It has been ten years since the first version of Netrunner was made available to the general public, and what better way to celebrate this special day than releasing the 20th release of Netrunner Desktop for Ubuntu/Debian.
Netrunner is an operating system that works on Debian Stable and works on PCs and ARM devices like Odroid C1, Pine 64, etc. It uses KDE Plasma as its desktop environment and features plenty of other useful applications. It looks gorgeous and can run on very minimal spec computers.
Minimum hardware requirements
- CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270
- RAM: 1+ GB
- Hard Drive: 10+ GB
- Graphics Card: Intel GMA 945
- Video Memory: 128+ MB
What’s New in Netrunner 20.01
The latest update to Netrunner, also known as Twenty, is based on Debian “buster” 10.3, and this has to be the most important highlight of this release. Apart from that, Netrunner 20.1 is also going to inherit all the security updates from Debian, making the system as stable as ever.
When it comes to the overall look and feel of the system, the users might be surprised to find a new “Birthday” theme, as dubbed by the makers themselves, in the form of a polished “Indigo” Global Theme. This new theme has been created with the help of Kvantum theming engine, and you can have a peek at it below:
Other than that, active and inactive windows will also start looking a lot different, all thanks to the increased contrast, as the designers have switched to the Breeze Window decoration alongside its darker color. Also, if anyone has any trouble locating the cursor on the screen, you should probably opt for the RED-theme, which comes with a red-colored cursor. Accompanying this update would also be a new wallpaper that has been designed, keeping in mind the 10th birthday of Netrunner and the 20th version release.
There have also been plenty of package updates as well in this version of Netrunner. First of all, users are going to find the latest LTS versions of Thunderbird and Firebox-ESR when they update to Netrunner Twenty.
A great thing about Netrunner is that you’ll find a bunch of handy software accompanying this OS. So, when you install or update to Netrunner 20.1, you’ll get your hands on an office suite (LibreOffice), image editors (Gimp and Inkscape), painting software (Krita), and video editor (Kdenlive). If you weren’t sold on its applications already, the Debian-based OS would also offer music management software (Yarock and GMusicbrowser), video player (SMPlayer), collaboration app (Pidgin or Skype), and terminal (Yakuake).
With that being said, if you’re not all that interested in additional software, your best bet would be to go for Netrunner Core, which is a minimal version of the OS.
Conclusion
The brains behind Netrunner took the perfect opportunity to release the 20th version right on time for the operating system’s 10th anniversary and, at the same time, made sure to incorporate sufficient changes to this update. If you were impressed by Netrunner 20.1, you could download it right now from here. Also, you can have a better look at what this update is all about by checking out our official news source.
