Nitrux 1.0.8
Pleasing Shashank Sharma is a matter of offering custom software and being a rolling release. Nitrux claims to have the first part sorted…
Pleasing Shashank Sharma is simply a matter of offering custom software and being a rolling release. Nitrux claims to have the first sorted, so how about the rest…?
The past few years have been especially generous for the Linux desktop. We’ve had numerous new distributions ship with their own home-grown desktops, each vying for the attention of the new users. Nitrux, based on Ubuntu, is no exception and features its own Nomad desktop.
With KDE Plasma as its base, Nitrux’s Nomad desktop has a lot in common with KDE and the distro uses several core KDE components such as the Dolphin file manager. All Linux desktops provide users the option to lock the screen, or suspend the system, apart from a couple of other powersaving options. With Nitrux, once the screen locks after a default period of inactivity, your only option is a hard reset: there’s no way to revive it.
Nitrux only ships with a minimal set of default programs, and you won’t find an email client, office suite or torrent application out of the box. In fact, with the exception of Chromium browser, Kate text editor, BabeMusicPlayer and VLCMediaPlayer, the distribution doesn’t provide any other everyday application. Not even a calculator!
The upside to such minimalist offerings is that Nitrux is incredibly fast. Despite being based on Ubuntu, Nitrux can easily put its parent to shame.
Custom design
Apart from the desktop, which features a panel at the top, and a dock featuring a few tools at the bottom, the distribution also boasts of a couple of other custom tools. The first of these is its SoftwareCenter. While similar in appearance to most other such graphical software management tools, the SoftwareCenter lists the available software in square tiles, with just a name for each software. Not only are there no icons for the software/utilities on offer, you also don’t get any information about the different software.
You install software by clicking the Get button on the tile. The Software Center doesn’t give any indication if it’s acting on your request, apart from greying-out the Get button. You must click the button to the left of the search bar at the top to view the activity. Unlike other similar tools, you can use Nomad SoftwareCenter to install multiple applications at the same time. This is possible because unlike other distros, Nitrux uses Snap packages by default. The obvious drawback here is that not all Linux tools and applications are available as Snap packages. Should you feel the need to install such software, you can still use apt with Nitrux.
For touch-screen devices, the distribution also supports various swipe gestures. These can be configured using the Touch Screen module. You can think of the feature as the equivalent of hot corners, which Nomad doesn’t support, surprisingly.
Apart from the unorthodox default launcher, which provides a list of frequently used apps on the first screen and all available applications on the second, the distribution also ships with several launcher widgets such as the full screen launcher, or the application launcher which provides a categorised list of installed software.
You can use the global search on the desktop to perform a variety of tasks. The search bar can also be used as an activity switcher, and for looking up applications. You can’t, however, use the global search for looking up files and folders on the desktop.
Although functional, Nomad is still some ways away from being in the same league as Budgie or Deepin, both custom desktops designed respectively by the Solus OS and Deepin Linux projects. While the global search is fast, it can’t be used for looking up files and folders. As it stands, Nitrux is unsuitable for everyday use – especially considering that more functional distributions are readily available.