We are proud to announce the first public Beta version of Neptune 5.0. This version (internally called 4.9) is based upon Debian 9.0 "Stretch".

To support modern hardware this release features the  Kernel 4.9 coming from the Debian repositories. 

The Desktop coming from Netrunner and DCI (Debian Continuous Integration) is Plasma 5.10. This desktop benefits from all the work and improvements in configuration we did in our Plasma 5 testing ISOs before. This includes the default application menu excalibur. 

Design is inspired by Neptune 4.5 and features the classic look and feel of Neptune. Besides that we also feature a more modern theme that we tested in our Plasma 5 ISOs and is based upon the Breeze Theme. You can switch between the different Themes in the Look and Feel settings. 

One of the biggest changes is the introduction of our new default installer called Calamares. This features an easy to use interface for partitioning and preparing everything necessary for installing Neptune. A nice slideshow provides you with basic information during the installation. 

Additionally Neptune 5 provides a few new applications not been there in Neptune 4.5 before. 

Configuring the bootloader Grub is possible with its own configuration utility (Grub Customizer), a  Systemd Configurationmodule in systemsettings allows you to disable or enable services. 

Brand new isl ISO Imagewriter which allows copying disk images to usb sticks or sd cards. 

The new default software center like tool which allows you installing applications is Plasma Discover . It offers a nice overview of installed and available applications, updates aswell as the ability to install plasma widgets. 

 

Encrypting files is now possible with the True- and Veracrypt compatible zulucrypt. This offers a better more advanced user interface compared to the previously shipped Veracrypt. 

Editing partitions, formatting, resizing and more is possible with  KDE's Partitionmanager.

You can grab the approx. 2 GiB big ISO Image from our Downloadsite.

Notice: This is a beta version intent for identifying and fixing bugs and not meant for production use. The configuration of software repositories is not final yet and might bring problems with future updates.
Planned is like on Netrunner to ship a final release based upon the Debian stable repos and Neptune repos with optionally Netrunner Backports repos that users can enable to get the newest Plasma, KF5 und KDE Applications packages. A tool which allows you to easily enable this is still in development and not included yet. 

Known Bugs:

• Bootsplash not showing after installation. (Solution: Add "splash" as default parameter for Grub in /etc/default/grub and run update-grub)
• ZRAM Swap is detected as resume device for suspend to disk after running update-initramfs (results in longer boot time and error messages. Solution: Create /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/zram-no-resume.conf and input RESUME=none and update-initramfs -u again)
• Netrunner-Backports repository is active by default which depends on Debian Testing repo which is disabled by default.