.0, which was released eight months ago as the first Neptune version based on the Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series, was powered by Linux kernel 5.10 LTS.
There aren’t any major changes in this release, but Neptune 7.5 does come with a few new apps, including Timeshift for full system backups and rollbacks, as well as Persistent Creator 2.0 for creating a persistence partition on USB thumb drives.
On top of that, the neptune-sysctl-config utility was updated with better settings to boost write speeds on USB thumb drives and slightly better system performance, and the Vim text editor received a new vim-airline theme.
Since Neptune 7.0, the devs updated the Chromium web browser to version 104 from 90, the Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client from version 78.14 to 91.12, and the VLC Media Player from version 3.0.16 to 3.0.17.
However, Neptune 7.5 keeps using the KDE Plasma 5.20 desktop environment series, and ships with the older KDE Frameworks 5.78 and KDE Gear 20.12.2 software suites, all built against Qt 5.15.2. That’s unfortunate, but at least you’re getting well-tested software from the Debian Stable repos.
You can download Neptune 7.5 right now from the official website if you want to try this KDE-oriented, Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution on your personal computer.
Existing Neptune 7.0 users don’t need to download the new ISO image, but only update their installations by running the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade command in a terminal emulator.
Last updated 2 years ago
