Lingmo OS: A Lightweight and Modern Linux Distro to Challenge Deepin.

The beauty of Linux is that anyone can set out to develop a fully-fledged operating system by taking components from other open-source projects, or creating them from scratch.

Even though there are plenty of interesting distributions based on Debian Linux, we get to see new ones being introduced regularly, with some making it, and some not. With this First Look, we have a new distro that may pique your interest.

According to the developers, Lingmo stands for “nimble and smooth ink”, meant to symbolize efficiency and beauty. Lingmo OS is a Debian-based Linux distro that will remind you of the discontinued Cutefish OS.

Yes, it is inspired by Cutefish OS indeed!

Some key features include:

• macOS-like Feel
• Lightweight Distro
• Intuitive User Interface

The Lingmo OS release I checked out is a beta version powered by Linux kernel 6.7.4 and required only 2 GB of RAM to run, with many memory-intensive animations being disabled on systems with older/slower hardware.

I tried installing it as a virtual machine using VirtualBox, but the installation failed both the times I tried; the screenshots you will see going forward are from the live environment.

Overall, it looks like they have made optimizations to make this fit as a lightweight Linux desktop experience.

At first glance, the desktop on Lingmo OS is reminiscent of macOS's, but with slightly different-looking tweaks done here and there. It uses Lingmo UI, a fork of the Cutefish desktop environment, alongside a customized version of KWin serving as the window manager.

The distro comes pre-installed with a very limited set of applications that include a file manager, the text editor, a software center that suspiciously looks like GNOME software and a few other apps.

The dock is the primary way of accessing your installed apps, with a very familiar look to it.

There is also a neat control center located in the header bar of the desktop, where you find options to enable/disable the Wi-Fi, dark mode toggle, DND, take a screenshot, adjust the volume, and access the settings menu.

The power menu besides the control center also has big buttons to control the state of your system by allowing you to shut down, reboot, log out, suspend, and even lock the screen. There's also a notification window useful to check for any missed notifications.

Overall, the way I see it, Lingmo OS could be a good competitor to another distro popular for its modern take on UI, Deepin.

However, it requires some work to get there, and I can only hope that development progresses well going forward. You can reach out to the project to contribute/help if you are interested.

If everything goes well, it can be a good fast/light experience, unlike Deepin.

Hopefully, this turns out to be something that we hoped Cutefish OS would be!

Get Lingmo OS​

You can get the latest Lingmo OS release from its official website, where you get a SourceForge mirror for ISO images.

Nitrux Linux Distro To Drop KDE Plasma in Favor of Maui Shell.​

When I came across the latest Nitrux 3.4.0 release, I was left wondering why they included the older KDE Plasma 5.27 instead of the newer Plasma 6 desktop environment that many recent distro releases come equipped with.

That's when I noticed their announcement, which explained what they are doing, and how it affects the future of Nitrux. Let's get into it without any further ado.

What's Happening: In a surprising move, the developers of Nitrux have signalled a move away from Plasma, and committed to using Maui Shell by default from late 2024, as the only desktop environment option with Nitrux.

It's been some time since we took a look at the first alpha release of Maui Shell, and as it stands, its development seems to have progressed consistently when you look at its GitHub repo.

What to Expect: Well, the switch is coming, but not anytime soon. Nitrux's developers will continue using the older Plasma 5.27.x LTS release for the majority of 2024.

However, what made them switch to Maui Shell was the fact that many of the widgets and plasmoids used to make NX Desktop (Nitrux's customization layer for Plasma) will stop functioning with Plasma 6.

The developers believe that NX Desktop has achieved what it set out to do, while also helping Plasma further its development. But, they also mention that Nitrux will still continue to use various KDE components such as KDE Frameworks, Extra CMake Modules, and a few more.

Despite the above, the developers have stated that they are open to the idea of providing an AppImage of KDE Plasma 6 “for fun”. Those who want to use it with their Nitrux installation could benefit from this.

For now, the devs are focused on porting their apps and Maui Shell to Qt6, while also carrying out some remaining work with AppImages on NX AppImage Build Hub.




KDE Plasma 6: The Big Release is Here!
KDE Plasma 6, the much-awaited upgrade, is here. Let’s take a look at it.

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Canonical Announces Netplan 1.0 with Simultaneous WPA2 and WPA3 Support​

This release will be available by default in the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Debian GNU/Linux 13 operating system releases.


After more than seven years of development, Canonical’s Netplan utility for easily configuring networking on a Linux system has finally matured with version 1.0, a major release introducing exciting new features.

Highlights of Netplan 1.0 include support for using WPA2 and WPA3 security protocols simultaneously, support for using PSK and EAP passwords simultaneously, Mellanox VF-LAG support for high-performance SR-IOV networking, as well as new hairpin and port-mac-learning settings for VXLAN tunnels with FRRouting.

Netplan 1.0 also introduces a new netplan status –diff subcommand for finding differences between configuration and system state, support for identifying bridge/bond/vrf members, support for the WPA3-Enterprise security protocol, and support for LEAP and EAP-PWD auth methods.

Netplan now comes with a stable libnetplan1 API that no longer contains legacy code, which increases the maintainability of Netplan’s codebase going forward. Additional bridge port settings have been added as well in this release, along with much-improved documentation and numerous bug fixes.


“Those changes pave the way to integrate Netplan into 3rd party projects, such as system installers or cloud deployment methods. By shipping the new python3-netplan Python bindings to libnetplan, it is now easier than ever to access Netplan functionality and network validation from other projects,” said Lukas Märdian, maintainer and lead developer of Netplan, in a blog post.
But Netplan 1.0 includes even more goodies compared to the version used in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), such as support for managing new network interface types like veth, dummy, VXLAN, VRF, or InfiniBand (IPoIB), and integration with NetworkManager on desktop systems.

It also brought improved consistency between supported backend renderers like systemd-networkd and NetworkManager by matching physical network interfaces on permanent MAC addresses when using the match.macaddress setting, as well as new hardware offloading functionality for high-performance networking.

While Netplan 1.0 was released on February 29th, Canonical says that it will be available by default in the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series, due out on April 25th, 2024.

Canonical also says that Netplan 1.0 will be available in the forthcoming Debian GNU/Linux 13 “Trixie” operating system series, which should see the light of day in June or July 2024. For more details about the changes included in Netplan 1.0, check out the GitHub release notes.