Feren OS 2019.12 released with KDE

[crosscourt]

I tried the live dvd and liked what I saw so Ive already got one laptop and usff install.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, the live or the installed didn't matter for me. It simply wouldn't change resolutions in Qemu/KVM. Hopefully it won't be so particular when I try it bare metal, as 1024x768/1366x768 simply is an unusable resolution for me. 1600x900 is pretty much the smallest resolution I'll use on anything larger than 10" LCD.

[crosscourt]

Given Feren is Mint/Ubuntu based there shouldnt be any issues, Im surprised.

[tlmiller]

It does work much better on bare metal than in a VM. Up and running fairly easily on the Samsung.

Don't like the default "dark" theme. Most dark themes are ugly to me, and this is no exception. The light theme isn't bad.
Don't like all the garbage installed. Feels like Kubuntu in that regards, having to clean all the useless cruft I will never use, and don't want. Huge advantage for Neon here.
Not a fan of the default menu. Not a horrible as many, but still not a fan.
I like the fact that it's got flathub configured out of the box with flatpak already installed, and DOES NOT have snap. Nice to see something Ubuntu based abandon that horrible mistake.

Overall, not a bad OS. Far inferior to Neon, and while it's got a newer KDE than base Debian, the amount of time I have to spend cleaning it up to be able to use it without 5 googleplex extra garbage apps installed makes it so that I can do a netinstall of Debian and be configuring my profile faster than this, so it'll only be kept around until someone is interested in buying this laptop, and I probably won't bother installing it on anything else. Although I don't dislike it, it simply doesn't have anything to offer to make it superior to Neon IMO, while having a lot of disadvantages to Neon.

[crosscourt]

The ease with which you can change the appearance,color and features is a plus for most users. Breeze Dark is available if you dont want the Feren dark theme and the standard KDE menu is also available. Feren has far less crap than Kubuntu but yes, it isnt as minimal as Neon which for me is a plus. Different needs for me as the features,appearance and overall design I really like. With my needs I would rate it ahead of Neon but you have to admit they did do a nice job overall for their first KDE distro. They didnr copy anyone and came up with a design thats unique and fun to use.
Down the road they may create a minimalist install such as Kubuntu has but lets give them some time to work into this given how new it is.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, don't like Breeze dark either. I haven't actually seen a "dark" theme for KDE that I like. They're all just so dark they're ugly. Kinda the same way with my cars, black is my absolute least favorite color, I consider it to be undrivably ugly.

I will say it's not the worst KDE distro I've ever seen. But I don't care for it. Dolphin, which they don't use, is utterly broken when installed (it fixes itself after a couple reboots) with the side menu locations. Too many gnome-apps, etc.

It's something to watch, yes. But unlike Void Linux or Frugalware which are also OS's to watch (well, when Frugalware still was being developed), this one doesn't function in VM's, where they do. So while it bears watching, it's unwatchable for me since I can't use it in a VM.

[crosscourt]

I have no interest in VM myself but having a nicely dine KDE distro will really fit the bill. I like Nemo so far in Feren as Ive used it before . Its a keeper and Ill be curious to see how others will react to it when I started demoing it.

[tlmiller]

I can use nemo (it has dual-pane view unlike Nautilus that it's split from), but since I'm using KDE...dolphin integrates better. So I prefer it. I actually think nemo is the next best GUI file manager after dolphin. They've essentially kept the few good things about Nautilus and added on all the features that were stripped out of it to make it completely usable again.

I like VM's for those distro's that aren't good enough to bother putting on one of my machines, but I want to keep track of. I still have a VM of Void on my desktop that I keep updated so that I can track the progress and decide when to try it again. I kept frugalware around for quite a while in the same way until finally I gave up as they hadn't had any updates in...forever. It's my preferred way of watching interesting OS's that just aren't up to par sufficiently to put on actual machines. To me, Feren definitely falls into that group, but something about their configuration makes it VERY VM-unfriendly (at least on Qemu-KVM).

[crosscourt]

Contact them and let them know, but Mint works fine in VM so not sure why Feren has issues. I also like Dolphin but my needs are more mainstream and honestly Nemo or Dolphin are fine with me. I just got my first 5 reactions from some of my senior users and friends and they all really like Feren in its present form.

There are some minor things I dont like but the overall design suits me very well.

[crosscourt]

Its interesting that Feren OS decided to go to KDE after Ubuntu Cinnamon showed up earlier this year. The response from former Mint KDE users should be interesting. They still offer Cinnamon as the classic Feren but long term I doubt they will stay with it.